Labor Day holiday to see domestic tourism spike

Domestic tourism will be on the upswing during the coming Labor Day holiday thanks to the government's effective prevention and control measures against COVID-19 and special offers given by travel agencies.

The five-day break is projected to see the year's first travel boom according to a report by Trip.com, an online travel agency headquartered in Shanghai, which said domestic travel will double that of Tomb Sweeping Day in early April.

The agency said that due to the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese travelers' visits will be transferred to domestic travel, with short-distance tours within 4 days the most popular type of trip.

Data cited from Lvmama, another travel agency in Shanghai, shows travel combos including attraction tickets and two or three stays in a hotel are sought after on its platforms. Also, travelers prefer to choose leisure hotels in the countryside with fewer people but beautiful scenery.

Self-guided tours by rental cars have registered the fastest recovery, because of travelers' demands for loose travel schedules, cleanness and privacy. Trip.com said the orders of rental cars on its platform has returned to 70 percent of that in the same period of previous year.

Discounted flight tickets is another motivator for travel. According to Qunar, an online travel service provider in Beijing, the prices of some hot domestic airlines are 30 or even 60 percent off during the Labor Day holiday compared to the previous year. For example, the average price of airline from Beijing to Shanghai is 478 yuan ($68) over the break, a decrease of 29.6 percent from 679 yuan in the same period of 2019.

Ge Lanxiang, vice president of Qunar, said the prices of domestic flights will be at their lowest during the holiday over the past past five years.