Source: Visual China

By Liu Mengmeng and Shaw Wan

BEIJING, February 6 (TMTPOST) — Tang Xiao seized the chance of the Lunar New Year holidays from January 21 to January 27 to visit Yunnan province in southwestern China, after the nation lifted many Covid-19 restrictions last December. “This is the first time that I have travelled since the curbs over Covid-19 epidemic were eased. Yunnan province is such a beautiful place. However, for those who haven’t set off, I wouldn’t suggest you coming here. It’s way too crowded,” Tang said.

Tang was not alone in treating herself with a getaway. China saw 308 million tourists in the domestic market during the seven-day holidays, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The number increased by 23.1 percent compared to the same period of last year, recovering to 88.6 percent of the performance during the same period in 2019.

Inter-provincial trips became the mainstream. As of January 5, the orders for long-distance travel during the Spring Festival holidays on Trip.com Group, a Chinese online travel agency, accounted for 70% of the total orders. On Fliggy, the travel platform that’s backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, the number accounted for 80 percent as of January 11.

Cross-border travel  is also catching up, as China opened borders to quarantine-free travel on January 8. The search volume for travel products about overseas group tours on service providers like Trip.com Group and Tongcheng Travel increased by about five times upon the announcement of China resuming outbound group travel on January 20. Six days later, orders for such products with destinations to 33 countries and regions on Fliggy more than doubled, when compared with last year.

Where are all these visitors flooding into? Yunnan province, the southernmost Hainan province, Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asian countries are the favorite places.

A Jammed Trip Down South

Hainan province has always been a top travel destination for the Chinese in winter, as it’s a tropical island famous for delicious food, the beach and sea air.

Guo Zi took a road trip with the family for the holiday vacation. They hit the road five days ahead of the Spring Festival from Chengdu city, southwestern China’s Sichuan province. Their original plan was to stop by a southern city for one night, however, they decided to drive overnight to the island after learning of a long queue at the port. “We arrived at the Shenhai Expressway at 2:30 a.m. on January 17. No further movement can be made after that. At 4:00 am, we ventured to take a country road, and then ended up in another traffic jam. I did not enter the Ferry Terminal until 9:30 a.m.,” Guo said. Guo felt lucky enough as others waited longer in the line.

According to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television and Sports of Hainan Province, the province received 6.4 million tourists during the 7-day vacation, a year-on-year growth of 18.2 percent.

The influx of tourists brought long-expected prosperity to local hotels. Guo Qiaohuai, a marketing manager for a hotel in Sanya, the most famous resort city on Hainan Island, said that tourists started booking hotel rooms in early January, when they used to reserve rooms almost on the last day before their check-in date for the past three years. By the first day of the Spring Festival holidays, 90 percent of the rooms in Guo’s hotel had been reserved for seven days. “It is expected that the number of reservations this year will increase by about 10 percent compared with the same period in the pandemic,” said Guo.

Long queues could also be found in front of a coconut chicken hot pot restaurant. People had lined up at 4:00 p.m. on the fifth day of the Year of the Rabbit, when dinner usually starts two hours later in China. Mai Zicai, the restaurant’s head of brand operations, said that the revenue of the brand's five stores in Sanya hit a record high.

A Pricy Room in the Southwest

For tourism in winter, if there is a place that can compete with Hainan province, it has to be Yunnan province in southwestern China. Dali city , which was not in the best season for travel, ascended to one of top hot destinations thanks to  Meet Yourself, a trending drama starring the famous actress Liu Yifei.  

Yang Yang , a freelance Pilates instructor, followed in Liu’s footsteps to Dali. “I went to Shaxi Ancient Town and ticked off the Mint Café, which was popular in the play. There were so many tourists that we all needed to queue up,” Yang said. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Yang used to spend 300 days travelling in a year. Now she has re-started her life on the road with a shooting scene.

An official from the local village told media that the daily number of tourists in the area was 50 to 100. It increased by five times three to five days after the show was broadcasted. It was expected that the number would climb up to 60 times during the Spring Festival holidays. Driven by such local growth, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture received a total of 4.2 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 219 percent.

Hotel prices soared as tourists flooded in. Yang told TMTPost that the price of accommodation in Dali city, the county-level seat of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, had increased by 20 to 50 percent during the Spring Festival in previous years. However, it grew by three to five times, or even 10 times in some cases, this year. 

 The price for one night in a homestay in Dali on January 18, which is before the holiday season, and on January 26, which is during the Spring Festival holidays. (Source: Cindy)

In addition to Dali, Xishuangbanna, Lijiang, and Tengchong are also on the list of popular destinations on multiple travel platforms, boosting tourism in Yunnan province.

During the Spring Festival holidays, Yunnan province received 45.1 million tourists, a year-on-year increase of 244.7 percent and a recovery of 130.3 percent compared with 2019. The revenue from the tourism sector reached 38.4 billion Yuan, up 249.4 percent from the same period of last year.

An Upcoming Peak Season in HK and Thailand

Outbound tours have also been put back on the agenda of Chinese tourists.

“In late December last year, I saw it from media coverage that China would open its borders. Since then, I’ve been planning to travel abroad,” Bai told TMTPost. Bai booked a seven-day tour in Thailand and a two-day trip to Hong Kong early January. After spending hours figuring out the Covid-19 travel restrictions, Bai embarked on the fourth trip to Thailand.

 Tourists lined up to check in at the Kunming Changshui International Airport. (Source: Bai)

As the nation has removed restrictions on overseas travel, more and more vacationers made the same choice as Bai. During the seven-day vacation, outbound travel orders on Trip.com saw year-on-year growth of 640 percent. The number of outbound air tickets on Qunar, a Chinese travel search engine, increased by 6.7 times year-on-year compared to the same period a year earlier. Places such as Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and Indonesia rank among the top outbound travel destinations.

However, these once-popular destinations were still waiting for a full recovery. Factors such as expensive return tickets and more hours to draft a travel plan consumed tourists’ enthusiasm. As for the outbound group tours, which can offer discounts and save tourists the trouble of trip planning, they haven’t got fully back on track. “In terms of outbound travel, group tours are the key players,” said a person from Fliggy.

“The flight from Kunming to Thailand was about 80 percent full. However, I rarely bumped into any Chinese, which was not the case before the Covid-19 pandemic,” Bai said.

Travel agencies will be able to restart their businesses from Monday, as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on January 20. Under the pilot program, two dozen countries, including Thailand, will be expecting groups of Chinese tourists like the good old days.