China’s service sector recovery takes another hit as new coronavirus outbreaks cast pall over Lunar New Year consumption, travel
- Ministry of Transport now projects that trips made during holiday period will hit a three-decade low, as it revises down its travel estimates by a third from a week earlier
- Chinese plans for Spring Festival are expected to be subdued, as it will take extra effort for people to travel in the coming weeks
The Lunar New Year holiday, popularly known in China as the Spring Festival, traditionally results in hundreds of millions of workers in big cites returning to their hometowns, spending large sums of money on food, gifts and travel.
Normally, hundreds of millions of people in the world’s most populous country go on holiday to mark the beginning of the new lunar year, drawing comparisons with Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter travel periods in the West, all rolled into one.
However, the Spring Festival this year, which officially begins on February 12, is expected to be much more subdued, as it will take extra effort for people to follow through on travel plans.
“I’ve spent a year planning this trip,” said Li Lin, a Beijing-based tech entrepreneur who has set aside 50,000 yuan (US$7,731) to visit a ski resort in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, bordering North Korea and Russia. “I anticipated that the schools would discourage children from leaving [Beijing], so I sent my kids and wife to Jilin right after the exams were over. They have been in the resort for nearly two weeks now.”