New year, new destination

Beach, sunshine, ocean breeze and palm trees – these are not the things that usually come to mind when you talk about a traditional Spring Festival. But this is exactly how I spent this year’s holidays with my family in the southern resort city of Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province.

Instead of having a Lunar New Year’s Eve meal of homemade dishes and dumplings, we had a big dinner in a restaurant specializing in Hainan’s special coconut chicken broth hot pot, and watched the Spring Festival gala in the hotel where we stayed. We didn’t visit as many relatives from our large family as usual, but traveling

with my husband’s parents after not seeing them for almost a year was a good enough family reunion.

To be honest, Sanya is a pricey destination during the Chinese Lunar New Year. The price for a return ticket from Beijing to Hainan is nearly 4,500 yuan ($664), enough for a round trip to Europe during the low season. Most hotels cost over 1,500 yuan per night, and some with better sea views can go up to 3,000 yuan each night, almost as much as a fiveal, star hotel in New York. In total the 5-day trip cost my family over 35,000 yuan.

But the higher-than-usual prices didn’t seem to do anything to deter Chinese holidaymakers. About 1 million tourists chose to spend their

Spring Festival holidays in Sanya this year, according to the city’s tourism authorities. We stayed in two hotels during our entire trip, and both were fully booked. Hotel check-in staff were so busy that they had virtually no time to take a break.

A decade ago, the idea of traveling during the Spring Festival season would have been unconventional for many Chinese. But today, traveling has almost become the new normal for Chinese people, turning the weeklong holiday into another golden week for tourism.

China’s various tourist destinations received 415 million tourists during the holiday period, a 7.6 percent rise from the year before, according to statistics from the China Tourism Academy, a Beijing-based research institution. Altogether, tourism revenue during the holidays came to 513.9 billion yuan.

And Chinese are to an increasingly diverse range of destinations around the world. Statistics from online travel agency Ctrip show that Chinese travelers visited 1,372 cities in 97 countries and regions, up from 82 the year before. Booking data shows that Chinese flight bookings to the UK from January 30 to February 12 rose 24 percent year on year.

Another new feature emerged this year: Tourists are paying more attention to the quality of travel. According to a report by Ctrip, people opting for higher-quality accommodation rose by 45.3 percent in the Spring Festival period.

Travel made up just part of the total spending of Chinese consumers during the past Spring Festival holidays. Shopping and dining-out also contributed to the massive amounts of money spent, despite worries of a consumption downturn over the past few years.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, spending on retail goods and dining during the seven-day holiday period reached 1.005 trillion yuan, exceeding 1 trillion for the first time. That’s an 8.5 percent growth rate year-on-year.

While the growth rate dropped, Chinese people now value quality over quantity.

A report by e-commerce site JD shows that mobile phones, computers and home appliances were the top three best-selling categories in terms of revenue during the Chinese Lunar New Year. Compared with the past, when people mainly gave food as New Year’s gifts, this new trend shows how the livelihoods of Chinese people have improved over the past decade.

The report also said that the biggest growth in consumption power came from people in fourthto sixth-tier cities. This shows how small town Chinese are also joining the country’s buying spree, as people who work in the larger cities return to their hometowns during the holidays and help mobilize buying power in China’s rural areas.