Short trips popular among travelers during holiday

Chinese travelers showed much enthusiasm for short trips, especially back to their hometowns, during the just concluded Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, taking the popularity of tourism during the traditional grave-sweeping activity period to a new high, according to data from industry players.

During the holiday from April 4 to 6, booking volumes of train tickets for people returning to their hometowns to pay their respects to departed family members as well as to visit relatives nearly doubled from the level seen last year, data from Alibaba's travel platform Fliggy showed.

"Chinese people traveled farther during the holiday, and they continued to pursue high-quality experiences, with the per capita tourism consumption growing by double-digits year-on-year. The number of bookings for hotels, car rentals, and mid- to long-distance travel products increased significantly," said Wang Liyang, operation manager of Fliggy.

During the holiday, the booking volume of domestic hotels jumped 159 percent year-on-year, and those of luxury hotels surged 195 percent on a yearly basis. Bookings for admission tickets to some popular scenic spots more than doubled year-on-year, Fliggy found.

With temperatures rising across the nation, more Chinese tourists undertook visits to appreciate areas filled with blooming flowers and for hiking. The booking volumes of travel products that included mountain climbing surged over five times year-on-year, and some favorite destinations included Huangshan mountain in Anhui province and Leshan mountain in Sichuan province, data from Fliggy showed.

Some 35,000 domestic commercial flights operated during the holiday period, up 1 percent year-on-year, and the busiest domestic airport was Chengdu Tianfu International Airport, according to VariFlight, an aviation data and solution services provider.

During the same period, about 5,500 international and regional flights operated, up 125 percent year-on-year, rebounding to nearly 70 percent of the pre-COVID level seen in 2019, according to VariFlight.

Travel to overseas destinations continued to boom during the holiday, and the booking volumes of such travel products nearly doubled over last year. Some popular destinations included Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. Among the top 30 most popular overseas destinations, countries within a 12-hour flight circle of China accounted for more than half of the total, Fliggy found.

Meanwhile, young travelers, especially those born in the 1990s and after the year 2000, were the main groups who booked bed-and-breakfast homestays during the holiday, and the booking volumes of B&B stays more than doubled from the level seen last year, according to Tujia, a homestay booking platform.

Domestic cities that witnessed highest bookings of B&B stays included Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Chengdu in Sichuan province, and Nanjing in Jiangsu province. Some smaller cities with distinctive features were also popular. The booking volume of B&B stays in Tianshui, Gansu province during the holiday surged 18.8 fold year-on-year, the highest growth domestically.