Tomb Sweeping holiday brings travelers to life

Sakura blossoms in Japan's Kyoto and Nara, and cherry blooms in South Korea's Jeju Island lured many domestic travelers, Ctrip reports. (Chinese don't need visas to visit Jeju.)

Roughly 60 percent of tourists took domestic trips.

Blossoms in Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming; Jiangxi province's Wuyuan; Fujian province's Xiamen; Shaanxi province's Xi'an; and Guilin in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region drew large numbers of tourists.

About 500,000 visits were made on the holiday's first day to 11 of Beijing's municipal parks and the city's Museum of Chinese Gardens.

The capital city's major scenic spots received 4.9 million visitors during the three-day holiday, up 6 percent year-on-year, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development reports.

Guizhou province's polychromatic tulip and rapeseed blossoms helped to attract 9.58 million visits, up 30.8 percent. Tourism income rose 32.25 percent to 4.9 billion yuan ($757 million).

Roughly 30,000 travelers a day descended upon Binhai Park in Fujian's Quanzhou city to view rapeseed flowers.

Peony blossoms in Henan province's Luoyang brought 502,000 visitors to the city's major tourism attractions on April 3, generating 10.7 million yuan in ticket sales.

University campuses with flowering landscapes were also popular with Chinese born in the 1980s and '90s.

Many signed up for individual trips to Wuhan University in Hubei province to see oriental cherry blossoms and to Xiamen University in Fujian to see ceiba blossoms, Yan says.

Domestic travelers' average per-capita spending stood at 3,000 yuan during the holiday, Ctrip says. Outbound tourists generally spent twice as much.

"Tourists are now increasingly willing to spend more for better experiences," Yan explains.

The company's high-end products generally saw a 10 percent rise in bookings compared with the same period last year.

Bookings of packages for small groups tripled. International five-star hotels were the top choice of individual travelers, Yan says.

Indeed, while the flowers will be largely gone by spring's final holiday, May Day, China's travelers have come out of hibernation.