More Chinese to travel overseas for Spring Festival

About 60 percent of Chinese people who plan to spend the Spring Festival holiday on a trip chose to travel overseas, according to interviews and research by Beijing Daily.

According to the newspaper's data from major Chinese travel portals, including ctrip.com and ly.com, the number of bookings from Chinese tourists for outbound tourism has almost doubled, compared with that from the same period last year.

Up to now, travel products of many popular overseas destinations have been fully booked. The upcoming Spring Festival is very likely to witness the biggest traffic ever of people travelling overseas for the lunar Chinese New Year, a Ctrip manager told the newspaper.

Popular overseas destinations are still mainly distributed in Asia, with Thailand taking the lead, according to booking data from travel agencies. Other hot destinations include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

Insiders estimate the peak traffic will arrive between the first and third day of the lunar Chinese New Year (Feb 19-21), and the prices of tourism products will reach their highest.

As the official week-long holiday starts on Feb 18, only four days after Valentine's Day on Feb 14, many people have chosen to take days off before Spring Festival to avoid major traffic. An insider said that overseas trips before mid-February can save travelers up to 50 percent.

Compared with overseas trips, domestic routes receive less attention, according to a staff member with China International Travel Service. There are still ample spots left to join a tour to popular Hainan and Yunnan.