China welcomed in the Lunar New Year on Saturday, 10 February, marking the start of the auspicious Year of the Dragon.
During the eight-day-long holiday, also known as Spring Festival, tourism revenues surged to – and even surpassed – pre-pandemic levels, providing a welcome boost to China’s beleaguered economy.
According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, overall domestic tourism spending increased 7.7% compared to 2019 (and 47.3% compared to 2023, when zero Covid restrictions had only just been relaxed), although Reuters estimated that the average spend per trip decreased by around RMB 100 compared to 2019, suggesting that Chinese tourists are keeping a tighter grip on their spending.
International travel also rebounded to 90% of 2019 levels, with Singapore and Malaysia proving particularly popular having recently allowed visa-free travel for most Chinese citizens.
Amid overall rising tourism numbers, media highlighted a number of specific holiday-related trends.
Reuters reported that Chinese tourists are increasingly abandoning group tours and shopping-focused holidays in favour of independently-planned, active, adventurous, and experience-based trips. Nevertheless, for domestic tourists, shopping was still high on the agenda, with Hainan reporting a record RMB 2.49 billion (£274.6 million) of duty-free spending during the holiday. That amounts to an average spend of over RMB 8,000 (£882) per person.
The phenomenon of “Home First, Travel Next” began to emerge during the holiday, in which people take a quick trip home to celebrate the new year with family, followed by travel to tourism destinations. Although the holiday is traditionally a time to spend with family, some young people prefer to skip it to avoid facing interrogation by relatives about topics like money, marriage, and children.
Those that have eschewed children for dependents of a furrier variety led to a massive demand for pet-sitting services, causing a massive increase in prices. According to some estimates, the number of pets in China increased 2.7% year on year in 2023 to almost 200 million.
Finally, ahead of the holiday, many Chinese youth increasingly bought spiritual ornaments such as prayer beads and traditional hanfu clothing (a term for traditional or traditionally inspired Chinese clothing). This reflects a growing interest in traditional Chinese culture and displays of Chinese nationalism at a time when Xi Jinping has emphasised the need for China to assert “cultural confidence”.
