Tourism industry sees major growth over Spring Festival

The tourism industry embraced flourishing growth during the 2024 Spring Festival holiday — an eight-day break celebrating the Chinese New Year starting Feb 10.

Latest figures from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that both the traveler numbers and tourism-related revenue reached record highs during the holiday thanks to people's ever stronger traveling ambitions, ample market supplies and improving travel policies.

The ministry said on Sunday that the domestic tourism market saw 474 million visits during the eight days, rising by 34.3 percent from the previous year. The number marked a 19-percent increase compared with that in 2019, previous to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The domestic tourism-related revenue reached about 632.69 billion yuan ($87.95 billion) over the holiday, a striking growth of 47.3 percent from the previous year and a 7.7 percent growth from that in 2019.

The inbound and outbound tourism market also showed a good performance during the holiday. The culture and tourism ministry said that around 3.6 million overseas trips were made during the holiday while the Chinese mainland received about 3.23 million visits from overseas destinations.