BEIJING, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- China is expected to see booming outbound trips during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday as the applications for entry-exit permits have increased significantly.
Spring Festival holiday this year will last from February 10 to 17.
According to data from Tongcheng Travel, an online travel service provider, so far, search interests for international flights departing between February 8 and February 17 have grown nearly 7 times year on year, surpassing the level seen in the same period of 2019.
Data from Alibaba's travel branch Fliggy indicates that bookings for outbound trips during the Spring Festival have surged over 15 times compared to the same period last year, with the bookings peaking more than half a month earlier than last year.
As early as mid-December last year, there was a significant increase in the number of bookings of overseas hotels for the upcoming Spring Festival. Around January 10, it entered the peak booking period. Popular destinations include Thailand, Japan, China's Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, China's Macao, Australia, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates, said Xiao Peng, a researcher with the big-data research institute of online travel service provider Qunar.
At present, various airlines have proposed to add more than 2,500 scheduled international flights and charter flights during the Spring Festival travel rush.
The China Tourism Academy predicts that the recovery of the inbound and outbound tourism market will further accelerate in 2024. The annual inbound and outbound tourists are expected to exceed 264 million, and international tourism revenue is projected to surpass 107 billion U.S. dollars. (Edited by Xie Weijia, Hu Pingchao, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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