Vacations following the holiday

A record number of Chinese are traveling after the Spring Festival peak to cash in on huge discounts and avoid massive crowds. Yang Feiyue reports.

Spring Festival is officially a Golden Week. But more Chinese than ever are discovering the silver lining to traveling after the holiday.

Shrewd tourists are using their paid vacation time following the seven-day holiday to enjoy lower prices for quality experiences.

China's biggest online travel agency, Ctrip, reports this year marks the briskest post-holiday travel to date.

Bookings to many tourism hot spots, such as Hainan's Sanya, Zhejiang province's Hangzhou, and Vietnam, Indonesia and Europe, increased more than 40 percent compared with last year, the company's report shows.

Flight and hotel costs have plunged across the board following the festival that ended on Feb 2.

Young people with paid vacation and retirees drive the phenomenon.

Prices for hotels in tourism hot spots, including Sanya, Fujian province's Xiamen and Yunnan province's Lijiang, are generally a third less from mid- to late February, compared with the holiday season.

The cost of flights to Thailand and Japan dropped 40 percent following Spring Festival, says Li Mengran, publicity officer of Beijing-based outbound-travel operator Utour International Travel Service Co.

Utour reports a roughly 10 percent annual growth in the number of people who traveled after the holiday.

"We found Chinese tourists are increasingly adept at choosing times for bargain travel," Li says.

Workers who use their paid vacation favor relatively nearby overseas getaways, such as Thailand, Japan and South Korea. Retirees are prone to such long-haul destinations as the United States and Europe, Li says.

A five-day Thailand trip cost about 10,000 yuan ($1,500) during the festival. The price now is half that.

"The low season (of Chinese travel to Thailand) may last until May," Li says.

Meng Wei used his paid vacation to take his mother on a seven-day trip to Taiwan starting on Feb 6.

"I saw the price was almost 40 percent off if I traveled after the festival," the Beijing resident says.

"And I knew tourism attractions would be much less crowded."

He paid 13,000 yuan in total for both of them, compared with 20,000 yuan if they'd made the journey during the peak period.

A total of 6.15 million people traveled outside the Chinese mainland during the holiday, up 7 percent over the same period of last year, the China National Tourism Administration reports.

They spent 423.3 billion yuan, a nearly 16 percent year-on-year increase.

"Outbound travel after the holiday is cheaper yet quality isn't compromised," Beijing-based China Youth Travel Service Co spokesman Xu Xiaolei says.

Roughly 90 percent of February trips to Japan, South Korea, Europe, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia had been booked by Feb 8, the agency reports.

Some sold out.

Most trips to Japan and South Korea are now 30 percent cheaper on Aoyou.com, an online-booking website under China Youth Travel Service. Southeast Asia packages are roughly half price.

Those to the US, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand average about 20 percent off.

Warm weather and discounts of about 20-30 percent make southern Europe popular among long-haul travelers.

Ctrip's six-day trips to Japan's Hokkaido, Tokyo and Osaka have all dropped by 2,000 yuan since the holiday.

Japan is ideal between late February and mid-March, Li says.

"Japan visits boom in late March when the sakura are in full bloom. But visitors can still experience early blossoms in warmer parts of the country before the rush."

Most Cambodia getaways are around 2,000-3,000 yuan.

Ctrip's US and Europe tours, which cost more than 10,000 yuan during the festival, are about 5,000-8,000 yuan through March and April.

Weeklong visits to Australia are 7,000 yuan, while eight-day trips to New Zealand dropped from 30,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan.

Domestic tours have also plummeted in price.

Agencies named Hainan, Yunnan, Fujian, Guangdong, Sichuan and Hunan provinces, and Beijing and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region as the best bargains for post-holiday travels.

They're also particularly pleasant in early spring.

Five-day packages to Sanya - the most popular destination - dropped from 10,000-20,000 yuan to just over 2,000.

Five days in Guangxi's Weizhou Island from Shanghai costs 1,500 yuan, while six-day trips to Yunnan from Shanghai can be booked for 2,500 yuan.

Skiers can find routes to Jilin province's Changbai Mountains for a little more than 2,000 yuan.

Indeed, it seems the low period following the Spring Festival travel peak is turning into a smaller yet growing rush following the world's largest annual human migration.

Contact the writer at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn

From left: Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Lijiang in Yunnan province and Japan are among the top destinations for Chinese tourists traveling after the Spring Festival peak. Photos Provided To China Daily