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Spring Festival tourism revenue reached $ 21 billion in China

February 9, 2014

Asia-Pacific / Travel Trends

Spring Festival tourism revenue reached $ 21 billion in China

BEIJING: Tourism revenue in China rose 16.4 percent year on year during the week-long Spring Festival holiday.Tourism revenue reached 126.4 billion yuan (20.69 billion U.S. dollars) during the holiday, which began on Jan. 31, according to a statement released by the National Tourism Administration.

The Spring Festival, or Chinese Lunar New Year, fell on Jan. 31 this year. It is the most important holiday in China for family reunion.

The number of tourists during the Spring Festival holiday topped 231 million across the country, up 14 percent from the same period last year, the statement said.

As many as 8.6 million people visited the country’s 39 key tourism cities, which include Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Haikou.

Outbound group travel tourists reached 4.72 million, up 18.1 percent from the same period last year. Insiders estimated a similar number of tourists for self-guided foreign travel, putting outbound tourists this year at a total of around 9 million.

Likewise , Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region received a record 230,000 tourists during the just-ended Spring Festival holiday, said local authorities .

An alluring destination for adventures and pilgrimages, Tibet has seen its tourism sector grow by an annual average of 30 percent over the past six years. A record 12.91 million tourists visited in 2013, up 22 percent year on year. – Xinhua

Feb. 7 , 2014