Visitors queue up at Xishan Ski Resort in Beijing on Monday, Photo: Chi Jingyi

Demand for travel in scenic spots, the number of hotel room bookings and the domestic movie box office has kept growing significantly in China as the Spring Festival holiday passes the halfway mark, indicating a rapid recovery of China's service sector.

As of Sunday, also the first four days of the Chinese New Year holidays, the number of domestic scenic spot ticket bookings increased by 105 percent from the previous week, and the number of scenic spot ticket bookings in 127 cities across the country has more than doubled, data from online tourism platform Qunar.com showed, according to a report from thepaper.com. 

Among the newly released data, the number of tickets for scenic spots in the Yangtze River Delta increased the most, with cities in the region, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Ningbo, and Nanjing increased by 4.6 times, 3.7 times, 3.2 times, and 2.8 times, respectively.

"I visited several attractions including the Palace Museum with my friends that we may not have time to go during working time," a Beijing-based white collar worker surnamed Zhao told the Global Times on Monday.

It's not crowded as most sites have restricted their capacities, but the experience is better, Zhao, who did not manage to go back to her hometown in East China's Jiangsu Province, said.

Visitors queue up at Xishan Ski Resort in Beijing on Monday, Photo: Chi Jingyi

Online travel agency Ctrip.com data showed that the top 10 local tourist attractions from February 8th to February 13th period include Shanghai Disney Resort and Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, among others.

And hotel room bookings have surged as most Chinese tourists this year chose "hotel tourism" for Chinese New Year. According to data from Tongcheng Travel Platform, hotel bookings in third-tier and lower tier cities during the first three days of the Spring Festival holiday have increased by nearly 30 percent compared to the same period in 2019, thepaper.com reported.

Consumption levels have also contributed to a 32.5 percent increase in bookings for leisure hotels such as gaming rooms, audio-visual rooms, and hot spring rooms compared to the same period in 2019, Tongcheng data showed, said the report.

Photo:VCG

The domestic film box office has seen a booming holiday season despite strict anti-virus measures including limiting audience size. According to Chinese ticket platform Maoyan, Chinese cinemas have raked in more than 5 billion yuan ($774.6 million) as of Monday morning.

"I need to book one day in advance to a ticket," Helen Wang, a local resident in Beijing told the Global Times on Monday, noting that the situation is quite a contrast to previous years, when Beijing would usually 'empty out' as migrant workers go back home to spend Spring Festival holidays to their relatives.

China's Spring Festival box office is projected to exceed 7.05 billion yuan, up 28.1 percent compared with the same period in 2019, prior to devastation caused by the pandemic, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing Chinese investment bank China International Capital Corp.

Global Times