An aerial drone photo shows tourists visiting the Slender West Lake scenic spot in Yangzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, Sept. 17, 2024. (Photo by Meng Delong/Xinhua)
BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- The just ended Mid-Autumn Festival holiday which fell on September 15 to 17 this year has seen boomed cultural and tourism activities, as well as vibrant consumption driven by the successive implementation of relevant policies.
The market hot spots during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday have demonstrated the vitality of domestic demand. Spurred by increasing policy support and peak consumption seasons such as the "golden September and silver October", China's consumption market is expected to further recover and improve, according to experts.
-- Vibrant cultural and tourism activities
The cultural and tourism market has continued its strong growth momentum in this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.
Returning home for family reunion during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday is the first choice for many people.
According to online travel service provider Qunar, in terms of the structure of travelers, the proportion of people returning home for reunion during the holiday has grown evidently.
The parent-child peripheral tours and youth returning home tours have cumulatively accounted for nearly half of the travels during the three-day holiday, with parent-child amusement parks and venues for large-scale cultural and tourism events in first- and second-tier cities becoming hot destinations for families of three, and ancient towns, cities and villages becoming hot destinations for young people returning home for reunion, according to Fliggy data.
During the holiday, various traditional folk activities are highly favored, and related scenic spots have launched diverse activities in response to the popularity.
According to Fliggy data, leading travel platform in China, the search popularity of moon watching and lantern watching tours during this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday has increased by 61 percent and 267 percent respectively compared to last year.
According to data from Ctrip, another Chinese leading travel platform, although short-distance trips predominated travels during the holiday, the travel duration was extended compared to the Dragon Boat Festival holiday as tourists' desire to explore nearby destinations has significantly increased.
According to data from Fliggy, the total travel bookings during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday have significantly increased compared to the New Year's Day, Qingming Festival, and Dragon Boat Festival holidays.
It is noteworthy that the trains tickets for the first day of the National Day holiday went on sale on the last day of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, and according to data from various platforms, the tourism market will remain hot during this year's National Day holiday.
Multiple train tickets on the day before and on the first day of the National Day holiday have been sold out, according to Qunar.
The cultural and tourism consumption industry, with holidays as the time basis and local cultural customs as the basis for event planning, still has sufficient potential to be released, and coupled with the demand of local cultural and tourism destinations for development, culture and tourism may gradually become the core theme of holiday travel, noted Minsheng Securities.
-- Booming commodity consumption
Mooncakes and other festive foods are indispensable during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
According to data from e-commerce platform Meituan, since September this year, the transaction volume in Chinese pastry categories such as mooncakes has risen by 23.1 percent year on year.
Innovative flavors and other innovations have revitalized many time-honored brands. For instance, traditional Shanxi-style mooncakes experienced a wave of consumption momentum by virtue of the "cultural and tourism fever" driven by popular IPs. In nearly a week before the Mid-Autumn Festival, the delivery sales of the Shanxi-style "hollow mooncakes" on Meituan increased by 787.50 percent year on year, while that of Shanxi-style "Guo Dulin" mooncakes by five times year on year.
In addition, many places carried out consumer goods trade-ins during the holiday.
From September 15 to 16, Yiwu City in east China's Zhejiang Province launched a car trade-in activity and a car exhibition, attracting the participation of over 80 car brands and more than 16,000 attendees. 650 cars were ordered in total, with a transaction amount exceeding 100 million yuan.
According to insiders, this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday is also a peak season for home decoration, and with the implementation of the trade-in policy, the home appliance markets in various places have experienced a peak of "replacement consumption".
According to data from Chinese e-commerce platform Suning, during the holiday, the customer flow of its stores nationwide increased by 244 percent, the sales of "trade-ins" up by 148 percent, and the volume of bundled purchase orders up by 298 percent year on year.
Liu Aihua, spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said that driven by the policies of strengthening support for consumer goods trade-ins, the consumption of some bulk commodities continues to rebound. Data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) shows that as of August 31, over 800,000 applications for car scrapping and renewal subsidies have been received, and in August, retail enterprises each with an annual main business income of 5 million yuan or more have seen increase instead of decrease in the retail sales of household appliances and audio-visual equipment.
-- Strong policy support
Wang Wei, former head of the Institute of Market Economy of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that holiday consumption has always been an important window for observing the economy. The growth of consumption in cultural and tourism services, as well as the hot sales of holiday goods and the increase of bulk consumer goods trade-ins, all reflect the vitality of the consumer market.
NBS data also shows the booming development trend of the consumer market. For example, service consumption maintains rapid growth, with the retail sales of services growing by 6.9 percent year on year from January to August this year, 3.9 percentage points faster than the retail sales of goods during the same period.
New-type consumption is active, with the retail sales of communication equipment products of retail enterprises each with an annual main business income of 5 million yuan or more increasing by 14.8 percent year on year in August, and online consumption grows rapidly, with the online retail sales of physical goods rising by 8.1 percent year on year from January to August, according to NBS data.
Liu Aihua also pointed out that the sustained recovery of consumption is facing some constraints, and residents' confidence and willingness to consume still need to be strengthened. From the next stage, relevant policy efforts are continuously increasing, and more places are actively promoting consumer goods trade-ins.
Wang Wei expressed optimism about the market leveraging effect of peak consumption seasons such as the "golden September and silver October", adding that there is a foundation for the sustained recovery and expansion of consumption in China, and with the better integration of consumer promotion policies and the new trends of residents' consumption transformation and upgrading, the stable growth of consumption throughout the year will be better supported, and the role of consumption as the main engine of economic growth will further emerge. (Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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