Tourism thrives as city enjoys Spring Festival

CFP

The city's tourism market showed a vigorous upward trend during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, as signaled by robust statistics.

Shanghai recorded 16.7595 million trips by travelers during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, soaring about 50 percent year on year.

The average occupancy rate of starred hotels over the eight days hit 53 percent, up 15 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the Shanghai Administration of Culture and Tourism.

In total, about 200 activities covering eight sections such as exhibitions, performances, and delicacies were rolled out across the city during the holiday.

Exhibitions and performances at more than 200 cultural venues like museums, art galleries and theaters proved popular.

During the holiday, 380 performances were staged at 39 performing venues, presenting a cultural feast to audiences.

Meanwhile, diversified activities such as a Spring Festival bazaar and a lantern fair at the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, loong- or dragon-themed activities at Oriental Land, ocean-and-loong-themed events at Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, and a magic and light festival at Shanghai Happy Valley also provided pleasant touring experiences for travelers, the administration said.

Lantern fairs at Yuyuan Garden scenic area, Shanghai Guyi Garden, and Qushui Garden, one of the city's five classic gardens in Qingpu District enabled people to experience traditional New Year culture.

Meanwhile, China saw around 13.52 million inbound and outbound trips, marking a 2.8-fold increase from the same holiday period last year, according to the National Immigration Administration.

A total of 16,300 commercial performances were on show nationwide during the holiday, up 52.1 percent year on year, reaching 778 million yuan (US$108 million) in revenue, an increase of 80.1 percent.

China's box office revenue during the holiday exceeded 8 billion yuan, hitting a new record for the period, according to National Film Administration statistics.

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China also reported nearly 2.3 billion trips in varied modes of transport.

Specifically, train journeys stood at 99.46 million, road trips hit more than 2.16 billion, water routes hit 9.41 million, and flights reached 17.99 million, according to data released by the government's work team for the holiday travel rush.

About 754,000 passengers arrived in Shanghai by train on Saturday, setting a new arrivals record at the city's railway stations.

A total of 812 trains, including 183 temporary ones from central China and provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi and Anhui, arrived in the city on Saturday, the last day of the holiday.

To meet the demand of travelers leaving Shanghai for their hometowns, the railway authority added 118 trains to central China, provinces of Jiangxi and Anhui and cities like Xuzhou and Nanjing.

Shanghai also saw a remarkable rebound in consumption during the holiday as various leisure activities appealed to local residents as well as overseas visitors.

According to UnionPay's payment data, the total consumption of inbound visitors from February 9 to February 16 jumped 21.6 percent from a year ago to 15.5 billion yuan and the number of payments reached 144.5 million times, a 41.8 percent surge from a year ago.

The Shanghai Commerce Commission said that visitors from Jiangsu Province made up one fifth of the total tourism spending, followed by Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shandong and Anhui provinces.

The city's total dining expenditure jumped 16.3 percent to 5.93 billion yuan.

Total offline and online consumption stood at 56.9 billion yuan, and about 28.7 million visits were recorded at 35 iconic business areas such as the Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall, Xujiahui, Hopson One Shopping Mall, Huaihai Road, rising 11.9 percent from the previous year.

Shanghai's dining spending also topped other cities, with the number of orders soaring 150 percent from a year ago, as per Meituan's restaurant tracking data.