Livestreams prompt travel dreams

The Beijing agency then staged two livestreaming events for Hunan province and Sanya city in May. The Hunan show attracted about 1.2 million viewers and generated over 14 million yuan, while the Hainan stream brought in more than 18 million yuan.

Spring Airlines chairman Wang Yu attracted over 8 million views online when introducing the carrier's new air routes in late April.

He found the online fans largely overlap with the company's customer base.

"We really want to attract young people through livestreaming and introduce them to more fun destinations and products."

Spring Airlines has resumed over 90 percent of its domestic flights compared with last year.

Wang expects seat-occupancy rates and ticket prices will increase as domestic epidemic control continues to improve.

Internet giant Alibaba's online travel agency, Fliggy, has staged over 25,000 livestreaming sessions hosted by influencers, officials and tourism businesses since February.

Some tourism and culture authorities have begun to explore livestreaming.

Qingdao West Coast New Economic District in Shandong province has proposed establishing schools to offer online-influencer training.

The goal is to develop internet celebrities to boost the local travel and culture industry, especially rural tourism, through creative marketing.

Liang says livestreaming has ignited China's repressed travel enthusiasm, and many people have shown a strong desire to travel in the province.

China's domestic tourism income exceeded 47 billion yuan during last month's May Day holiday, which is about half of the same period last year, Ministry of Culture and Tourism data shows.

Nearly a fifth of Chinese household spending was on travel in the first three months of the year, People's Bank of China reports.

It was the fourth-largest expenditure, after education, healthcare and housing.

"We believe the Chinese economy will surely welcome a more prosperous market," Nanfang Metropolis Daily quoted Wang as saying.

Wang also called for an aviation and tourism revitalization plan to be adopted as soon as possible.

Liang says he'll pay more attention to leisure tourism.

He expects inbound and outbound tourism will fully recover after the pandemic is completely over.

Contact the writer at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn