Tourism expected to boom during May Day holidays

China's tourism sector, which is healing from the coronavirus outbreak, will face a critical period as the upcoming May Day holidays will likely stimulate domestic travel, even as the government and tourism sites are displaying caution over whether large gatherings of people could cause new COVID-19 infections.

Wuhan, the city pummeled by the epidemic, is gradually reopening its sightseeing spots, a sign of economic resumption in the coronavirusbattered country.

On Wednesday, Yellow Crane Tower, a wellknown scenic spot in Wuhan, opened to the public after months of closure. By about 11 am, some 200 people had visited. The tower is allowing a maximum of 5,400 visits per day, one-tenth of its normal daily capacity.

“Although reservations for the May Day holidays tickets are few now, just less than 100, we expect that daily visits will surge to 4,000-5,000 people on average during the May Day holidays,” Wang Hongnian, head of marketing at Yellow Crane Tower park told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Tourism service providers are also expecting a boost from the five-day holiday from May 1-5, the longest May vacation since 2008.

Xavier Desaulles, CEO of Asia-Pacific Markets at Club Med, an all-inclusive holiday resort brand, told the Global Times that rooms at its resort in Yanqing county in northwestern Beijing, a 90-mimute drive from the downtown, are almost fully booked for the May Day holidays. The county government has capped the maximum occupancy rate at 90 percent of capacity for epidemic prevention.

“As the epidemic situation turned in China, people are increasingly willing to travel, but of course most of them will choose self-drive tours in the suburbs instead of long-distance travel,” he said.

Despite these positive signs, it is unlikely that the May Day holidays will become a turning point for China's tourism industry, experts said, as the sector's recovery is subdued and slow with the government going to all lengths to prevent a second wave of coronavirus infections.

For the upcoming May Day holidays, some usually popular sites like Beijing's Forbidden City and Shanghai's Disneyland will remain shut. The government has not yet lifted the ban on transprovincial tours for travel agents, and other sites such as parks are exercising extreme cautions.