A total of 705 million tourists traveled around China during the national holiday, generating RMB 583.6 billion (about USD 87.7 billion) of revenue, the China National Tourism Administration said.
Income from tourism reached 549.4 billion yuan (HK$644.57 billion) for the first seven days of the National Day Golden Week holiday, with a total of 663 million domestic tourists.
People used to save money for years to travel either within the country or outside for year-end holidays. Of late, people have started using credit cards, but end up paying huge interest rates.
For Chinese travelers - who spent USD 261 billion overseas last year - the hottest destinations aren’t Paris, New York or Tokyo but the beaches of Sanya or the peaks of far-western Yunnan.
The number of Chinese cross-border tourists during the National Day break is expected to remain flat for the first time in years, due to a set of travel restrictions.
Travelers are expected to make 130 million trips by rail and 13 million by air during the National Day holiday travel rush, railway and civil aviation regulators said on Thursday.
Tourist spending grew the fastest in Asia-Pacific in 2016, outpacing visitor arrival expenditures in Europe and North America, Mastercard’s Global Destinations Cities Index 2017 showed.
Shanghai is the top-ranked destination city in the Chinese mainland according to international overnight visitor arrivals, the latest annual Mastercard Global Destinations Cities Index says.
