Tourists ride a ferris wheel at the top of the Canton Tower, a landmark in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Aug. 7, 2022. Tourist attractions that blend modernity with history are gaining popularity among visitors to Guangzhou, one of the top summer travel destinations in China. Photo: Xinhua

China's tourism consumption during the coming National Day holidays is likely to see continued recovery as train tickets for many popular routes on the first day of the holidays have been sold out and airfares are increasing too.

The Global Times has learned that train tickets from Beijing to other first-tier cities including Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing, are already sold out for October 1, the first day of the holiday. Tickets are also sold out for provincial capitals such as Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province; Jinan, East China's Shandong Province, and Hohhot, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The Shanghai-centered rail network is also running short of tickets to neighboring provinces including Jiangsu and Zhejiang, national online train ticket selling platform 12306.cn showed. 

Airfares are surging for the coming holidays. Tickets to scenic spots, including from Beijing to Dunhuang in Northwest China's Gansu Province and Shanghai to Lijiang in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, are back to full price.

Jiang Yiyi, deputy head of the School of Leisure Sports and Tourism under the Beijing Sport University, told the Global Times on Sunday that regional COVID-19 outbreaks may affect some tourists, but the full sector will see a further recovery. 

Data from China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) showed that the revenue of the tourism sector hit 389.06 billion yuan ($55.7 billion) in the 2021 National Day holidays, recovering to 59.9 percent of the 2019 level. 

Tourism showed positive growth signs during the recent Mid-Autumn Festival holidays. The MCT's data showed that the number of tourists during the holidays hit 73.41 million, recovering to 72.6 percent of the 2019 level, and revenue recovered to 60.6 percent of the 2019 level with 28.68 billion yuan.

"The upcoming National Day holidays tourism consumption are likely to maintain at last year's level, and it may even slightly increase," Jiang said. 

After Sanya city, a popular tropical city in South China's Hainan Province, stopped strict COVID-19 control measures on Thursday, flight ticket sales on online travel agency platform Qunar to the city rose by 113 percent over the day before, Chinese media outlet jiemian.com reported. 

Global Times