Tourists have fun at Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, Jan. 2, 2024. Heilongjiang Province has abundant ice-and-snow resources, making it a popular destination for winter tourism in China and attracting numerous tourists from home and abroad during the New Year holiday. (Xinhua/Xie Jianfei)

China is on track for a bumper travel season, with travel authorities and tourism industry players expecting record-breaking journey numbers during the upcoming Spring Festival, adding new steam to the country's economic recovery.

The Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 10 this year, is China's biggest festival and a day for family reunions. It will serve as an important window for observing vitality and consumer confidence levels in the world's second-largest economy.

With record demand for travel, this year's Spring Festival holiday is poised to become the most vibrant and prosperous in recent years, experts said.

NEW RECORDS

An estimated 80 million passenger trips, a record high, are likely to be handled by China's civil aviation sector during this year's Spring Festival travel rush, which starts on Jan. 26 and ends on March 5, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

This figure represents a 44.9-percent surge compared with the same period of 2023 and is an increase of 9.8 percent from the level recorded during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2019.

To handle the spike in air travel passenger levels, the country's airlines have planned to add over 2,500 flights during the 40-day period, taking into consideration the likely demand for trips to popular destinations including Southeast Asian countries, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other neighboring regions, said Liang Nan, a CAAC official.

Liang said the CAAC has urged airlines to intensify efforts to increase international flights, especially those to neighboring regions and countries, and ensure safe operation during the Spring Festival travel surge.

The 2024 Spring Festival is likely to elevate the tourism market to a higher peak, judging from the online booking situation, said Qi Chunguang, vice president of Tuniu, a Chinese online travel services provider.

Qi said some of the company's tourism products designed for the Spring Festival were sold out much earlier than in previous years, with the list including trips to popular destinations in northern European countries.

Concerning domestic travel, he said trips to the country's northeastern regions have become so popular that local tourism reception capacity there has proved almost saturated in recent times. "Such a situation never happened before," he said.

SOLID START

The eight-day Spring Festival holiday, which starts on Feb. 10, is the first major holiday after the New Year holiday, which produced a travel boom in China's culture and tourism market, ensuring a solid start for China's economic recovery efforts in 2024.

During the three-day New Year holiday that ended on Jan. 1, a total of 135 million domestic tourist trips were made, up 155.3 percent year on year, according to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The total revenue of the country's tourism market surpassed 79.73 billion yuan (about 11.22 billion U.S. dollars) over the course of these three days, tripling that of the same holiday period last year and increasing 5.6 percent compared with 2019.

China recorded 5.18 million inbound and outbound trips during the three days, a 4.7-fold increase compared with the figure for the same period a year earlier and returning to the 2019 level, according to the National Immigration Administration.

Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said 2023 saw China's domestic tourism market recovering rapidly, while in 2024 it will enter a new stage of prosperity.

Dai predicted that total domestic travel will exceed 6 billion visits in 2024 and that domestic tourism revenue is likely to surpass 6 trillion yuan.

He expected the country's inbound and outbound trips to exceed 264 million visits this year, generating combined tourism revenue of 107 billion U.S. dollars.

Qi Chunguang, meanwhile, said China's steady economic recovery in 2024, along with increasing international flights and adjustment of visa policies, will lead to a surge in outbound trips.