China's Residential Elderly Care Tourism Reaches 84.3 Million Trips

A latest report by the China Association on Aging shows that China's residential elderly care tourism reached 84.316 million person-trips, averaging more than 7 million per month, and the related industry has become a new growth point for the economy. In recent years, a growing number of older people have enriched their later lives through travel, convalescence, and vacations. In line with differentiated development concepts, various regions and departments have drawn up action plans, issued service standards, built cooperation platforms, developed residential demonstration zones, certified residential elderly care bases, and cultivated premium routes, gradually improving the policy support system.

Against the backdrop of integrating culture and tourism, elderly care, and health industries, residential elderly care tourism has developed models such as snowbird-style, convalescent, community-based, and rural-style arrangements. Older people can thereby take in different natural scenery and cultural landscapes while expanding their social networks and strengthening family bonds. On the supply side, current residential elderly care tourism service offerings generally center on the theme of escaping the summer heat, and product homogenization is relatively prominent. Many county-level residential elderly care bases emphasize tourism over health care, and their health care service capacity struggles to meet older people's balanced needs for medical care, wellness, and travel.