Driving tours boost tourism during Golden Week

Tourism was booming with record number of passengers during China's seven-day National Day holiday, featuring the increasing popularity of self-driving tours, statistics from the holiday's tourism watchdog showed on Monday.

A total of 125 tourism cities and areas reported 31.25 million tourists, up 6.8 percent year on year, and raked in 1.66 billion yuan (271.2 million U.S. dollars), up 10.33 percent, according to statistics from the Office of the National Holiday Tourism Inter-Ministerial Coordination Meeting.

The Summer Palace in Beijing, the largest royal park in China, received a record high of 540,000 tourists during the first five days of the holiday.

Self-driving tours became the fashion for short or medium-distance traveling.

The Shennongjia Scenic Area in central China's Hubei Province, a hot spot for venture explorers, received over 40,000 cars, which accounted for over 80 percent of the area's total reception of tourists, according to the office.