Travel agents see clear opportunity in hazy cities

Twin daughters and their mother enjoy a smog-free holiday in Sanya, Hainan province. [Photo provided to China Daily]

It is a family tradition for 50-year-old Beijing resident Wang Jianying and her family to travel to Sanya in southern China's Hainan province every Spring Festival for the warm and pleasant weather, but this year there is a new factor: heavy smog in the north.

A similar escape is not unique among northern China's residents suffering from the continuous bad air. Trips to places where the air is clean are becoming popular.

Since October, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and neighboring regions have witnessed six major rounds of smog, with the Air Quality Index often surpassing 300, at times 500, to reach the "hazardous" level. This has led to many northern residents taking short-term trips away from home.

The increasing demand has made flight tickets and hotel rooms harder to book than usual, and the trend is still going on.

Wang felt the pressure of buying flight tickets a month before the one-week trip from Beijing to Sanya later in January.

She said: "Prices usually rise two weeks before Spring Festival, but this time the rise has occurred a whole month earlier, with tickets being sold much quicker."

She bought her round-trip ticket at 5,000 yuan ($720) in the middle of December, at almost twice the usual price. By Jan 2, the cheapest round-trip ticket was sold for more than 10,000 yuan.

Coastal cities such as Sanya, Xiamen, Haikou, Zhuhai and Qingdao are among the most popular destinations for people trying to escape the smog during the coming Spring Festival, many of whom come from Beijing and cities in Hebei province such as Shijianzhuang and Handan, according to Ctrip.com International Ltd, China's largest online travel agency.

Ctrip released data showing that hotel reservations for these coastal cities have been steadily rising, with some seeing a 100 percent increase. Cities in northeastern China where snow is abundant, such as Harbin, Shenyang and Baishan, have also become popular with travelers.

Online travel agencies have seen this as a great business opportunity. Ctrip provides hotel rooms with clean air to popular travel destinations, and promotes special "refresh your lungs" travel packages to northeastern China with discounts. Page views for these two promotions rose significantly of late.

Feng Luosu, 24, said she flew to Sanya for a week with her parents in December 2015 to elude the smog, when Beijing was put on red alert, the highest level, for the first time.

"It was not planned," said Feng, "but the smog lingered for so long that I felt my throat was on fire. Then we decided in a day to fly away."

She knows such a temporary escape cannot be a solution to the problem.

"I have to get used to smog as long as I live in Beijing," she said bitterly.

He Fei contributed to this story.