Holidaymakers choose short trips amid outbreak of virus

Rural homestays benefit as people stay closer to home for Qingming Festival

Local tours are the most popular option for the upcoming Qingming Festival holiday on April 3-5, as travelers have shortened the radius of their travel to reduce risk amid the pandemic, business insiders said.

Data from online travel agency Qunar show that, suburb tour reservations for this year's holiday increased by 30 percent year-on-year.

From the presale of train tickets, as of March 28, the proportion of intraprovincial passengers accounted for 75 percent of the national total, an increase of more than 20 percent compared with the same period last year.

"Since the outbreak of the pandemic, leisure travel to suburbs and rural areas are in demand among tourists," a manager of Qunar was quoted as saying by Beijing Daily.

"The increasing demand energizes accommodation in rural areas, with some having outperformed hotels in downtown areas."

Moreover, during this year's Qingming Festival, some upscale hotels and homestays in rural areas have cut their prices by about 30 percent, attracting many tourists to choose countryside travel, the manager said.

According to the tourism platform, some hotel reservations in rural areas doubled year-on-year, with the price half of that from the Spring Festival in February. Cities including Dali, Chengdu, Lijiang,Chongqing, Beijing, Guangzhou and Sanya are among the favorite destinations.

"We had to cancel our travel plans to stay in Beijing due to the outbreak across the country. I plan to take my family on a two-night trip in the suburbs and travel around," a visitor surnamed Zhao told Beijing Business Today.