Long holiday boosts consumer spending
Pent-up demand drives tourism resurgence over extended National Day break
Chinese consumers appeared to be spending more money than last year during the just-ended National Day holiday.
On the first two days of the eightday holiday, Chinese consumers spent 628 billion yuan ($92.6 billion) by UnionPay card, up 11.8 percent yearon-year, according to UnionPay.
On National Day, Oct 1, which overlapped with the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, transaction volume recorded by UnionPay reached 330 billion yuan, up 15.5 percent on a yearly basis, it found.
“With the recovery of tourists’ confidence, higher travel demand will be activated in the country. Trips to western China, island tours, and tailored road trips are expected to become important forces that help the recovery of the tourism sector after COVID-19,” said Gou Zhipeng, president of Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.
The rare extended National Day holiday was the longest public vacation since the outbreak of the virus earlier this year. Long-distance trips and tours of western parts of China saw growing popularity.
To safeguard public health, scenic spots continued an online booking system to ensure tourists visit in staggered time slots.
At popular attractions, timely travel alerts were issued, and staff worked with multiple government departments to divert passenger flows as needed and prevent mass gatherings.
The Tibet autonomous region, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Ningxia Hui autonomous region were the areas that saw the fastest growth of spending on a yearly basis
in the first two days, the UnionPay data found.
“With vast land and lower population density, western China fits with the psychology of tourists to avoid crowds in the post-epidemic period,” said Zhang Jinshan, a tourism industry professor at Beijing Union University.
“In recent years, the National Day holidays were often peak periods
for international trips. Due to the pandemic this year, Chinese tourists chose long-distance domestic trips instead, and it helped the western region to gain popularity,” Zhang said.
On the first two days of the eightday holiday, tourists’ spending volume on hotels in Tibet more than doubled year-on-year, while spending on catering grew 49 percent.
In Xinjiang, the amount spent on flight tickets tripled, and spending on admission tickets for sightseeing spots in Ningxia increased by 20 percent, according to UnionPay.
Meanwhile, Chinese consumers showed continued enthusiasm for the Shanghai Disneyland theme park. For bed-and-breakfast homestays within 3 kilometers of the park, their average price was higher than 1,000 yuan per night during the holiday, Qunar found.
About 550 million people were forecast to take domestic trips during the holiday, about 70 percent of the level seen last year, according to an earlier estimate by the China Tourism Academy.
The country saw 97 million domestic tourist trips on Oct 1. That was roughly 74 percent of the trips made at the same time last year, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It brought tourism revenue of 76.65 billion yuan, a recovery amounting to 68.9 percent of the revenue for the same period last year, the ministry said.
On Oct 2, a total of 108 million visits were made, with a total tourism revenue of 76.51 billion yuan, according to the ministry.
China State Railway Group, the country’s rail operator, said the system handled over 15 million train trips on Oct 1, hitting a record high for daily railway passenger trips since the coronavirus outbreak began early this year.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China estimated 14,941 passenger flights with some 1.67 million air trips on Oct 1, almost up to the level of the same period last year.
To speed the recovery of domestic tourism amid regular COVID-19 control, China further eased restrictions by raising the limit on daily reception numbers at scenic spots, theaters and performance venues to 75 percent of their maximum capacity, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism said in midSeptember.