Spring Festival holiday sees surge in visitor number, tourism revenue

The just concluded Spring Festival holiday — from Jan 28 to Feb 4 — recorded a tourism boom with both the visitor number and tourism-related revenue seeing remarkable growth.

Figures from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism released on Wednesday show that in the eight-day break, domestic tourism attractions received about 501 million visits, a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent. The tourism-related expenses were over 677 billion yuan ($93.04 billion), up 7 percent year-on-year.

Tourism destinations highlighting folk customs, traditional New Year celebrations or intangible cultural experience events such as lion dances and fish-shaped lantern shows were top choices during the holiday, the ministry said.

Also, winter tourism destinations with snow views or winter sports experience in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region and provinces in northeastern part of China such as Heilongjiang and Jilin attracted crowds of travelers over the holiday, according to the ministry.

Spring Festival was added to the UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list in December. Marking the beginning of the new year in China and falling on the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, this year's Spring Festival was marked on Jan 29.