Under the covid-19 pneumonia epidemic that lasted for more than two years, China’s Spring Festival travel market continued to break through in the recovery.
According to the data released by the Ministry of culture and tourism on February 6, 251 million Chinese tourists traveled during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday in 2022, a year-on-year decrease of 2.0%, and recovered to 73.9% in the same period of the Spring Festival holiday in 2019 according to a comparable standard. China’s tourism revenue reached 289.198 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.9%, returning to 56.3% over the same period of the Spring Festival holiday in 2019.
Although the number of trips and tourism income are still in a “double drop”, peripheral tourism and ice and snow tourism have become new engines in the market. The reporter of China business daily learned from many platforms such as Ctrip, Tongcheng travel and flying pig that the demand of returning people and local travel strongly drives micro travel and peripheral travel. According to the data of Ctrip platform, the trend of local tourism during the Spring Festival is obvious, and the order volume of local hotels accounts for about 60%.
The Winter Olympic Games held as scheduled in Beijing brought fire to the ice and snow tourism. Ctrip data showed that as of February 5, the bookings of ski theme hotels during the Spring Festival increased by 54% year-on-year, the ticket orders of ice and snow and ski scenic spots increased by nearly 40% year-on-year, the orders of ice and snow tourism during the Spring Festival on flying pigs increased by more than 30% year-on-year, and Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou were the top three tourist sources.
Some regular changes also appear in the market during the Spring Festival holiday. Cheng chaogong, chief researcher of Tongcheng Research Institute, believes that the first is the change of tourism consumption form. The growth of leisure and vacation consumption has strongly supported the stable recovery of tourism and vacation market within and among urban agglomerations; Secondly, there is a strong consumption potential of local residents. There is a solid demand for traditional cultural and tourism scenic spots, emerging home stay resorts and other business forms, and local supply is in short supply; In addition, the diversification of business forms has also timely captured new consumer demand, such as E-sports hotels, RV camping, comprehensive resort, etc., which have created new opportunities for slow recovery industries.
“local travel” and “micro travel” become the main
Despite the impact of epidemic outbreaks in many places before the Spring Festival, people did not stop returning home to visit their relatives.
“The overall return passenger flow before the Spring Festival increased by more than 40% compared with the same period last year.” The big data of one-way travel shows that the travel passenger flow is concentrated before and after the holiday, especially the demand for some long-term travel has been released before the Spring Festival.
“The tourism and vacation market during the Spring Festival holiday is generally stable, with some consumption hotspots centered on localization and surrounding areas. Driven by the demand for returning home to visit relatives, the performance of the large travel market is significantly better than that of the tourism and vacation market, and the passenger flow of the three passenger transport departments of railway, highway and civil aviation has increased significantly compared with the same period in 2021.” Overtravel representation. In terms of specific data, air ticket bookings increased by 23%, train ticket bookings increased by 41%, and bus ticket bookings increased by 195%.
The passenger flow of returning home to visit relatives superimposed the travel needs of local residents, detonating peripheral travel and micro travel.
“The length of travel is more likely to be a micro trip from two days to one night or even the same day.” In terms of same journey travel, he told reporters that some users choose different times to travel to different scenic spots and destinations during the holidays, and punching in and out for many times has become a major feature of the trend of micro travel. From the perspective of Spring Festival travel preference, the number of tickets or package products booked for scenic spots such as ice and snow, humanities, zoos and aquariums ranks first.
The local Chinese new year also further detonated local consumption. Fang Zexi, an industry analyst at Ctrip Research Institute, said that the trend of short-range local travel during the Spring Festival this year is obvious, and the bustling crowds of major scenic spots, bustling urban business districts and historical and cultural blocks across the country are crowded with people for the new year. Ctrip data show that more than 80% of tourists choose to visit scenic spots locally during the Spring Festival of the year of the tiger, and the ticket proportion of scenic spots in the province is as high as 82%. In terms of age, the post-80s are the largest, accounting for nearly 50%, and the post-90s account for about 30%; It is worth mentioning that in the year of the tiger, the number of Post-00 tourists who joined the ranks of shopping and eating increased significantly. During the Spring Festival, the number of Post-00 tourists in scenic spots increased by 27% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that special hotels such as e-sports, script killing and video and audio further tap the local “demand” for accommodation. According to Ctrip, the order volume of E-sports rooms increased by more than 80% year-on-year during the Spring Festival.
“ice and snow Tour” has a strong follow-up
With the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the consumption enthusiasm of ice and snow tourism will be further ignited in 2022.
The reporter learned from several OTA platforms that activities related to ice and snow have become a hot choice for consumption during the Spring Festival this year, and the number of orders has increased explosively.
As of February 5, Ctrip’s bookings of ski themed hotels during the Spring Festival increased by 54% year-on-year, and ticket orders of ice, snow and ski scenic spots increased by nearly 40% year-on-year. In terms of flying pigs, the orders of ice and snow tourism related commodities in the Spring Festival of the year of the tiger increased by more than 30% year-on-year. According to the big data of the same journey, during the Spring Festival, the orders of ice and snow scenic spots across the country increased by 68% over the same period last year.
Among them, Beijing Shichahai ice field, Sichuan taiziling ski field, Beijing Jundushan ski field, Zhejiang Hangzhou Daming Mountain Ski Field and Guangzhou rongchuang snow world have become popular ice and snow tourist attractions during the Spring Festival.
According to Wang Dandan, sales director of Beida lake ski resort, during the Spring Festival this year, the passenger flow to ski increased three times year-on-year, which was more popular than before the epidemic. Orders from the flying pig platform accounted for nearly half of the orders on the line. More and more female snowboarders come to ski, and skiing with children has become a new trend.
In this wave of consumption heat wave of ice and snow tourism, southerners unexpectedly became the main force. The reporter learned from the flying pig that in the ice and snow tourism orders of the Spring Festival of the tiger, the top ten cities of tourist sources are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Jinan and Dalian, among which the southern cities occupy seven seats.
Ice and snow tourism consumption shows significant localization and small radius characteristics, and the “door” skiing of 3 hours is favored. In the south, where ice and snow resources are relatively scarce, a number of characteristic snow fields have emerged, and it is more and more convenient for southerners to ski at the “door of their home”. Guangzhou rongchuang snow world, Anji Jiangnan Tianchi ski resort, Hangzhou Daming Mountain wansongling ski resort, Chengdu Xiling Snow Mountain Ski Resort and Shennongjia international ski resort are all popular ski resorts in the South with high heat.
Li Yang, general manager of the marketing department of Jingshang tourism group, told reporters that the weather was fine from the fourth day to the sixth day of the Spring Festival this year. The ticket booking volume of Anji yunshang grassland ski resort had doubled last year. The official hotel of the resort 1168 Star Sky Astronomy Hotel, squirrel tribe Hotel and Yunshan Resort Apartment Hotel were full for three days in a row. Tourists mainly come from young people in local and surrounding areas.
“Ice and snow tourism has become the hottest tourism industry during the Spring Festival in the year of the tiger due to the simultaneous holding of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.” Wu Ruoshan, a special researcher of the tourism research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that many types of products such as ice and snow sports tourism, ice and snow folk tourism, ice and snow health tourism and indoor ice and snow tourism have brought many choices to tourists. In addition, new sub industries such as ice climbing, curling and extreme sports on snow have attracted more attention from young people.
In Wu Ruoshan’s view, southerners have more curiosity and expectation about ice and snow than northerners’ familiarity with ice and snow. In recent years, with the gradual increase of ski resorts in the south, the “potential” ice and snow consumption demand in the South has been gradually released, and ice and snow tourism has become a real “National Tourism”.
It is generally believed in the industry that there will be a wave of market before the end of the snow season in mid March due to the continuous impact of the Winter Olympic Games. Some popular ski resorts in Beijing and Zhangjiakou have suspended ticket sales due to hosting Olympic projects. After the Olympic Games, these reopened Winter Olympic venues will also usher in a new round of passenger flow peak.
