A Chinese think tank is urging the country to offer foreign visitors domestically made phones packed with local apps at border entry points, allowing inbound tourists access to payment and reservation tools that devices made overseas often lack.

Inbound travellers should be able to borrow low-end 4G or 5G handsets near immigration checkpoints, such as airports, the Straits Urban Research Institute recommended in a commentary. The phones would come with eSIM cards plus pre-installed apps that could be used to show maps, process e-payments, book hotels and make emergency calls, it said.

“China’s inbound tourism market continues to recover, but international tourists still face a significant ‘digital divide’ in China,” according to the commentary posted Sunday on WeChat by the independent academic group, which focuses on macroeconomics, urban development and geopolitics.

The think tank cited surveys showing that more than two in three independent travellers from outside China said they were affected by “the inability to use mainstream domestic apps for booking and payment”.

Foreign tourists on average must download at least six apps to “meet their basic needs” while travelling, the institute said. Ready-to-use phones would meet those needs while leaving travellers with a good impression of Chinese technology, it added.

Phone sales at border entry points “would address practical bottlenecks in payment and reservation systems in the short term, while fostering China’s international competitiveness in digital services in the long term, transforming inbound tourism facilitation into a window showcasing the country’s digital development achievements”, it said.