Summer travel heats up as Chinese travelers embrace holiday

BEIJING - China's tourism market has been heating up since the start of July as parents and students eagerly embrace their first post-pandemic summer vacation, a sign of accelerated recovery of the tourism sector in the country.

The passion for summer outings among Chinese travelers has been captured by traffic data. Last month, the country's railways handled a total of 406 million passenger trips, according to the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd.

To meet increasing travel demand, the country's railway operator has arranged 10,169 passenger trains per day since the summer travel rush started on July 1. The figure is up 14.2 percent compared with the same period in 2019.

Air passenger flows have also been on the rise, with the number of domestic passenger flights reaching 430,000 last month, surging 12 percent year on year, according to civil aviation data service provider VariFlight.

Liu Ting, a researcher with the big data research institute of online travel service provider Qunar.com, expects the busy airline traffic to continue through August, saying that there is travel demand yet to be unleashed in the market.

For travel service providers, the bright spots in this hectic summer are study trips and parent-child tours.

According to Lvmama, an online travel agency, the number of bookings for study trips in the summer holiday has already exceeded that for the same period in 2019, with culture-themed study tours ranking among the most popular.

The city of Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province is one of the ancient capitals in China, boasting a rich cultural and historical legacy, said Ye Jinsheng, a 9th grader from the southern Guangdong Province, while introducing the destination of his recent study tour.

"The picturesque scenery of the West Lake has left an indelible impression on me. I've also gained insight into the lake's pivotal role as a water conservation project for countering floods and facilitating irrigation," the 14-year-old said.

Rising demand from students like Ye has prompted tour service providers to roll out more diverse study trips, featuring themes ranging from art shows and camping to zoos.

Zou Qingling, CEO of Lvmama, noted that the customized and individualized study trips are trending this summer, while trips offering experiential learning have become a popular option.

As students are a major source of travel business in the summertime, it is natural to see parent-child tours soaring in the market. Since the start of July, the search volume for the keywords "parent-child tour" has more than quintupled from a year ago, data from the e-commerce platform Meituan and online consumer guide Dianping.com shows.

Surging parent-child tours have boosted the business performance of hotels and restaurants. Since July, hotel bookings for parent-child tours skyrocketed 150 percent compared with the same period in 2019, while group buying of kid's meals nearly quintupled year on year, according to Meituan.

"The heated summer tourism market shows that the recovery of the tourism sector is picking up pace and market demand for traveling continues to grow," said Zhu Keli, a researcher on the new economy with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

China has come to regard tourism as one of the key areas for reviving and expanding consumption at home. In a 20-point plan unveiled last month to spur consumer spending, the country's economic planner pledged to introduce favorable measures for cultural and tourism consumption, develop rural tourism and scale up financial support for the tourism sector.

In the eyes of analysts, a quicker recovery and sound growth of the country's tourism industry entails greater efforts down the road.

China should work to further upgrade the tourism sector, enhance the quality and service of tourism, while providing more diverse vacation packages by integrating tourism with culture, sports and education, said Zhu.