Shanghai residents enjoy shopping spree ahead of Spring Festival Photo:Chen Xia/GT

As many Chinese plan to stay put during the upcoming Spring Festival holidays amid COVID-19 outbreaks, bookings for local hotels, winter tourism and theme park tourism are surging rapidly, though cross-provincial travel might be impacted, according to industry data on Thursday.

As officials and employers encourage workers to stay put during the holidays to help stem the spread of the COVID-19, the number of people staying put in 36 medium and large cities across China will increase by more than 48 million compared with previous years, according to estimates from the Ministry of Commerce. 

Against such a backdrop, tourism within cities and short-range trips are hot trends for this year's Spring Festival, which runs from Monday through February 6, according to a report from China's online travel booking platform Ctrip, which was shared with the Global Times on Thursday.

As of January 20, bookings for tourism and vacation products within each province during the Spring Festival accounted for 65 percent of total bookings on the platform, increasing significantly from the level in 2019, the report said.

The number of hotel reservations during the Spring Festival through domestic travel platform Qunar has increased by nearly three times compared with 2021, according to a report sent to the Global Times on Thursday.

Multiple Chinese cities have issued plans to reduce mass gatherings and strengthen epidemic control, with measures such as advocating off-peak travel and encouraging people to stay put during the holidays.

The sporadic outbreaks in many places have had a great impact on people's decisions when it comes to travel, and many of them are more likely to spend the Chinese New Year locally, Xu Xiaolei, marketing manager at China's CYTS Tours Holding Co, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"Due to stringent epidemic prevention and control requirements, we don't have high expectations for tourism bookings and revenue this year," he said.

In 2021, tourism revenue in China during the Spring Festival reached 301.1 billion yuan ($47.33 billion), slightly higher than the 278.28 billion yuan in 2020 but significantly lower than the 513.9 billion in 2019 before the pandemic, according to media reports.

Amid downward economic pressure this year, boosting consumption, including tourism spending, is among policymaker's top priorities for the year, analysts noted.

Xu noted that ice and snow tourism in the north and theme park tourism in the south could be growth points.

Ctrip said that it has received an increasing amount of consultations from consumers on food tourism and in-depth cultural experience of their cities.

A 34-year-old Shanghai resident surnamed Yang told the Global Times that due to the resurgent COVID-19 cases in the country, she canceled her travel plan to other provinces.

"I will take my kid to the Shanghai Disneyland and spend one night at a local hotel, enjoy the food and the hot spring instead. The cost is around 1,000 yuan per person," she said.

Bookings for Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province are five times the level of last year's Spring Festival, while bookings for Shanghai Disney are 2.5 times higher, according to data from Qunar.