BEIJING: China’s effective containment of the COVID-19 pandemic and progress in vaccination have greatly boosted people’s enthusiasm for domestic travel during the May Day holiday lasting from Saturday to Wednesday.
Viewing the travel rush as a clear signal of the country’s economic recovery, especially a pick-up in consumers’ sentiment, international businesses are shifting to e-commerce to seek fortune in China’s online market, given that the coronavirus has brought overseas travel to a standstill.
Passenger trips on Chinese railways hit a new single-day high on the first day of the International Workers’ Day holiday, with nearly 18.83 million trips recorded, up by 9.2 percent from the 2019 level.
Experts and media outlets have called the travel boom a “definitely encouraging” sign of post-pandemic revival.
Tommy Wu, a lead economist of British thinktank Oxford Economics, said, “domestic travel will likely recover to close to pre-pandemic levels during the Labor Day holiday, which is definitely encouraging.”
“That said, should we see a strong positive outturn on consumer spending during the Labor Day holiday, it will be a very encouraging sign that household consumption recovery is probably back on track again,” Wu said.
As a “record-breaking wave of Chinese tourists” are hitting the road for a May Day trip, the travel frenzy is “giving China’s economy a powerful short-term boost,” Reuters said in a recent report.
That is “in stark contrast to the rest of the world where many countries are still struggling to bring the virus under control, let alone open up domestic or even international travel,” the report added.
“Tickets for everything from domestic flights to theme parks are rapidly selling out in China ahead of its Labor Day holiday as the nation’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic gathers pace,” the Bloomberg News observed in a report last week. – Agencies
