Personal Finance
More people to travel during the upcoming National Day week
By Yu Tianyu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-21 08:46
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 Domestic and foreign tourists visit Tian'anmen Square in Beijing. Outbound and inbound travel is expected to boom during the coming eight-day National Day holiday. [Zhang Wei] |
Several days before the eight-day National Day holiday, Zhu Ke, a senior marketing manager of a State-owned travel agency in Beijing, already had a "no vacancy" sign as her signature.
She wrote the words, "No vacancy for Bali trip now, and later nothing will be left for Phuket", as her online MSN signature.
"I've been extremely busy these days. Every day, hundreds of customers ask about routes, times and prices of our tour groups for the upcoming holiday by telephone and MSN," Zhu said.
Liu Xiaojun, a senior official at the National Tourism Administration, said that several factors had affected travel in the first half of the year.
Tourism analysts specify the impacts as due to the financial crisis, the spread of H1N1 (swine flu) disease and also the lack of a long public holiday following the Spring Festival.
In 2008, Chinese people who traveled during the National Day holiday totaled 176 million, Liu said.
Liu predicted a 15 percent increase in National Day travel this year to 200 million people.
Su Yu, 32, a public relations officer at an international bank's Beijing bureau, paid 28,000 yuan for a two-person luxury cruise trip to Egypt two months ahead of the upcoming gold week.
"It is a bit more expensive than regular days, but we have to pay for that because we only have enough time to travel during the National Day holiday," Su said.
"We have to grasp the opportunity, as it will be the last long holiday this year," she said.
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"Sales of trips to Europe are better than we expected, and registration of many tour groups have been closed," Sun said.
The United Arab Emirates has been officially open to Chinese tourists since September 15, Sun said, and added that the region's luxury hotels and goods will make it a new favorite for Chinese travelers.
Sun also listed Bali in Indonesia and Phuket in Thailand as a focus for travel sales this month.
Xie Dan, a marketing and product promotion manager at Shenzhen Airlines International Travel Service, said Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have topped his company's "best-seller" list.
"We launched new routes in Taiwan, targeting young tourists, such as an around-the-island train trip apart from older tourists," Xie said.
"More young Chinese people are choosing Taiwan as their travel destination," Xie said.
Shopping and cuisine trips to South Korea also are popular because of a relatively higher currency exchange rate of renminbi against South Korea's won.
According to statistics from Ctrip.com, the largest online travel service in China, the number of tourists traveling to Europe, the United States, Australia and Africa are up this year compared to National Day week in 2008.
Prices have decreased too, according to Ctrip.com, which cited a 10 percent year-on-year drop in the cost of travel to Europe as an example.
However, those prices are heading back up, Ctrip.com noted, reporting a 5 percent month-on-month increase in European travel this month.
Xie said overall trip prices during the eight-day holiday will be no more than 15 percent over travel during non-holiday periods.
"We're trying to gain smaller profits but good sales, " she said. "We need to maintain customer-friendly prices during the holiday to realize a better business performance in 2009."
Sun of ByeCity.com said prices of tourism products are lower than during the same period in previous years due to the recession and recent promotional activities by airline companies and travel agents.
She said the cost of trips to Southeast Asian countries doubled month-on-month during the previous National Day holiday, but that they are stable this year.
