Foreign travel new flavor of Spring Festival holidays

Increasing incomes, paid vacations, simplified visa procedures and the availability of more international flights are encouraging the younger generation to give up the habit of staying at home during the festival.

Mainlanders were expected to make up to 6 million trips abroad during the festival, according to data from China Tourism Academy and China's largest online travel agency Ctrip.

Outbound tourism spending is forecast to reach 90 billion yuan.

Of all those who booked trips through Ctrip during the holiday, 53 percent of them chose outbound visits, the agency says.

In the whole of 2015, 120 million Chinese went overseas, and spent $104.5 billion, the National Tourism Administration reports.

The Spring Festival is one of the two longest vacations in China now, and makes up a big part of the outbound tourism market. (The other big vacation is the National Day holiday).

Thailand, Japan and South Korea are the hottest destinations for travelers, followed by Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, Malaysia and Vietnam, according to Ctrip.

Duty-free shops in Japan were filled with Chinese tourists during the festival, and local businesses have even introduced the popular Chinese online payment channel, such as Alipay (Alibaba's online payment platform), and Chinese language services to cater to them.

"We saw many Chinese families carrying three to four suitcases at the airport on our way back," says Hao.