China's tourism industry bounces back for summer vacation

Despite sporadic outbreaks of COVID-19 in some Chinese cities, domestic tourism market has been on a fast track of recovery thanks to scientific and precise pandemic control measures, as well as the introduction of a series of favorable policies to promote consumption, Securities Times reported.

Over the past two weeks, the number of tourist-based booking for this summer vacation rose significantly on Ctrip, China's leading online tourism platform, increasing by more than 9-fold from the previous two weeks, the newspaper said quoting a report from Ctrip.

According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, between July 4 and 10, the number of passenger flights increased 12.1 percent from the previous week, basically flat with the same period of last year. Air passenger flow recorded a 13.8 percent increase week-on-week.

FlightAI, a market insight platform of Ctrip, also showed that, at present, the search index of summer vacation has recovered to the level of 2019, however still lags behind the level of 2021.

The peak season for booking plane tickets is expected to be July 15- August 4, the report said.

In terms of hotel bookings, so far, the hotel summer vacation search has recovered to the level of 2021, and over 70 percent of the same period in 2019. As a more scientific and precise pandemic control measures are implemented, tourists' travel time and range are extending.

The report predicted that the ratio of booking cross-provincial hotels will increase to more than 50 percent, while hotel bookings for two days or more will account for 20 percent.

On June 29, the nation removed the cautionary asterisks marking all travel codes to alleviate restrictions on domestic travel, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.