Coronavirus: Chinese tourists, gripped by pandemic fears, scale back domestic travel plans for holidays

Plane tickets are nearly 20 per cent cheaper than the last New Year-Lunar New Year season as many Chinese indicate they’ll stay closer to home

Authorities in several cities advise residents not to leave the city ‘unless necessary’, or even stay indoors

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Passengers look at train information at Huanxian Station, in northwest China's Gansu Province on December 26, 2020. Qunar.com says for the 2021 New Year-Lunar New Year period, more travellers seek a destination within an hour from home. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 1:34pm, 30 Dec 2020Updated: 9:38pm, 30 Dec 2020

Chinese tourists, millions of whom have shunned overseas travel this year because of the global pandemic, are further narrowing the scope of their journeys, visiting nearby cities and avoiding trips out of their provinces.

Recent cases of the novel coronavirus in Beijing and northern China have rekindled public concern already shaken by calls to avoid non-essential travel during the festive season between January 1 and the start of Lunar New Year in mid-February.

Millions of domestic tourists travel in the week before and after January 1 in a typical year.

Although, by December 24. hotel bookings for the upcoming three-day New Year weekend had reached 1.8 times the number of bookings a year earlier, plane tickets were nearly 20 per cent cheaper on average, with many people not travelling far, Beijing-based online travel platform Qunar.com said.

“The trend is taking a train to visit cities within the reach of one hour,” the company said.

The hottest train tickets are for trips between the southwestern cities of Chengdu and Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province, and Shanghai and Hangzhou, according to Qunar.com.

Huang Li said she decided against going to Sanya, on the southern island of Hainan, after the government told people to avoid unnecessary travel.

Coronavirus: Chinese tourists, gripped by pandemic fears, scale back domestic travel plans for holidays

Plane tickets are nearly 20 per cent cheaper than the last New Year-Lunar New Year season as many Chinese indicate they’ll stay closer to home Authorities in several cities advise residents not to leave the city ‘unless necessary’, or even stay indoors

Plane tickets are nearly 20 per cent cheaper than the last New Year-Lunar New Year season as many Chinese indicate they’ll stay closer to home

Authorities in several cities advise residents not to leave the city ‘unless necessary’, or even stay indoors