Travel and tourism revenue up across China during 3-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday

China saw a robust growth in travel and tourism-related consumption during the just-concluded Dragon Boat Festival holiday, as the country's cultural appeal and spending momentum continued to draw crowds across major cities and provinces, official data released on Tuesday revealed.

According to China's Ministry of Transport, an estimated 657 million inter-provincial trips were recorded during the three-day holiday, averaging 219 million trips per day, up 3 percent year-on-year. Railways played a central role, which handled 47.1 million passenger trips during the holiday, marking a 2.3 percent increase year-on-year. To better manage the surge of sightseers, over 11,000 passenger trains were scheduled daily under the holiday peak plan, the state broadcaster CCTV reported on Tuesday.

The capital city of Beijing welcomed 8.21 million visitors during the three-day holiday, marking a 5.4 percent increase year-on-year, generating 10.77 billion yuan ($1.49 billion) in tourism revenue, up 6.7 percent, during the holiday, according to data released by Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism on Tuesday.

The city's parks reported 4.49 million visits, up 14.67 percent from last year's 3.92 million, according to data provided by the Beijing Municipal Forestry and Parks Bureau.

Shanghai received 6.48 million visitors, with total tourism-related transactions — covering accommodation, dining, transportation, sightseeing, shopping, entertainment, and more — reaching 12.48 billion yuan ($1.72 billion), marking a 3.3 percent year-on-year increase. Major attractions in the city received 2.27 million visitors, while hotel occupancy rate reached an average of 59 percent, up one percentage point from a year earlier, according to local tourism authority.

Other provinces reported growing tourism performance too. Central China's Henan Province recorded 15.1 million tourist visits, rising 4.7 percent year-on-year, and 6.79 billion yuan in tourism revenue, rising 5.3 percent year-on-year, with the local culture and tourism bureau noting steady improvement in both volume and quality.

In Southwest China's Sichuan Province, tourism related activity was also brisk. From May 31 to June 1, more than 550 key tourism enterprises recorded 1.56 billion yuan in total sales, up 7.8 percent year-on-year. Third-party data from UnionPay showed offline consumption reached 36.17 billion yuan, a 6.96 percent increase over last year, according to an article published on the official website of Sichuan provincial government on Tuesday.

Regarding the cross-border travel, China's immigration officers processed a total of 5.907 million inbound and outbound border crossings during this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, averaging 1.969 million per day, which rose by 2.7 percent increase year-on-year. Notably, among inbound foreign visitors 231,000 entries were made under China's visa-free policy, marking a 59.4 percent year-on-year increase, the National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday.

The Dragon Boat Festival, which honors the ancient patriotic poet Qu Yuan and falls on the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, has become an increasingly popular occasion for domestic travel and cultural activities. Analysts said that this year's tourism figures again demonstrate China's vibrant holiday economy and the continued recovery and upgrading of the travel and tourism sector.