The week-long National Day holiday witnessed an increase in both the number of visitors to Northeast China’s Jilin province and its tourism income. It was the holiday economy that drove the rapid growth.

According to research by the province’s bureau of statistics, the number of visitors to Jilin during the week reached 8.37 million, which rises 17.8 percent year to year. The tourism income reached 4.6 billion yuan ($750 million), an increase of 26.8 percent.

Individual travelers made up 60.3 percent of all visitors, which was 1.8 percent higher than last year’s figure. The time tourists spent in Jilin on average was 2.88 days, which saw a year-on-year increase of 0.7 percent. The average amount of money spent per person was 552.42 yuan, which grew 7.6 percent year on year.

Various cultural activities were held to involve domestic tourists and drive the industrial development of Jilin. The activities included a river lantern festival at Songhuajiang River, a red leaves festival at Changbaishan Mountain, a Chinese Korean ethnic groups’ folk tourism festival, and an apple picking festival.

The province has also developed a group of routes that features its unique scenery, such as Changbaishan Mountain’s autumn view, red leaves in Jilin city, snow on golden leaves, bird watching in the wetlands, and countryside landscapes.

The rural tourism, including hot spring bathing and fruit and vegetable picking in the countryside around the city attracted great numbers of short-term visitors. Compared with last year, tourists extended days spent on rural tourism from one day to two or more days. In addition, they changed their travel patterns from a single family trip to traveling with two to four families.

According to the research report, the ways in which people were travelling were more diversified. Individual travel, independent travel, and self-drive travel had taken the place of group travel with agencies.

The toll roads opening for free during the National Day holiday resulted in a new record of the number of self-drive visitors. It was reported that around 70 percent of the vehicles in scenic spots’ parking lots were private cars.