Chinese authorities are reportedly acknowledging citizens to go out on an adventure in a "revenge travel" pitch. The purpose is to reinvigorate tourism and bolster the economy after months of lockdowns to combat COVID-19.
The Golden Week
China's ministry of culture and tourism expects 550 million people beginning Thursday slated to travel for the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival. This is expected to keep moving through the Golden Week for eight days.
On Tuesday, photographs posted on social media chronicled the first day of the national holiday, displaying tourist destinations packed with tourists and train stations bustling with harried people.
People grumbled on online forums that tickets and hotels for Chinese tourist destinations were sold out or that moving is impossible due to traffic.
According to state media, China surmised that 13 million railway passenger trips were made at the beginning of the Golden Week holiday. It is the largest total of trips for one day since the COVID-19 pandemic became prevalent in February.
The tally insinuates pent-up demand for travel especially now that the coronavirus pandemic in China is largely mitigated. However, it is still lower than the 17 million railway passenger trips on the same day in 2019, reported Yahoo News.
The total may have been reduced compared with the almost 800 million tourists in China in the 2019 holiday, a rare long official break in a nation that has few holidays. The number is still deemed to be stunning by Yahoo taking into account that global travel is unexpected to be revived to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, as most parts of the globe continue to play "whack-a-mole" in response to COVID-19 spikes.
Bookings for domestic flights as of September 14 during the National Day holiday overtook the tally last year. Booking prices for hotels have also risen by 20%, reported another article from Yahoo News.
The First Major Holiday Season
In China, this is the first major holiday season after COVID-19 prevailed in Wuhan and the rest of the nation in January 2019 before it spread across the globe. Thus, Chinese New Year celebrations were halted by quarantine.
The National Day Holiday is the second-largest holiday for Chinese people during which millions flock from abroad and the country to visit major tourist destinations.
'Revenge Travel'
The term "revenge travel" has been coined often in Chinese media recently. The concept is defined as "the government's hope that people will travel or consume more than they usually do... because of pent-up demand from being cooped up," reported Quartz.
On Getty, photos were published on Wednesday and Thursday displaying crowds at a Wuhan train station, the Leshan Giant Buddha, and the Great Wall in Beijing.
One commentator on Weibo said that congestion is inevitable and that it is best to stay home. According to the travel booking site Qunar, hotel bookings had doubled for prominent tourist spots including Sanya in Hainan and Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province.
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