Spring Festival sets off surge in travel to regional destinations
The number of tourists from the Chinese mainland visiting Macao and Taiwan grew during the week long Spring Festival holidays, while the number of tourists to Hong Kong declined, data from China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) showed Sunday.
From February 7 to 12, Macao received 665,000 mainland visitors, up 4.7 percent year-on-year, the CNTA said, citing data from Macao authorities.
The number of mainland visitors to Taiwan was up 9.9 percent to 45,000, the CNTA reported, citing data from the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association.
However, the number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong fell 11.65 percent to 744,000, according to the CNTA.
The decline in the Hong Kong tourism market was to be expected because the city, which was opened to mainland tourists in 2003, has matured as a destination. It still has much potential for development and upgrading, said Jiang Yiyi, director of international tourism development at the China Tourism Academy.
"Since the Taiwan tourism market was opened to mainland visitors only in 2008, it still offers vigorous growth," Jiang told the Global Times Sunday. She said that Macao's tourism industry is driven by the tourism industry of its neighbor city Zhuhai in South China's Guangdong Province, thus providing more travel choices for visitors.
"My family and I chose to go to Taiwan instead of Hong Kong this holiday because the lovely natural views in Taiwan attracted us," Wang Ziyuan, a 20-something white-collar worker in Zunyi in Southwest China's Guizhou Province, told the Global Times on Sunday.
"It's not that necessary to visit Hong Kong for just shopping as we can also buy some cheap and good cosmetics in Taiwan," she said.
Media reports said that the number of Chinese outbound tourists during this year's Spring Festival holidays was forecast to hit a record high of 6 million, up around 15 percent year-on-year.
The domestic tourism market also continued to expand during the holidays. The revenue of the domestic tourism market approached 13.79 billion yuan ($2.11 billion), up 14.2 percent on a yearly basis, according to the CNTA.
A new hot domestic attraction was Haikou, capital of South China's Hainan Province, which received 1.31 million tourists and generated 1.66 billion yuan in revenue during the holidays, media reported Sunday.
The warm weather of Hainan Province in the winter is attractive to many tourists and the local government has stepped up efforts to regulate the tourism market in a bid to provide visitors a sound travel environment, Jiang noted.
