Travel bags are out for May Day holiday

China is expected to see an influx of inbound tourists as well as rising numbers of domestic travelers during the upcoming May Day holiday that starts May 1, and bookings ahead of the period have surged as travel fervor heats up.

During the five-day holiday, the daily volume of cross-regional personnel exchanges is expected to top 260 million passenger trips, according to an estimate by the Ministry of Transport.

China's favorable policies that allow overseas visitors to get tax refunds right after purchases at designated stores nationwide are encouraging more people to visit the nation. For the May Day holiday, the booking volume for inbound travel products has already surged over 170 percent year-on-year, according to Trip.com Group, China's largest online travel agency.

"Inbound tourism has entered a new stage of prosperous growth, fueled by China's increasing opening-up to the outside world. More public cultural and leisure venues in the country have become new places that meet the diverse and personalized demands of inbound tourists," said Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy.

"Data indicate that factors such as sustained growth of the Chinese economy, the country's huge population, and abundant natural and cultural resources will support the long-term growth of the tourism economy, and the domestic tourism market is steadily moving toward a new cycle of prosperous development," Dai said.

As part of its latest moves to boost consumption, China plans to further expand its unilateral visa-free entry policy in an orderly manner, and better leverage the role of tax refund stores and tax refund policies by opening more such stores and optimizing tax refund procedures for overseas visitors.

China will accelerate the transformation of five major cities — Shanghai; Beijing; Guangzhou, Guangdong province; Tianjin; and Chongqing — into global consumption centers on par with New York and London, and create globally attractive retail environments.

Last year, the number of inbound foreign travelers who visited the above-mentioned five cities doubled from that in 2023, said the National Immigration Administration.

"In those five cities, the number of tax refund stores for overseas visitors accounted for 60 percent in the country last year, and total sales made up for over 70 percent of the value nationwide," said Li Gang, director-general of the department of market operation and consumption promotion of the Ministry of Commerce, during a news conference earlier in Beijing.

For the May Day holiday, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Russia, Malaysia, Thailand and the United States have been listed among the top source countries for inbound tourists, and their top destinations in China include Shanghai; Beijing; Guangzhou and Shenzhen of Guangdong; Chengdu, Sichuan province; and Chongqing, Trip.com found.

"In late April and early May, Japan also celebrates several public holidays and employees get those days off from work. During this year's May Day holiday, the booking volume of inbound travel products made by Japanese tourists has nearly doubled year-on-year," said Shen Jiani, a senior researcher with Trip.com.