China celebrated the Lunar New Year last week and as always it was a week of numerous travels. According to official data, during the whole festival about 386 million trips of Chinese tourists were made. This represents an increase of 12.1% compared to last year’s holiday.
Moreover, the expenditure of Chinese tourists led to exponential increases in revenue. Official sources reveal that the industry earned 475 billion yuan during the holidays. This, again, represents an increase of about 12.6% compared to the same period last year.
Popular destinations both domestically and overseas
The popularity of domestic tourism is rising. Sichuan, Hunan and Guangdong welcomed most tourists from all provinces.
In terms of overseas travel, Chinese tourists visited about 200 cities in 68 countries during the festival. The most popular destinations were in Southeast Asia. Almost half of travels were individual tours rather than organized groups.
When traveling domestically, the Chinese preferred car transportation compared to public transport. On the other hand, air traffic was also extremely popular, with more than 10 million trips made during the festival.
Overall, 11.4 million air trips were made between February 15 and 21. This is an increase of 16.1% compared to last year. Air travel is registering big increases in popularity. Last year there were about 5.1 million commercial flights. This is 9.48% more than in 2017.
The Chinese Lunar New Year was as usual a big driver for Chinese tourism. The already mentioned number of tourists and trips is a clear indicator of this trend.
Overall, another record year would be logical to expect, after earnings of up to 5.4 trillion yuan from tourism last year, which represents a 15.1% increase. China wants to increase the revenues to 7 trillion by 2020.