Record travel figures at Chinese New Year

Source: China Hospitality News | 02-04-2009 16:36

The China National Tourism Administration and the National Bureau of Statistics of China have jointly released statistics on the performance of China's travel market during the recent Spring Festival holiday.

Lots of foreigners spend the Lunar New Year in China. The  Golden Week tourism report released by the two departments  shows that China hosted a total of 109 million tourists  during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday.

The Golden Week tourism report released by the two departments shows that China hosted a total of 109 million tourists during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday: an increase of 24.7 percent over the same period of last year. The country's tourism income for the period increased by more than 23 percent and reached a total of 50.93 billion yuan. Of the 50.93 billion yuan income from tourism, 3.8 billion yuan was contributed by the civil aviation industry and 2.26 billion yuan by the railway sector. According to the report, 39 key tourism cities achieved a total income of 21.88 billion yuan during the period, and the rest of the cities and scenic spots earned 22.99 billion yuan.

An official from CNTA said that as the first golden week holiday in 2009, this year's Spring Festival travel market had four characteristics: a large increase in tourist numbers and tourism income; a general increase in domestic travel; a stable increase in outbound travel; and traveling is becoming an important way of spending the Spring Festival holiday.

During the holiday two outbound travel related accidents were reported, with three people injured during a Taiwan trip, and seven people killed and over a dozen injured while traveling in the United States.

Editor:Zhang Ning