Most people dissatisfied with holiday arrangements

The majority of people in a public survey Friday said they are not satisfied with the statutory holiday time arrangements, while experts said a reform of the vacation system is necessary.

The survey, released by the national holiday coordination office under the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) on several news portals on Thursday, had drawn the participation of more than 1 million people by press time on Friday.

Li Xiaoliang, director of the press department at CNTA, told the Global Times that the survey's purpose was to reflect the public's desire to make holiday time arrangements more reasonable in the future.

China's current holiday arrangement made in 2007, includes 11 days of public holidays a year which were extended to seven-day or three-day holidays by borrowing from neighboring weekends.

According to the survey on sina.com on Friday, 82 percent out of 160,000 respondents said they are not satisfied with the current arrangements.

However, only 57 percent of people think the seven-day Spring Festival and National Day holidays are unnecessary while 36 percent say they want to keep them.

Meanwhile, 58 percent said it is unnecessary to borrow a weekend to make up three-day long holidays like the May Day holidays.

Surveys on other websites show similar results.

Susan Shen, an employee at a transnational company in Shanghai, told the Global Times that the disorganized time arrangements for previous Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays caused big problems for companies like hers, which need to work with colleagues in different regions and time zones.

"But considering China hasn't formed a mature paid vacation system like they have in developed countries, it is reasonable to keep long holidays to let people have a chance to do long-distance travel, but it should not bring more trouble and tiredness as the cost," Susan said.

"The intention behind the top-level design for a long holiday system is good, but it has a different effect when implemented unreasonably, and this is why people complain and the government needs to improve its direction," said Dong Guanzhi, a deputy dean of Institute of Tourism Planning and Designing at Jinan University in Guangdong Province.