Local travel becomes major choice during Qingming Festival

Local travel was the trend during the three-day Qingming Festival holiday in China with 94.9 percent of total tourists coming from the provinces they live in, said the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Tuesday.

The figure was a new high since the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic became normalized.

Driven by inter-province tourism, hotel bookings in a number of niche cities increased compared to last year's festival. Data from Qunar, an online travel agency, show that Qianjiang, a city famous for crayfish in Central China's Hubei province, saw a 35 percent rise in hotel bookings over the same period last year; hotels booking surged 30 percent over the same period last year in Altay prefecture in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region where ski resorts are still open.

During this year's holiday, visits to flower gardens, camping in parks, and outdoor sports were popular. Online search for flower gardens jumped. Data from online travel agency Ctrip show search for Qingcheng Mountain Scenic Area grew 284 percent over the same period last month and 268 percent for Beijing Wtown.

Western China's tourism market saw greater recovery due to relatively small pandemic impact. Travel grew fast in the western areas, including Chongqing, Xi'an, Kunming, Urumqi and Guiyang. Data from Qunar show gate tickets sales at scenic spots in Xi'an rose 12 times during April 1-5 compared with that of March 27-31 period and hotel bookings increased 22 percent.

Impacted by short distance travel, prices of plane ticket to many hot routes slumped. As of April 4, the average price of economy-class ticket on April 1-6 was at 548 yuan ($86), down nearly 20 percent year-on-year, the lowest for the last three years, data from Qunar show.