Chinese travellers back with a roar in Year of the Dragon, with 195 million trips marking Lunar New Year’s Eve
- Leading travel services report numbers well above pre-pandemic levels, as hundreds of millions criss-cross country for Spring Festival holiday
- Iconic landmarks around world join in on the festivities, with London Eye, Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House and Tokyo Tower lighting up red
Domestic passenger traffic on Friday, Lunar New Year’s Eve, was up by 26.7 per cent compared with the same time last year, with 195.24 million trips taken across the transport system, according to state news agency Xinhua.
The bulk of the traffic was on the highways, with more than 184 million trips made on Friday. Rail traffic roughly doubled to 8.2 million trips, while the number of people taking flights was up by nearly 1.5 times, rising by 137.7 per cent to 1.8 million, the report said.
Ctrip, China’s biggest travel company, reported higher demand for transport on Saturday as well. It said ticket orders more than doubled year on year to exceed pre-pandemic levels, during the start of the 2019 Lunar New Year, Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper reported.
Warmer destinations in the south such as Hainan, Guangdong and Yunnan provinces were popular choices among holidaymakers from China’s colder northern regions, while southerners were keen to head north to snowy destinations, according to the report.
Ctrip was quoted as saying that bookings for Harbin in Heilongjiang province, a trending travel destination and home of the renowned ice festival, rose by 40 per cent from the first day of the last Lunar New Year.