Illustration: Liu Xiangya/Global Times

As the New Year's Day holidays officially started on Saturday, China’s tourism sector ush-ered what is expected to be a record winter peak. 

Data from Trip.com, China’s largest online travel service provider, showed that cross-provincial travel orders accounted for 55 percent of all orders during the first day of the New Year’s Day holidays, according to Chinese media reports. The top 10 most popular destinations are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Tianjin. Meanwhile, on the first day of the holiday, winter themed travel bookings saw a surge of 170 percent compared with the same time last year.

For outbound travel, the average daily number of passengers entering and leaving Chinese ports during the New Year’s Day holidays is expected to reach 1.56 million passenger trips, a more than fivefold increase from the 2023 new year holidays and up 90 percent from lev-els seen in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to China’s National Immigra-tion Administration. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) is the most popular overseas destination, showed Trip.com data.

According to Tuniu.com, another online travel agency, the number of Tuniu users traveling during the first day of the holidays saw an increase of 253 percent year-on-year. In addi-tion to Hong Kong and Macao SARs, travel to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, and Northern Europe are also proving popular among Chinese holidaymakers. 

China’s rail network is expected to facilitate an estimated 15 million passenger trips on the first day of the New Year’s Day holidays, tripling on a year-on-year basis, China Railway announced on Friday.

An estimated 49,000 flights are scheduled to be operated nationwide during the holiday period, marking an increase of around 85.5 percent compared with the same period in 2023, up about 2.7 percent from levels seen in the same period in 2019, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

Global Times