Capital sees peak travel booking ahead of Universal Beijing Resort's opening

Beijing will become the most popular tourism destination during the Chinese traditional holiday Mid-Autumn Festival as the Universal Beijing Resort plans to officially open for visitors on Sept 20, ThePaper reported on Thursday.

The search volume for flight to Beijing surpassed 11 times in 30 minutes compare to the same period of last week as the resort announced its opening, said the online news outlet, citing the online platform Qunar.

Data from the online travel agency Lvmama showed that after the announcement, the search volume based on key words "Beijing Universal" jumped seven times from same period of last month.

Beijing has maintained its lead as the most popular tourism destination for days with its search popularity far ahead of other cities, according to the online travel booking platform Ctrip.

On Sept 6, the number of people booking travel products in Beijing during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday via Ctrip increased 8 times compared with August 20. Moreover, the average one-way passenger price in and out of Beijing was 877 yuan by Sept 6, up about 20 percent from last year, said the Ctrip.

Apart from Beijing, the airfare to other cities showed a "good price" during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.

Currently, the average airfare price booked via Qunar was just 600 yuan, the lowest price in history, said ThePaper.

Some airline ticket prices are even cheaper than train tickets, such as the airfare from Zhengzhou to Ningbo 362 yuan while the second-class fare of high-speed train ticket price is 528 yuan. The ticket price from Tianjin to Lanzhou is 393 yuan for plane and 694 yuan for train, while it is 219 yuan and 757 yuan, respectively, from Xi'an to Kunming.

As the COVID-19 epidemic situation in Chinese mainland has stabilized, some provinces announced removal of ban on cross-provincial group travelling, and some tourist attractions started to welcome tourists.

Compared with Aug 20, the order volume of cross-provincial group travel and independent travel booked via Ctrip jumped 365 percent on Sept 20, and the order volume of family trip surged 550 percent, said ThePaper.

Guiyang, Hulun Buir, Chengdu, Sanya, Urumchi, Jiuzhaigou, Hohhot, Xining, Enshi, and Huangshan are the popular destination for family trips.

The short-distance tour is still the mainstream, and the car and high-speed trains from central cities to neighboring cities and counties are in high demand, said ThePaer, citing the online travel agency Tongcheng-eLong.

In addition, many tourists are choosing to spend their Mid-Autumn Festival holidays in themed hotels this year. According to the Ctrip, the search volume of themed hotels increased 82 percent in recent days.