Staycation trend boosts local tourism revenue during holiday
4.92m Number of combined visits in Shanghai over the seven-day Spring Festival holiday.
NEW leisure modes have become emerging drivers for domestic tourism, with local tours and online tourism widely favored during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday — from February 11 to yesterday — this year.
Unlike in the past, when billions of passenger trips were made for the most important Chinese festival, many people avoided long-distance travel this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
In late January, the Ministry of Transport cut its forecast of passenger flow to around 1.15 billion passenger trips for the 40-day Spring Festival travel season this year. It marks a drop of more than 20 percent year on year, and a plunge of over 60 percent from 2019.
Shanghai’s tourism market was injected with new momentum under the staycation trend as it recorded a combined 4.92 million visits over the seven days, 96 percent of the 2019 number.
Of this, 81.55 percent came from those staying in the city, according to the Shanghai Administration of Culture and Tourism.
The city reaped a total tourism revenue of 5.67 billion yuan (US$878 million) during the holiday.
The average occupancy rate of hotels across the city reached 90 percent of that in 2019, the administration said.
A hundred micro tour routes, 100 performances and 100 exhibitions were arranged during the holiday to make locals and those staying back experience Shanghai’s splendor, said Cheng Meihong, deputy director of the administration.
They have brought a fresh look and injected new impetus into the city’s culture and tourism market with strong festive flavor, online and offline interaction, combination of culture, tourism and business and accurate epidemic prevention measures, she added.
Among the city’s 170 major tourist attractions, scenic spots on Chongming Island had a combined 311,000 visits, soaring 395 percent from 2019, and Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Garden received 85,900, surging 245 percent.
Sheshan National Tourism Resort welcomed 578,200, a 177 percent gain, while Shanghai International Tourism Resort had 515,600, up 15 percent.
Open tourism areas like the Bund, Yuyuan Garden, and Lujiazui received 1.14 million, 370,300 and 1.07 million visits during the holiday, respectively, according to the administration.
The newly opened riverfront areas of the Huangpu River spanning five districts had almost 3 million in total.
Suburban hotels did well, with those in Jinshan, Songjiang, Qingpu, Fengxian and Chongming districts recording 50-plus percent occupancy rates, rising more than 20 percent from 2019.
The staycation trend also boosted the entertainment market as venues like KTV halls recorded a visitor and revenue increase of 20 percent and 42 percent, respectively, from that in 2019, the administration said.
The revenue of gaming venues rose 16.6 percent as well.
Cultural venues in the city recorded 1.32 million visits during the holiday, and online cultural and tourism activities had 125 million viewings in total.
Local parks received 3.47 million visits, up 12 percent; with countryside parks seeing a 444 percent surge to 259,700 visits.
The city’s culture and tourism consumption during the holiday mostly came from Shanghainese instead of out-of-town tourists.
Shanghai resident Amy Zhang booked two nights at a hot spring hotel in Jiading District with her husband.
“I planned to book three nights but the Valentine’s Day was fully reserved,” she said. “Unable to travel elsewhere, we still needed a sense of ritual during the important holiday.”
Lu Xinyi, a native of Hebei Province, stayed in the city during the holiday. She took a cycling tour on the Huangpu riverfront with her friends and visited Zhujiajiao water town.
“I have been in Shanghai for four years, but I had never been to the ancient town,” said Lu. “I felt the festive atmosphere there and the riverfront area is also beautiful.”
Red tourism venues such as Shanghai Longhua Martyr Cemetery and Chen Yun Memorial were popular as this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the administration said.
The staycation economy has indeed boosted the local tourism market, according to travel agencies.
The booking figures of tourist attractions’ admission surged over 50 percent during the holiday over that of 2019, with Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen among cities seeing the largest number of scenic spot bookings, Shanghai-based online travel operator Trip.com said yesterday.
To encourage people to stay put for the holiday, a number of ticketing preferential policies were launched at scenic spots, leading to the surge, it added.
Shanghai Disney Resort, Haichang Ocean Park, and Century Park in Shanghai were among the top 10 national holiday destinations, Trip.com said.
Online travel operator TongchengElong said rural tourism and tours featuring experience of folk tradition and customs were popular during the holiday, and some tourist attractions such as Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou were fully booked.
In-depth local tours and short-distance self-driving tours were popular, and tourism authorities and companies’ webcast and “cloud tourism” activities enriched people’s experiences during the holiday, said Wu Ruoshan, researcher of the Tourism Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
SPRING Festival is the time for family reunions. Essam Ahamed, a Sudanese student in China, also feels at home through participating in a series of activities, though he has not seen his parents for two years.
With a dumpling wrapper in hand, the young man carefully filled it with meat stuffing.
“It’s my first time making dumplings. It is quite challenging, but we had a lot of fun chatting and working together,” Ahamed said in fluent Chinese.
Ahamed is a second-year postgraduate in business administration at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. To avoid getting infected by the COVID19 virus, some 40 international students of the university chose to stay on campus during the holiday.
To enrich their lives, the university has organized activities such as skiing, playing table tennis, making dumplings, writing Chinese characters on Spring Festival couplets with brush pens, and learning traditional paper-cutting for the international teachers and students.
“We went skiing last week, and also took part in activities like making dumplings and paper-cutting,” Ahamed said. “We feel very happy since we can get together through these activities. It is very warm like we are a big family.”
Unforgettable memory
Nitesh Singh and his wife Sucharita Kundu from India have been teaching computer programming at the university since 2017. In the university’s activities, they have learned how to make the perfect dumpling.
Singh has been worrying about his parents in India and keeps in touch with them every day. “China brought the epidemic under control very quickly, and our lives went back to normalcy due to the efficient measures,” Singh said.
There are more than 170 international students at the university, and some of them could not return to campus due to the pandemic. Teachers have rescheduled the classes to make sure each of them can follow classes through an online teaching platform.
“The pandemic is still serious globally. Ningxia is a low-risk area, and experiencing traditional Chinese culture here will be an unforgettable memory for our international teachers and students,” said Li Xing, Party chief of the university.
Ahamed learned Chinese in Egypt where he earned his bachelor’s degree. After that, he came to China to work as a Chinese-Arabic translator for two years. He decided translating was not enough and he returned to school.
He used to return home or travel around China with friends during holidays. Due to COVID-19, he is staying in Ningxia. He said his parents worried about him at first and urged him to go back, but soon they felt relieved thanks to China’s efficient measures.
“Now Sudan has some cases, and my two brothers are in the United States, so I often share with them some methods to avoid getting infected and persuade them to wear masks,” he said.
“Teachers are on duty 24 hours a day. We can go out whenever we need if we complete an application procedure, so our daily life is very convenient,” Ahamed said.
Li said the university will make every effort to ensure international teachers and students have a happy holiday.