By Casey Hall
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Temples, mountains and historic sites around China drew huge crowds and hours-long queues as millions of people made trips during the country’s seven-day “Golden Week” holiday that wrapped up on Monday.
Though Chinese consumer confidence remains near record lows and economic growth is slowing amid a prolonged property crisis and employment concerns, there was hope the pre-holiday stimulus unveiled by Beijing in the days before the holiday might help loosen traveler purse strings.
The holiday period is traditionally one of the busiest on China’s travel calendar and the number of travelers on the move throughout the holiday was characteristically high this year, though official data about their spending has not yet been released.
China’s railway network said 175 million passenger trips will be completed during the 10-day National Day holiday travel rush from Sept. 29 to Oct. 8, with daily average trip numbers similar to last year’s levels.
Prior to the holiday, analysts had predicted that absolute trip numbers would rise but spending remain flat as tourists took advantage of lower flight and hotel prices both at home and abroad to book longer holidays at higher-rated hotels for lower prices.
Though big cities such as Beijing remain popular draws, smaller towns and natural scenic areas proved to be particularly popular this year.
Best-selling video game “Black Myth: Wukong”, based on a mythical monkey king from a Chinese literary classic, sparked interest from travelers in destinations associated with the game, including Xi County in Shanxi Province in the north.
In two separate incidents at mountain scenic spots, videos widely shared on Chinese social media showed crowds of tourists at Jiangxi’s Sanqing Mountain and Anhui’s Yellow Mountain facing hours-long queues for cable cars – and anxious waits for toilets.
Gambling hub Macau was also inundated with tourists from the mainland throughout the holiday period, with total tourist numbers exceeding Golden Week levels from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Average daily tourist numbers there reached more than 150,000 from Oct. 1 to 6, far higher than the 100,000 per day forecast by the Macao Government Tourism Office.
Alibaba-owned travel site Fliggy said overseas bookings on its platform grew more than 50% year-on-year, with international hotel bookings up 120% from 2019 levels.
Thailand was expected to be one of the major beneficiaries of outbound travel, with 183,000 Chinese tourists expected to visit during the Golden Week period, representing 88% of 2019 levels and generating 5.1 billion baht ($153 million) in revenue, according to the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
($1 = 33.4300 baht)
(Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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