Going abroad for Lunar New Year

A lion dance troupe participates in a lion dance competition held in Singapore's Chinatown, Feb. 7, 2015. Singapore on Saturday held the 8th International Lion Dance Competition to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year in Singapore's Chinatown.[Photo/Xinhua]

"We went to Singapore and Malaysia last year and will go to Thailand again this year, but this time we will visit Phuket island," he said. "We will fly on Feb 19, after having the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with my parents and parents-in-law."

Wei's story is typical of a fast-growing number of Chinese families who choose the alternative way of spending the traditional holiday.

More Chinese are willing to travel overseas than stay at home during the upcoming Spring Festival, according to a recently released survey by Ctrip.com, China's leading online travel agency.

About 40 percent of the respondents said they had plans to go abroad during this Spring Festival. For the first time, the figure exceeded that for domestic travel (37 percent) during the holiday.

The finding was echoed by the number of travel bookings on Qunar.com, a popular travel search engine. According to Liu Haibo, Qunar's flight ticket specialist, the number of travelers who made overseas travel bookings during the 2015 Chinese New Year witnessed a huge surge, with a year-on-year increase of 350 percent.

But with Spring Festival approaching, those with last-minute travel plans might realize that ticket prices have skyrocketed. Some tickets have even doubled in price during the holiday period.

As direct tickets can be expensive, many tourists have decided to book comparatively cheaper indirect tickets. Researchers at Ctrip found that those who selected the same trip with indirect flights sometimes paid up to half the price of direct flights.

To ensure the smooth transition between flights, the proposed connection time should be at least be 2 hours. Ctrip's experts also advise people to pick the same airline for connecting flights where possible.

Thailand, Bali and Maldives are the top three destinations Chinese would like to visit during Spring Festival, followed by other relatively short-distance outbound attractions such as Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea.