Nation celebrates Lunar New Year with boomed spendings

BEIJING: China’s Spring Festival holiday has ignited a new round of consumption boom, further unleashing consumer spending potential amid fresh styles for people to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
This year’s official Spring Festival holiday lasted from Feb. 10 to Feb. 17, one day more than the previous years, allowing people to arrange their holiday activities with more options.
The eight-day Spring Festival holiday has seen more people on trips, more holiday goods purchases, and more quality family time spent in leisure activities.
The travel willingness of residents increased during the holiday, and many indicators, such as the number of travelers and the total cost of traveling, hit a record high.
According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 474 million domestic tourism trips were made during the Spring Festival holiday, an increase of 34.3 percent over the same period last year and an increase of 19 percent on a comparable basis compared with the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
Domestic tourists have spent about 632.69 billion yuan (about 89.07 billion U.S. dollars) in total, up 7.7 percent from the same holiday period in 2019.
China Unicom’s data showed that compared with 2019, the traffic volume of people traveling in the Spring Festival of 2024 increased by 45 percent, with more than 14,000 popular tourist routes newly added.
“Tourism is becoming a New Year custom,” said Wang Yalei, an industry analyst with Trip.com Group. From New Year’s Day to the Spring Festival, the consumption of cultural tourism continued to be hot, which has become the main force driving residents’ consumption, reflecting the great potential of domestic consumption, he said.
On the Spring Festival Eve, the large domestic cruise ship “Adora Magic City,” carrying more than 4,500 passengers, left Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal for a New Year journey.
“It’s very memorable to spend the Spring Festival on this domestically made cruise ship,” said He Yingxin, a tourist from Beijing.
After a lapse of four years, the Chinese Spring Festival once again became the peak of global travel consumption.
According to a report released by Trip.com on Saturday, China’s outbound and inbound tourism orders both exceeded the same period in 2019, especially inbound tourism, which increased by 48 percent compared with 2019.
According to the National Immigration Administration, a total of 13.52 million inbound and outbound visits were made during the holiday. The number of daily average visits was 1.69 million, a 2.8-time increase over the same holiday period last year. This year, in addition to local specialties, Hefei resident Yang Xiaoyan has shrimp and crabs from Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces, sausage from Guangzhou, beef from Brazil, and lamb chops from New Zealand on her dinner table. “Online shopping is very convenient and you can have the food mailed to you,” Yang said. –Agencies