Spring Festival travel to break record

CHINA is on track for a bumper travel season, with travel authorities and tourism industry players expecting record-breaking journey numbers during the upcoming Spring Festival, adding new steam to the country’s economic recovery.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, which falls on February 10, is China’s biggest festival and a day for family reunions. It will serve as an important window for observing vitality and consumer confidence levels in the world’s second-largest economy.

With record demand for travel, this year’s Spring Festival holiday is poised to become the most vibrant and prosperous in recent years, experts said.

An estimated 80 million passenger trips, a record high, are likely to be handled by China’s civil aviation sector during the Spring Festival travel rush, which starts on January 26 and ends on March 5, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

This figure represents a 44.9 percent surge compared with the same period of 2023 and up 9.8 percent from the level recorded during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2019.

To handle the spike in air travel passenger levels, the country’s airlines have planned to add over 2,500 flights during the 40-day period, taking into consideration likely demand for trips to popular destinations, including Southeast Asian countries, Japan, South Korea and other neighboring regions, said Liang Nan, a CAAC official.

During the three-day New Year holiday that ended on January 1, a total of 135 million domestic tourist trips were made, up 155.3 percent year on year, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

(Xinhua)