Festival spending a long-tail economic boost

The national tourism industry has seen a large boom in the Spring Festival holiday. That is an indicator of the recovery of the economy.

Tourists made 474 million trips at home during the Spring Festival holiday from Feb 10 to 17, up 34.3 percent year-on-year and 19 percent from that of 2019, spending 632.69 billion yuan ($94.9 billion), an increase of 47.3 percent from 2023, and 7 percent up on 2019, according to the estimates of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

But the tourism boom would have been less significant without the encouragement of various levels of governments taking measures to boost the industry. As early as the beginning of the Spring Festival, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism organized “Happy Chinese New Year” themed cultural and tourism activities.

Many local governments also issued consumption coupons to tourists so as to further stimulate the economy during the holiday. Their efforts have borne fruit, as official data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that from the first to the fifth day of the first lunar month, the sales of festive goods boomed, among which the sales of green organic food and gold and silver jewelry by key retail enterprises increased by more than 10 percent year-on-year.

In 2023, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached a record high, while consumption became the main driving force of economic growth, with a contribution rate of 82.5 percent. The booming domestic consumption during this year’s Spring Festival period shows consumption must now be sustained so it has a long-tail effect, and the overall performance of consumption in 2024 is a sustained driving force for the economy.