Long holiday a boon for travel sector

"Some popular domestic self-driving routes included the ring roads of Hainan province, western Yunnan province, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and Gansu province," Shen said.

China's tourism market has entered a new stage of development in the past few years. The tourism market in smaller cities has embraced huge growth potential and travelers have shown increasingly diversified demand, said the China Tourism Academy in a report on the development of domestic tourism in 2023 and 2024.

For instance, Inner Mongolia has attracted more travelers taking self-driving tours. This summer, the number of such travelers jumped 94 percent year-on-year, ranking tops nationwide. The number of tourists who booked private tours and customized tours online surged 136 percent, said Trip.com.

A large number of visitors come from out of town and from overseas markets. Among foreign visitors, one third came from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, and 20 percent of the total came from Singapore. Melbourne, Australia also served as one of the region's top sources of foreign visitors, according to Trip.com.

Inner Mongolia's department of culture and tourism said it would beef up efforts on both the supply and demand sides to advance green, low-carbon and sustainable growth of local tourism this autumn, hoping to make the autonomous region the first choice for self-driving tours in the nation, and a top option for camping.

"Ulanqab will continue to welcome more tourists from Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, and strive to attract more visitors from the Yangtze River Delta region and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," said Hao Wenyue, director of the cultural tourism and sports bureau of Ulanqab, a city in the region.

Inner Mongolia also plans to launch more unique self-driving routes, such as driving routes that will pass by forests, grasslands, ancient sites and deserts, as well as China-Russia-Mongolia cross-border self-driving tours, the local government said.