China anticipates holiday travel boom driven by longer trips, culture craze

BEIJING -- The annual Spring Festival of 2025 is shaping up to be a long and unique public holiday for Chinese people.

It marks the first since it was decided to extend the holiday by a day to eight days and the first since the festival was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2024.

Thanks to these factors, apart from traditional family reunions, Chinese people are eyeing longer trips during the upcoming holiday, which starts on Jan 28, as traditional Chinese culture takes center stage with more momentum.

LONGER HOLIDAY, LONGER TRIPS

The holiday extension came from a State Council decision last November, which officially made the eve of the Chinese New Year part of the public holidays.

Correspondingly, longer trips are to follow as more Chinese have opted for further destinations and more immersive experiences.

According to a report jointly published by the China Association of Travel Services and online travel agency Tuniu, the average trip duration for travel package customers during the upcoming holiday stands at around 4.8 days, longer than the 4.3 days during the Spring Festival of 2019, the last one before the pandemic.

A report released by UTour Group Co., Ltd, a company specializing in outbound tourist group tours, showed that the number of tourist groups for this year's Spring Festival is up 30 percent compared to last year's, with the number of outbound tourists rising by 46 percent.

Among them, the number of applicants for holiday trips to Australia and New Zealand saw a whopping 220 percent rise from last Spring Festival, while there are 200 percent more customers bound for the United Arab Emirates, 100 percent more traveling to southern Europe, and 30 percent more planning for trips to northern Europe.

Another report by a leading online travel agency, Fliggy, said that among the destinations with the biggest package sales rise during this year's Spring Festival holiday, many are more than 8 hours of flying time away, including Austria, Belgium, Hungary and Ireland.

Domestically, while big cities like Beijing and Shanghai remain the favorite destinations for many holiday travelers, remote and less-known places like Nujiang and Chongzuo in the counry's southwest and Zhongwei in the northwest are gaining increasing popularity, according to Fliggy.

Moreover, estimated data from another leading travel platform, Ctrip, shows that car rentals during the 2025 Spring Festival are expected to land a 240 percent increase from 2019, reflecting a pursuit of more in-depth tourism among Chinese people.

CRAZE FOR TRADITIONAL CULTURE

Including Spring Festival on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list further aroused Chinese people's enthusiasm for their intangible culture and various festive customs.

According to data from Fliggy, the search volume of "intangible cultural heritage travel" on the platform in early January saw a staggering 133 percent rise from the same period in December.

The Tuniu report also shows the rising popularity of interactive activities involving festive customs and intangible cultural heritage for the upcoming holiday.

In response, localities have put forward various tourism items to promote their own cultural heritage.

In Harbin, the capital city of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, a special train bound for the border county of Mohe set off on Jan 11, on which inheritors of ethnic intangible cultural heritage demonstrated items such as birch-bark painting, dough sculpture, and embroidery. They are all from the Oroqen ethnic minority group, which is known for its ancient history and culture of hunting.

"We came up with such a train to make our fine intangible cultural heritage seen by more people as Spring Festival is just around the corner," said train conductor Shi Lei.

Earlier, in the ancient city of Langzhong of southwestern Sichuan province, a series of events celebrating Spring Festival have been launched to showcase intangible cultural heritage items and local traditions.

"Having seen all these programs, I feel like the festive atmosphere is getting more palpable and that Spring Festival is in the air," said Jiang Yilin, a tourist from northwestern Shaanxi province.

"We are taking the inscription of Spring Festival on the UNESCO list as an opportunity to make the festive vibes even thicker while trying to facilitate cultural and tourism consumption and promote the creative evolution and innovative development of fine traditional Chinese culture," said Zhang Zhiping, head of a local culture research society.

An early move into the Spring Festival mode would greatly help promote excellent traditional culture, boost holiday consumer market development, and balance supply and demand, said Zhou Qingjie, a professor at Beijing Technology and Business University.