Tourism rides high on Chinese Valentine's Day

Upcoming Chinese Valentine's Day, which falls this Friday, will turn out to be a money-spinner for the hospitality and tourism sector in the country, as The Paper reported on Friday, citing data from two major online travel agencies, which also showed that those born after 1995 were driving the festival consumption.

According to Ctrip, hotel bookings over the period linked with the traditional romantic festival, or Qixi Festival, increased 200 percent compared with a year earlier, while nearly half of the reservations came from those in their early 20s, who preferred hotels rated high on social media.

Couples in first-tier cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, showed a stronger desire to celebrate the festival, and Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Suzhou, Tianjin and Wuhan were among the top 10. Noticeably, 60 percent of hotel bookings were made by women.

In the traveling front, the post-1995 generation also posted an upward streak in consumption this year, though those born in 1980s accounted for 41 percent of the total and those in their late 20s took up 29 percent, Tuniu's data revealed.

The online travel services provider predicted that the week before the festival may see a bigger lift in the consumption by the post-1995, given the group's random spending habit.

Major traveling consumers were from first- and second-tier cities, including Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Chengdu, Shenyang and Hangzhou, whereas orders from third and fourth cities with higher income, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province, for instance, posted a significant growth as well.

In addition to popular outbound destination such as London, Prague, Kyoto, Paris and Madrid, islands with free-visa or landing-visa policy for Chinese tourists were welcome by young couples, such as Maldives, Phuket, Fiji and Bali, said Tuniu.