Domestic holiday travel off and running
BEIJING: As a signal that the country’s tourism market is experiencing a strong recovery, China is estimated to have seen more than double the number of passenger trips made on the first day of the May Day holiday compared to a year earlier.
The Ministry of Transport’s preliminary estimate showed that the country handled 56.4 million passenger trips on Saturday as the fiveday May Day holiday kicked off, up 111.5% year-on-year.
The boom happened after Chinese people increasingly feel at ease due to safety concerns implemented to counter the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the ministry, the estimated number of trips China handled on Saturday has surpassed that made on the first day of the May Day holiday in 2019, which occurred before the outbreak.
Roughly 54.6 million passenger trips were made in the country on May 1, 2019.
The projection made by the ministry before this year’s May Day holiday showed that 265 million passenger trips are expected to occur from May 1 to May 5, close to the traffic recorded during the same period in 2019.
“The number of vehicles that took to the road on the first day of the holiday is expected to exceed 60 million, a record high,” ministry spokesman Sun Wenjian said at a news conference earlier.
The ministry’s latest estimate showed that 36 million trips were made via roadways on Saturday.
The business growth of travel agencies is in line with the official projection.
Domestic flight bookings, for example, soared since April on qunar.com, an online travel services provider.
In mid-April, the number of single-day flight bookings via the platform hit the highest level since the company was established, said Lan Xiang, a data specialist with the company.
The number of daily ticket bookings for the holiday increased more than 30% compared with the same period in 2019, Lan added.