Staff members of Hankou Railway Station remind passengers to follow epidemic prevention rules in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Sep 19, 2021, the first day of the 3-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.Photo:Xinhua

The number of passenger trips across China's railways were recorded at 10.48 million on Sunday, the first day of the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday in China this year. A total of 10,067 trains running on regular timetables, according to data provided by the China Railway.

The data however is down 29 percent compared to the first day of last year's Mid-Autumn & National Day holidays. The number is projected to reach 7.3 million on Monday.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region saw a railway traveling peak on Sunday, accommodating around 950,000 passenger trips on Sunday, local news site YNET.com reported, citing data from China Railway Beijing Group Co.

Before the Mid-Autumn Festival, cross-provincial tourism had already seen improvement, with the number of registered tourists rising steadily, according to a report sent to the Global Times by the online travel booking platform Ctrip on Monday.

As of Thursday, short-distance trip bookings for the Mid-Autumn Festival had surpassed the number in 2019 before the outbreak of the COVID-19, with ticket booking number increased about 30 percent over that in 2019, data from Ctrip showed.

Per Ctrip's data on September 6, Cross-provincial family travelling reservation surged 550 percent comparing to August 20.

The newly opened Universal Beijing Resort ranked first among popular scenic spots across the country, followed by Shanghai Disneyland Resort and the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Provinces and cities also have taken the chance to further boost consumer spending, including issuing coupons. According to media reports, Central China's Hubei Province released its first round of coupons on Friday with the second round set to be will be issued on Monday. It issued 200-million-yuan worth of coupons within the province. Northwest China's Shanxi Province releases 40-million-yuan worth of coupons for the holiday.

Despite the recent COVID-19 flare-up in East China's Fujian Province, overall tourism performance in the Mid-Autumn Festival and the looming National Day Holiday is unlikely to be significantly affected, since the outbreaks in China have largely been localized and suppressed, with impact generally limiting within specific regions, Jiang Yiyi, deputy head of the School of Leisure Sports and Tourism under the Beijing Sport University, told the Global Times on Monday.

China has developed highly effective protocols to tackle COVID-19 infection clusters, and has been able to bring the outbreaks under control typically within two weeks, Jiang said, noting that some severe examples may take as long as four weeks.

Global Times