Searches for international flights have spiked following China's announcement to ease COVID curbs on cross-border trips, bolstering confidence for an acceleration in consumption recovery.

China's health authorities said late Monday that outbound travel will gradually resume. It also announced to scrap quarantine requirement for international arrivals starting January 8, 2023.

Flight ticket search volume surged following the news. Searches for international flights jumped seven-fold on the travel platform Qunar within 15 minutes of the news. Thailand, Japan and South Korea were the most popular destinations that people looked up. Within half an hour, searches for outbound flights, including to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, hit a three-year peak on Ctrip, another platform.

Publishing of the measures has fast-forwarded analysts' prediction on the post-pandemic resumption of international tourism.

The willingness to travel across-border will quickly turn into action with the optimization of COVID rules on international travel, said Xiang Min, head of Fliggy's flight ticket business. Fliggy is Alibaba's online travel arm.

Xiang expects bookings of inbound flights to lead the recovery and airlines will work to launch more routes to meet the demand.

Moreover, China's top banking and insurance regulator pledged to increase financial support for the catering and tourism industry in 2023 in a Tuesday announcement.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission also emphasized strengthening financial relief for service industries to boost domestic demand, especially for small and micro enterprises.

The recovery in tourism, hotel and catering is still under pressure in the short-term as winter is the season of high risk of virus infection and consumer willingness to spend needs more time to recuperate, analysts from China International Capital Corporation said in a note last week. But they predicted that growth in the sectors is likely to accelerate in the medium and long term.