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China’s Lunar New Year holidaymakers head overseas to release pent-up post-Covid demand for travel
- Bookings for international flights and hotels surge over the break, according to an online agency
- But long-distance bus trips are down, pointing to pain at the bottom of the economic ladder, analyst says
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Luna Sunin Beijing
Chinese tourists set foot in more distant corners of the world during the Lunar New Year holiday, with travel one of the few bright spots in the country’s consumer sectors.
Online travel agency Qunar said international flight bookings for the eight-day break were up 14-fold compared with the same holiday last year, taking Chinese tourists to 1,754 cities in 115 countries.
Overseas hotel bookings quintupled, it said.
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Domestic travel also saw a resurgence over the festive season, in some cases surpassing highs from 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic halted both domestic and overseas trips altogether.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, domestic tourists collectively spent 632.7 billion yuan (US$87.7 billion) during the holiday, or about 50 per cent more than they did during the 2023 Lunar New Year break.
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A total of 474 million domestic trips were made across the country, marking a 34.3 per cent year-on-year increase and a 19 per cent rise compared with 2019, according to ministry data.
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