BEIJING, Feb 24 (Reuters) – China’s nine-day Lunar New Year holiday delivered a boost to domestic travel and consumer spending, meeting government hopes that an extended break would coax households to travel, shop and seek entertainment.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism said on Tuesday that domestic trips during the holiday reached 596 million and total tourism spending hit 803.5 billion yuan ($116.81 billion).
Both were up almost 19% from the same holiday period last year, which was shorter by one day, according to Reuters calculations based on ministry data. Domestic tourism spending per trip, however, dipped 0.2%.
Crowds packed major scenic sites, from the Great Wall in Beijing to the Danxia landform in Guangdong. Even small villages in Fujian were full of tourists attracted by traditional folk activities such as “you shen”, a parade honouring local deities.
Liu Jian, a 32-year-old Beijing resident, said she intended to go to Tangshan, a two-hour ride from Beijing for a traditional molten-iron fireworks display, but failed to book a ticket.
“The ticket is 98 yuan, way more than the usual 38, but they’ve got tons of Spring Festival-only shows, so it’s popular. The tickets are gone the second they go on sale, and I just can’t get one,” she said.
In Sichuan province, the Jiuzhaigou scenic area said it received 182,700 visitors during the Spring Festival through February 23, an increase of 17.7% from last year’s holiday.
Similarly, Zhangjiajie, a popular mountain park in central China, said via its official WeChat account that visitor numbers in the first five days of the break rose 10.27% year-on-year.
Big cities also reported solid results. Shanghai authorities said the city welcomed 21.67 million visitors over the holiday, up 8.36%, while tourism-related spending reached 25.6 billion yuan, up 20.9%. Beijing reported 19.84 million visitors and total tourism spending of 33.14 billion yuan.
Travel platforms said lower-tier cities and county-level destinations benefited from a search for a more traditional holiday atmosphere. LY.COM said Guangdong emerged as a winner in “New Year flavour” trips, with hotel bookings in some destinations such as Shantou rising by more than 80% from a year earlier.
Dining also performed well, with sales revenue at key catering businesses monitored by the Ministry of Commerce increasing by 5.2%, compared with the holiday last year.
Hotpot chain Haidilao said it served more than 7 million customers nationwide in the first five days of the holiday, with traffic on Lunar New Year’s Eve and the first day of the new year up by more than 10% from the same period last year.
Chinese-style fried chicken brand Lin Yu Fried Chicken said that the surge of people returning home for the Spring Festival boosted consumption in lower-tier markets, with its stores receiving more than 3.7 million visits during the holiday period.
One of the brand’s outlets located in a scenic area of Rizhao in Shandong province reported order volume nearly seven times higher than on regular days.
The bright spot in travel and catering contrasted with a slump at the box office, a key holiday barometer of discretionary spending.
Several new releases saw weakening word of mouth dampening cinema attendance. Data from ticketing platform Maoyan showed Spring Festival box office takings of 5.75 billion yuan, down 39.5% from a year earlier, while total admissions fell 35.8% to 120 million.
($1 = 6.8788 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Brenda Goh, Sophie Yu and Beijing Newsroom, Editing by Louise Heavens and Anil D’Silva)
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