China cashes in on vibrant Spring Festival spending
China’s Spring Festival holiday has ignited a new round of consumption boom, further unleashing consumer spending potential amid fresh styles for people to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
This year’s official Spring Festival holiday lasted eight days, one day more than the previous years, allowing people to arrange their holiday activities with more options.
The holiday has seen more people on trips, more holiday goods purchases and more quality family time spent in leisure activities.
The travel willingness of residents increased during the holiday, and many indicators, such as the number of travelers and the total cost of traveling, hit a record high.
According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 474 million domestic tourism trips were made during the Spring Festival holiday, an increase of 34.3 percent over the same period of last year and an increase of 19 percent on a comparable basis compared with the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
Domestic tourists have spent about 632.69 billion yuan (US$89 billion) in total, up 7.7 percent from the same holiday period in 2019.
China Unicom’s data showed that compared with 2019, the traffic volume of people traveling in the Spring Festival of 2024 increased by 45 percent, with more than 14,000 popular tourist routes newly added.
“Travel is becoming a New Year custom,” said Wang Yalei, an industry analyst with Trip.com.
From New Year’s Day to the Spring Festival, the consumption of cultural tourism continued to be hot, which has become the main force driving residents’ consumption, reflecting the great potential of domestic consumption, he said.
On the Spring Festival Eve, the large domestic cruise ship Adora Magic City, carrying more than 4,500 passengers, left Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal for a New Year journey.
“It’s very memorable to spend the Spring Festival on this domestically made cruise ship,” said He Yingxin, a tourist from Beijing.
After a lapse of four years, the Chinese Spring Festival once again became the peak of global travel consumption. According to a report released by Trip.com on Saturday, China’s outbound and inbound tourism orders both exceeded the same period in 2019, especially inbound tourism, which increased by 48 percent compared with 2019.
According to the National Immigration Administration, a total of 13.52 million inbound and outbound visits were made during the holiday. The number of daily average visits was 1.69 million, a 2.8-time increase over the same holiday period of last year.
Plentiful holiday purchases
This year, in addition to local specialties, Hefei resident Yang Xiaoyan has shrimp and crabs from Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, sausage from Guangzhou, beef from Brazil and lamb chops from New Zealand on her dinner table.
“Online shopping is very convenient, and you can have these different food mailed to you,” Yang said.
As the first major online activity to boost the country’s efforts in promoting consumption this year, China started a national online Spring Festival shopping season on January 18, integrating online promotion activities from various localities, e-commerce platforms and shops.
During the first five days of the holiday, the sales of festival goods were booming. Sales of organic food, gold, silver and jewelry from retail enterprises monitored by the Ministry of Commerce increased by more than 10 percent year on year.
Spending on luxury goods is also rising. According to statistics from local customs authorities of south China’s Hainan Province, duty-free spending is nearly 2.5 billion yuan, or 8,358 yuan per capita during the holiday period.
Recreational spending boom
Apart from goods consumption, leisure activities were also popular among Chinese consumers.
According to the Beijing Bureau of Culture and Tourism, during the Spring Festival holiday, 97 theaters in the city held a total of 1,513 commercial performances, attracting about 310,000 audiences and generating a box-office revenue of 49.28 million yuan.
Compared with the same holiday period in 2019, the number of performances, audiences and box-office revenue surged by 245.7 percent, 41.5 percent and 31.7 percent, respectively.
As for the cinemas, the national box office during the holiday was 8.02 billion yuan, and the number of people watching movies was 163 million. The figures increased by 18.47 percent and 26.36 percent, respectively, compared with the Spring Festival holiday in 2023, both setting a new record in the same period, according to the China Film Administration.
Winter sports are gaining popularity beyond the country’s northeastern provinces. In December, the coastal city Longkou in east China’s Shandong Province opened its first ski resort, offering a new option for outdoor fun during the Spring Festival holiday.
“The enthusiasm of locals as well as tourists for skiing has surpassed our expectations. Many people specifically asked whether the resort is open during the Spring Festival holiday,” said Wang Bin, the ski resort’s general manager.