Longer public holidays prelude dynamic tourism in 2025

On Tuesday, the New Year's eve, the reception hall of Shanghai's Exit-Entry Administration Bureau remained open three hours longer than usual, until 8pm, to assist citizens with passport and travel document services.

The bureau said that this extension was made to accommodate the increased demand from people planning to travel around New Year's Day and the upcoming Spring Festival holidays.

In 2025, Chinese citizens will enjoy more time off. The government announced in November 2024 that the Spring Festival holiday would be extended from three to four days, adding the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. The May Day holiday will also increase, from one to two days, with May 2 now included. This brings public holidays to 13 days.

While the increase is small, it creates two uninterrupted long holidays: the Spring Festival from January 28 to February 4 this year, and May Day from May 1 to 5.

The longer holidays would offer people more flexibility for travel and further ignite the public's enthusiasm for exploring tourist destinations, said Wang Yalei, an analyst at the online travel giant Ctrip.

Previous statistics supported Wang's observation. During the latest long holiday, the seven-day National Day holiday in 2024, 765 million trips were made across China with more than 700 billion yuan (US$97.38 billion) spent.

The tourism industry places high hope on the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, which is less than a month away and likely to be a busier period than previous years.

According to data from Umetrip, an official mobile platform for real-time flight information, over 2.44 million domestic flight tickets had been booked for the Spring Festival holiday as of December 24. Meanwhile, more than 1.12 million international flight tickets were booked, reflecting a roughly 37 percent increase compared to the same period last year.

Data released by online travel platform Qunar in mid-December shows that international flight and hotel bookings for the Spring Festival holiday on the platform have more than doubled year on year, with flight bookings for cities including Budapest, Hanoi, Nagoya, Sapporo and Siem Reap increasing by over 200 percent.

"Many people have planned for the long Spring Festival holiday early," said Li Mengran, media and public relations manager at Beijing-based travel agency Utour, noting that some of the company's outbound tourism products, including South America and Antarctica trips, were sold out soon after release.

Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of Shanghai-based travel agency Spring Tour, said bookings for the company's outbound tourism products for the Spring Festival holiday have nearly doubled compared to last year.

Popular domestic winter tourism destinations, such as the northeastern Jilin Province and the southern island province of Hainan, have also been offering consumption vouchers to further attract tourists and boost consumption during the Spring Festival holiday.

Although New Year's Day in 2025 falls on Wednesday, many people took Thursday and Friday off to extend the break to five days for a short trip.

Data from Fliggy, Alibaba's online travel platform, revealed a more than 30 percent increase in New Year holiday bookings for high-end hotel brands at flagship stores compared to the previous year. Fliggy also saw a significant rise in international trip bookings for the New Year holiday, with short-haul destinations like Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam remaining the most popular.

Strong consumption around the New Year is expected to lay a solid foundation for consumption growth throughout 2025, driving a continued recovery in the consumer market, said Fu Yifu, a research fellow with the Star Atlas Institute of Finance.