The Chinese New Year travel market is sizzling with inbound travel bookings during the holiday, which has already surged over 200 percent from the same period last year, according to travel operators.
With UNESCO recently inscribing China's Spring Festival on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the upcoming celebration in 2025 will officially usher in the first "intangible cultural heritage-version Spring Festival."
This year's Spring Festival holiday will last eight days, from January 28 to February 4.
With less than a month to go, people's willingness to travel this year is super high, and the market is noticeably warming up with both domestic and inbound/outbound tourism flourishing, according to China's global travel service provider Trip.com.
Under the newly implemented 240-hour visa-free transit policy and the continuous expansion of the "visa-free circle" since 2024, the rapid growth of inbound tourism is a highlight of the 2025 Spring Festival tourism market, it said.
Tianzifang, an arts and crafts enclave, is a favorite destination for international travelers.
Statistics reveal that inbound tourism orders during the Spring Festival had increased by 203 percent year on year, with the main source countries being South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, the US, Australia, Thailand, the UK, Russia and Vietnam.
Popular domestic destinations for foreign tourists include Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Harbin, and Chengdu, and experiencing the Chinese New Year in China has become a trend on overseas social media platforms, according to Trip.com.
During the holiday, bookings for inbound tourism from South Korea have increased by 452 percent, it revealed.
A report from Tongcheng Travel showed that the average air ticket price of international flights during the peak period between January 14 and February 22 approached 4,000 yuan (US$546), a 20 percent increase from normal days.
The air routes between Shanghai and Tokyo, Shanghai and Bangkok, Shanghai and Singapore are among the most popular.
The visa-free and transit visa-free policies introduced by China are increasingly igniting the inbound tourism market, coupled with the rapid recovery of international flights, which has not only led to a significant increase in short-term leisure visits from neighboring countries, but also provided more opportunities for a richer experience in Shanghai, said Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of Shanghai-based travel agency Spring Tour.
A view of Liyang, which is waiving admission fees to its two 5A-level scenic spots for passengers taking the Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou High-Speed Railway.
The Yangtze River Delta region tourism market is heating up as well during the festival due to the shortened travel time with the operation of Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou High-Speed Railway and the "Super Ring" high-speed rail line.
The city of Liyang in Jiangsu Province has announced that admission fees of its two 5A-level scenic spots, Tianmu Lake and Nanshan Bamboo Sea, are waived for all passengers taking the Shanghai-Suzhou-Huzhou High-Speed Railway through the holiday.
There will also be a 50-percent discount on the Tianmu Lake Hot Spring for passengers taking the railway.
The railway has cut the travel time between Liyang and Shanghai to just one hour.
Those born in the 1980s are still the backbone of Spring Festival tourism consumption, accounting for 48 percent of the total number of travelers, according to online travel operator Tuniu.
The successful application for "Spring Festival" heritage status has significantly stimulated people's enthusiasm and attention to China's intangible cultural heritage.
During the Chinese New Year, activities of intangible cultural heritage folk culture and handicraft skills have been highly popular with tourists, it said. Among them, activities such as Beijing temple fairs, Guangdong lion dances, as well as creative handicraft experiences such as hairpin flowers, tie-dyeing, paper-cutting, and lacquer fans, have triggered the interest of many tourists, it said.
Source: Shanghai Daily