According to the China Tourism Academy, there were 637 million domestic tourist trips made during China’s combined National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday from October 1 to 8.
The data derived from tourist departments and telecommunication operators indicates a 79-percent recovery in the tourism industry following the Covid-19 pandemic compared to the same period of 2019. Domestic tourist revenue during the eight-day holiday was 466.6 billion yuan (US$69.5b), 70 percent of that in 2019.
Catering and lodging industries were also big beneficiaries. The Ministry of Commerce said on October 9 that key enterprises in retailing and the food and beverage industries earned 1.6 trillion yuan (US$235.3b) in revenue, growth of 4.9 percent year-on-year. Total revenue of key catering enterprises in the hot tourism destinations of Sichuan and Zhejiang provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region rose by 43 percent, 23.4 percent and 21.7 percent respectively.
Data from Fliggy, a tourism booking platform owned by Alibaba Group, showed that the volume of hotel bookings during the holiday made through the app increased by over 50 percent year-on-year on average, with bookings in high-rated hotels at 100 percent.
The movie industry which was badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic was also reactivated, harvesting a box office of nearly 4 billion yuan (US$588.2m) by 5pm on October 8, according to Dengta, an app which collates box office data.
Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province and former center of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw the same passenger flows as the same period of last year, with China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines scheduling more flights to and from Wuhan. Local media said that many scenic spots in Wuhan were crowded and the total tourism consumption in Hubei saw 30 percent growth year-on-year.
Analysts described the boom as a second Spring Festival, which normally sees the greatest annual passenger flows. Due to the success in epidemic control, China’s economy grew 4.9% in the third quarter, which is very helpful to increase public and enterprise confidence in the government’s future economic policies and measures, Chinese analysts said.
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