More Chinese travelers have booked trips that are
within three hours driving distance ahead of the five-day Labor Day
holiday in May.
Farmyards where tourists can cook a barbecue, bed-and-breakfast
homestay villages, and various resorts are the most popular
accommodations.
With the coronavirus outbreak steadily receding in China, travelers
are confident about stepping out again by taking short trips to
neighboring areas.
More than 80 million people are expected to travel during the May
holiday, and the number will be double that of the three-day Tomb
Sweeping break in early April, according to China's largest online
travel agency Trip.com Group.
Traveling abroad though has come to a standstill as the epidemic has
hit other countries and regions. Instead, the focus has shifted to
domestic trips.
Nationwide, the hottest destinations include the Taiping National
Forest Park in Shaanxi province, the Mutianyu Great Wall in Beijing, the
Huangshan Mountain in Anhui province, and the Wuyi Mountain in Fujian
province.
Those who have booked four- and five-star hotels accounts for 55 percent of the total, Trip.com found.
In the past week, the number of hotel bookings in Tianjin
municipality surged 70 percent over the previous week. Beijing, Tianjin,
and Hebei province announced they would recognize the health status of
people commuting in the region to help facilitate travel, said
Beijing-based online travel service provider Qunar.
In the same period, tourist cities Qinhuangdao and Chengde in Hebei
province saw their hotel bookings jump 40 percent week-on-week.
Safety, sanitary conditions and contactless services are the key buzzwords that travelers search for the most, Qunar found.
"Many families have rented SUVs and business vehicles online. Given
the freedom, cleanness and privacy, car rentals have become one of the
fast-growing business segments," said Gou Zhipeng, vice-president of
Qunar.
"Recreational vehicles that include living quarters have become more
prevalent for the Labor Day holiday. Some camping bases in suburban
Beijing have been largely reserved," he said.
Still, traveling by RV remains a niche sector in China, and many
people lack enough understanding of the style points for such a trip.
In fact, the offering of camping bases and other related
infrastructure has been quite mature in the country, and a regular Class
C driver's license in China will allow one to drive most RVs.
The rental price of a homemade RV is wallet-friendly, and the rental
market is mature. RV trips are foreseen to be more prevalent in the next
few years, said Xu Yang, brand director of Jiangsu Jinghang Automobile
Co Ltd, China News Service reported.
Targeted support policies introduced in many places across the country have brought vitality to the tourism market.
More than 20 provinces and cities, including Huzhou in Zhejiang
province and Changzhou in Jiangsu province have issued travel vouchers
to local residents.
Sightseeing spots should be opened in a limited, orderly manner with
the number of tourists not exceeding 30 percent of the maximum approved
capacity to prevent a recurrence of the epidemic, the Ministry for
Culture and Tourism and the National Health Commission said.
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