The 20th Ankang dragon boat racing is held on the Hanjiang River to celebrate the traditional Dragon Boat Festival in Ankang City, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, June 25, 2020. The dragon boat racing has become a spontaneous and grand folk activity of Ankang during the Dragon Boat Festival. (Xinhua/Tao Ming)

 
Travels in this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday in China rebounded to about 60 percent of last year's levels but lower than the May Day holiday, as a new cluster of coronavirus infections in Beijing slowed the country’s tourism recovery, company data showed. 

Under the tag, “would you travel during the Dragon Boat Festival” on China’s social network platform Weibo, most netizens said they wouldn’t. Some said that they don’t want to “add trouble to the country” amid the coronavirus. 

Company and organization data also reflected the cautious trend. Data sent by domestic tourism site fliggy.com to the Global Times shows that trips in Beijing, North China’s Tianjin and Hebei only rebounded to about 40 percent last year’s levels for this Dragon Boat Festival holiday, and because the festival is shorter, people were less willing to travel compared to the May Day holiday. 

Data from ctrip.com also showed that reservations for hotels, flights and holiday products for this year’s Dragon Boat Festival holiday rose slightly on a monthly basis, but not as strong as prior to the May Day holiday and Qingming Festival. 

On Thursday, the day of this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, 7.6 million train trips were made, according to data China Railway provided. 

Xu Xiaolei, the marketing manager of China's CYTS Tours Holding Co., told the Global Times on Thursday that a new cluster of coronavirus infections in Beijing has made people afraid to travel, while government authorities are also cautious about trans-provincial tourism. 

“The tourism industry has never really healed, and the recent coronavirus fluctuations may slow down the recovery further,” he said. 

Some regions, such as Jinli town in Zhaoqing city, South China’s Guangdong Province, cancelled dragon boat races, a tradition of the Dragon Boat Festival. 

Beijing’s airports also cancelled more than 650 flights on June 17, after Beijing raised its COVID-19 emergency response level following the infection spike. 

Global Times