Data from China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed that during the combined eight-day Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays from September 29 to October 6, the country recorded 826 million domestic tourist trips, 71.3 percent more than during the 2022 holidays, when travel was still restricted due to Covid rules, and up 4.1 percent on 2019 prior to the pandemic.
Domestic tourism revenue was recorded at 753.4 billion yuan (US$103b), a 129.5 percent growth year-on-year and 1.5 percent more than in 2019.
This is an obvious signal that China’s tourism industry is recovering following the pandemic. Data from leading tourism platforms Ctrip and Alibaba-owned Fliggy showed ticket and hotel bookings to popular destinations exceeded that in the same period of 2019. Ctrip said that bookings had tripled over the 2022 holiday, with the top three destinations being Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
Bookings for trips outside the Chinese mainland increased eightfold compared to 2022, with travel to Hong Kong and Macao, as well as to other Asian destinations such as Thailand, South Korea and Japan proving particularly popular.
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