The COVID-19 is changing the way people travel
The data centre of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China estimates that during the 2022 National Day holiday (from October 1 to October 7), domestic tourism trips in China reached 422 million, down 18.2% year-on-year and recovering to 60.7% of the same period in 2019 on a comparable basis.
In addition, China's domestic tourism revenue reached CNY 287.21 billion, down 26.2% year-on-year, recovering to 44.2% of the same period in 2019.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, local and peripheral tours remained the first choice of travel for the majority of Chinese residents. The proportion of tourists choosing cross-province and cross-city trips within the province fell by 14.4 and 9.5 percentage points respectively during the National Day holiday.
Data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China showed that the top three percentages of visitors went to suburban parks, rural areas around cities and urban parks, amounting to 23.8%, 22.6% and 16.8% respectively.
The camping economy continued to be popular, driven by the trend of peripheral tourism. Ctrip data shows that during the National Day, the number of orders for camping tours increased by more than 10 times compared to the same period last year, with local orders accounting for nearly 80% and orders from surrounding areas outside the city accounting for 15%. The per capita cost of camping was about 650 CNY, 30% more expensive than the per capita cost of camping in mid-autumn.
Deng Ning, vice president of the School of Tourism Science of Beijing International Studies University, believes that with the upgrading of various tourism formats and the local celebration of festivals advocated by the government, people's travel radius is shrinking, and their decision-making is increasingly characterized by "fragmentation" and "flexibility". On the one hand, this shows that the promotion of tourism destinations has become more comprehensive, diversified and three-dimensional, which can reach users in many life scenes. On the other hand, it is also a reflection of the growing mainstream of tourism methods such as peripheral travel and micro vacation.