Qingming Festival boosts travel numbers

Tourists look at blossoming flowers at a scenic spot in Wuhan, Hubei province, during the Qingming Festival holiday. （YANG HAIYONG/FOR CHINA DAILY）

This year's Qingming Festival (Tomb Sweeping Day) holiday, which concluded on Sunday, brought about a surge in travel numbers, despite April being a traditional off-season for travel.

The elderly continue to show a strong demand for travel, and young people took advantage of the break by taking days off work to enjoy longer vacations.

Over the holiday, flight booking volumes to popular domestic cities grew by 10 percent year-on-year, while hotel bookings in hot domestic tourist destinations saw double-digit growth, according to Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.

Specifically, hotel booking volumes by elderly travelers jumped by 30 percent year-on-year, making them the group that recorded the highest growth, Qunar found.

"Qingming has not been a peak travel period in previous years, but this year's tourism market has been more active. All kinds of data indicate that tourism consumption is more dynamic this year," said Xiao Peng, a Qunar researcher.

In addition to millions of Chinese participating in ancient rituals and cleaning tombs to pay tribute to their family ancestors, the festival has seen urbanites setting out for activities such as kite flying and family outings. In particular, the trend of enjoying seasonal sights such as flower blossoms has continued to heat up, driving the growth of local cultural and tourism markets, Qunar said.

For hotel bookings, Luoyang, Henan province ranked among the top 10 most popular destinations in China. Kunming, Yunnan province; Bijie, Guizhou province and Wuyuan, Jiangxi province, also saw their hotel booking volumes jump 30 percent year-on-year, thanks, in part, to the different kinds of flowers blooming in those locations, Qunar said.

Chinese travelers have also been traveling abroad for the Qingming Festival, with booking volumes of hotels in the Japanese cities of Osaka and Tokyo jumping 78 percent and 44 percent year-on-year, respectively, according to Trip.com Group, China's largest online travel agency.

Meanwhile, domestic carriers have launched new flights and added frequencies on some popular routes to cater to the growing travel demand, as the domestic air travel market started its summer and fall flying season on March 30 this year and will last until Oct 25, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

For instance, State-owned China Southern Airlines plans to add more frequencies on routes that connect Beijing Daxing International Airport with Altay, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, and Beijing Daxing with Jieyang, Guangdong province.

In addition, the carrier will launch more international flights to connect cities involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. These include flights that connect Beijing Daxing with Urumqi, Xinjiang and Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, as well as Beijing Daxing with Xi'an, Shaanxi province and Doha, Qatar.