BEIJING: From record box office earnings to bustling tourist attractions, China’s three-day New Year holiday witnessed warming consumer sentiment and got the economy off to a strong start in 2024.
Chen Xin from the warm, coastal Fujian Province celebrated New Year’s Eve in the snow for the first time.
“It will be a very special and happy memory,” said Chen, who traveled some 2,000 kilometers to Shenyang City in northeast China’s Liaoning Province to ski with friends. The ski resort Chen stayed at saw nearly 2,000 tourists each day of the holiday.
According to the research institute of online travel agency Trip.com, snow and ice tourism sites were the most popular destinations, seeing surging numbers of ticket orders.
Driven by the enthusiasm for winter activities, there was a holiday boom in travel and tourism over the past three days.
The passenger volumes on railways, roads, waterways and airways nationwide totaled nearly 130 million from Dec. 30, 2023, to Jan. 1, 2024, the Ministry of Transport said on Tuesday. The total revenues of China’s tourism market surpassed 79.73 billion yuan (about 11.26 billion U.S. dollars) in the three days, tripling the total for the holiday season last year and increasing 5.6 percent from 2019, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Various New Year celebration events and pro-consumption measures nationwide prompted the stellar performance of China’s tourism economy during the holiday, kicking off 2024 on a positive note, Trip.com’s research institute said.
Foreign tourists also contributed to the Chinese holiday market heat. On Dec. 31, about 140 foreign tourists arrived in Shanghai to become the city’s first foreign tourist group of the New Year holiday.
The tourists boarded China’s first domestically built large cruise ship, Adora Magic City, from the Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal on Monday, joining the ship’s commercial voyage after participating in New Year countdown events including light shows and intangible cultural heritage programs such as egg-shell carving.
The country saw 5.18 million inbound and outbound trips during the three-day holiday, 4.7 times more than the figure for the same period last year and returning to the 2019 level, the National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday.
In addition to the travel boom, China’s box office revenue also registered a stellar performance. Ticket sales amounted to approximately 1.53 billion yuan during the holiday, surpassing the previous record earnings of 1.3 billion yuan seen in 2021, according to film data platforms Maoyan and Beacon. –Agencies
