Record tourist numbers since Covid-19 expected for China’s Labour Day, boosting hopes for domestic tourism recovery
- The five-day holiday will be the first “mini peak season” this year, according to a report by Trip.com
China’s hard-hit tourism sector is poised for a gradual recovery and the upcoming Labour Day holiday is expected to see a record number of over 80 million tourists as people try to return to normality after the recent Covid-19 lockdowns.
The five-day holiday will be the first “mini peak season” this year, according to a Tuesday report by Trip.com Group, China’s largest online travel services provider. It expects double the number of travellers seen during the Ching Ming Festival earlier this month, which recorded 43 million tourists and 8 billion yuan in tourism revenue, according to the China Tourism Academy.
Domestic travel, in particular intra-provincial and local trips, will be the preferred choice for most holidaymakers as restrictions are still in place for travel across provinces or to overseas destinations. Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing are the top 3 destination for holidaymakers during the planned Labour Day break, according to the report by the Nasdaq-listed Trip.com, formerly known as Ctrip.com International.
Hotel bookings are emerging with “several hundred million yuan” in gross merchandise value, and 55 per cent of bookings have been made with four- and five-star hotels as higher quality trips are in demand amid safety concerns, according to Trip.com.
A total of 4,000 attraction sites will be open for tourists during the May break, a record number since the pandemic, with Taiping National Forest Park in central China's Xi'an city and the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in Beijing among the most popular destinations based on the bookings on Trip.com.
The tourism industry in China has been one of the hardest-hit sectors by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in lockdowns and travel bans to prevent spread of the coronavirus. Back in February, online travel service providers like Trip.com were overloaded with customer booking changes, cancellations and refunds.
According to estimates by Beijing-based consultancy Analysys, China’s national tourism economy lost at least 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) a day on average during the outbreak.