High-end hotels get boost from holiday bookings

Young Chinese consumers who returned to their hometowns during the Spring Festival holiday this year also brought their urban spending habits back with them. Instead of staying at home, they opted for rooms at local luxury hotels, driving the significant growth of hotel bookings in small towns.

China's travel and consumption markets were boosted by hundreds of millions of Chinese people's family reunions. This year's eight-day Spring Festival holiday, which concluded on Tuesday, saw a record high volume of passenger traffic, according to Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.

Bookings at hotels in county-level cities jumped 40 percent year-on-year, with nearly half of such bookings made by travelers between age 25 and 35, Qunar said.

"Normally, bookings of high-end hotels account for 20 percent of all hotel bookings, while during this Spring Festival holiday, they made up over 30 percent," said Cai Muzi, a Qunar researcher. "Consumers tend to stay at better hotels during the holiday, and high-end hotels are offering cheaper room rates on average this year, which has helped drive the consumption upgrade trend."

Young people who work in major cities away from their hometowns said differences in lifestyle habits could lead to conflicts. By staying at hotels, they can get up late and go back home for lunch, thus avoiding family conflicts.

Besides the bump in bookings of high-end hotels in small towns, overall bookings of luxury hotels during Spring Festival increased by nearly 40 percent year-on-year, and the booking proportion of high-end hotels has surpassed that of chain hotels and ordinary hotels, Qunar has found.

This year marks the first Spring Festival following its inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, and it has remarkably increased Chinese people's enthusiasm to take trips during the holiday.

Over the festival period, a large number of scenic spots nationwide sold out all their tickets or implemented flow restrictions. Several museums such as the Palace Museum and the National Museum of China in Beijing were fully booked during the holiday, according to Tuniu Corp, an online travel agency based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

Domestic tourism dominated this year's Spring Festival travel market, accounting for 70 percent of tourist bookings.

Ice and snow tourism, in particular, remained trendy from early January through the holiday.

Traveling to snowy destinations, bathing in hot springs and enjoying special foods in Northeast China were among the most popular things to do. Such activities were highly favored by consumers from areas such as Shanghai and provinces of Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian, according to Tuniu.

Overseas travel also boomed during the holiday, fueled by visa-free policies issued by multiple countries. Some popular outbound destinations include Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, South Korea and the United States, according to Shanghai-based Trip.com Group, China's largest online travel agency.

In particular, Chinese bookings for trips to Japan doubled year-on-year, and reservations for tours in countries such as the US, Spain, Italy and France surged over 50 percent compared with the 2024 Spring Festival period, Trip.com found.

"Chinese travelers are becoming increasingly familiar with outbound travel, and their ways of taking trips have become more diversified," said Zhou Huijie, a researcher with Trip.com Group.

Over the holiday, reservations for car rentals overseas grew 42 percent year-on-year, with the average rental period lasting six days.

Furthermore, orders for overseas chartered tours climbed 20 percent compared with last year's holiday. The top five countries for chartered tours were Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia, according to Trip.com Group.