Economy

China returns to normal after travel spending spree

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-10-08 21:28

BEIJING -- As the seven-day National Day holidays ended Thursday and millions of visitors returned home from traveling, several tourist attractions reported a double-digit rise in tourist revenues.

The Tibet autonomous region witnessed an influx of more than 343,000 visitors and revenue of 132 million yuan (US$19.8 million) during the National Day holidays, which run from October 1 to 7, a gain of 27.5 percent and 30 percent year on year respectively, according to the region's tourism bureau statistics.

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Traditional tourist attractions in Tibet such as the Potala Palace are still popular. There were also some new travel patterns noticed among tourists. For example, many city dwellers chose to travel to the countryside and stay for a couple of days, said Wang Songping, deputy chief of the bureau.

The Region's neighbor Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China also saw a year-on-year jump of 68 percent in the number of domestic visitors to 2.18 million this year, according to Xinjiang tourism bureau statistics.

Xinjiang's tourist revenue from domestic visitors was 1.18 billion yuan, up by 80 percent from the same period last year.

More than 13 million people visited central China's Hubei Province and spent 4.89 billion yuan, up by 31 percent and 35 percent compared with the same period last year, a provincial tourism bureau spokesman said.

Good transportation facilities, such as the high-speed rail, and an increase in local accommodations have greatly contributed to the booming tourism in Hubei, the spokesman said.