Hotel reservations for New Year up 80% in China: report
By GT staff reporters Source: Global Times Published: 2020/12/23 22:03:45
Women of different ethnic groups learn embroidery at a poverty alleviation workshop in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south Aerial photo taken on Dec. 8, 2020 shows two cruise ships, the Changle Gongzhu (or Princess Changle, L) and the Nanhai Dream at a port in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province. A ceremony to resume cruise routes to the Xisha Islands was held Tuesday in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province. Two cruise ships, the Nanhai Dream and the Changle Gongzhu, are scheduled to resume service on Dec. 9 and 10, respectively.(Photo: Xinhua)
Chinese tourists are increasingly wondering how to book a desirable hotel for the coming holidays, and data from several online travel platforms show that the coming New Year holidays are likely to be busier than recent months.
The number of hotel reservations for the New Year holidays is up 80 percent year-on-year, data from qunar.com showed on Wednesday. The top three cities are Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province, Beijing, and Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province.
The platform said that booking a desirable hotel is much harder than getting a flight ticket, as some hotels' bookings in Guangzhou, Sanya and Xi'an increased by more than 100 percent year-on-year.
The tourism market for the New Year holidays has steadily improved. Compared with the past two months, the average daily visitor intake is up 20 percent, data from CYTS Tours Holding Co showed.
Qian Jin, area president of Hilton China and Mongolia, told the Global Times on Wednesday that its travel guest bookings have recovered to the year-earlier level, after a rebound from August to November, and he is confident in the Chinese market, vowing to open 400 hotels next year. He said the average occupancy rate from August to November was 60-70 percent.
As winter sets in and occasional COVID-19 outbreaks occur, Chinese experts reminded the public that sporadic cases are normal.
New Year's travel will not be affected by the coronavirus, and with closed-loop management, quarantines and other measures in place, China is safe place on the whole despite sporadic COVID-19 cases, Yang Zhanqiu, deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"As long as local tourist attractions do a good job of quarantine and inspection measures, there should be no need to worry about risk," Yang said.
Feng Rao, head of Mafeangwo's tourism research center, told the Global Times that people will likely choose more private and safe travel modes such as short-distance car trips.
Beijing Daxing International Airport said on Wednesday that it will continue to strengthen temperature monitoring of passengers and inspection of health codes.
Newspaper headline: Hotel reservations for New Year up 80% in China