840 million trips! The holiday economy unlocks the energy of consumption across the entire chain | Beijing News Editorial

▲On April 4, tourists visit the National Botanical Garden (North Garden) to enjoy the spring scenery during the holiday. Xinhua Daily News reporter Xue Jun photo

This year’s Qingming holiday has officially wrapped up. According to the Ministry of Transport, during the Qingming holiday (April 4 to 6), the estimated total volume of cross-regional travel by people across society is 845.38M person-trips, or 281.79M person-trips per day on average, up 6% year over year. On the first day, passenger volumes for rail, road, and civil aviation all exceeded the historical同期 peak for the same period. In addition, this year, many parts of the country have arranged spring breaks for primary and middle school students so that they run continuously with the Qingming holiday, boosting outbound travel for parent-child trips and family travel. This has formed a full-chain consumption scenario spanning transportation services, cultural and tourism accommodations, catering and retail, and energy refueling.

With spring in full view and bright scenery everywhere, the Qingming mini-holiday is not only a traditional time for commemorating ancestors and making offerings, but also a great opportunity to go sightseeing and enjoy the spring outdoors. During this Qingming holiday, the movement of more than 800 million person-trips across regions not only demonstrates the public’s enthusiasm for travel through practical actions, but also once again confirms the significant pull that “holiday economy” exerts on expanding domestic demand and promoting consumption.

Compared with previous years, one standout change in this year’s Qingming holiday is that, in multiple places, spring break has been scheduled for April 1 to 3, connected with the Qingming holiday, creating a six-day continuous break.

This not only effectively expands people’s travel radius—for example, the share of travelers traveling across provinces increased by 12 percentage points compared with the same period last year—but also significantly increases society’s willingness to travel. Data show that, starting from April 1, the size of the spring-break travel group in spring-break areas increased by 41% compared with the same period last year. To a certain extent, this indicates that a reasonable holiday arrangement itself is also an important policy tool for stimulating consumption and keeping domestic demand flowing.

Of course, the booming consumption during the holiday also relies on the proactive efforts by localities in creating experiences and providing supporting services. For instance, in Beijing, in addition to releasing a flower-viewing map, it has opened flower-sea boardwalks, launched dedicated flower-viewing shuttle lines, and also built distinctive cycling routes and sports events, enriching tourists’ and residents’ travel experiences. Over the three holiday days, Beijing received 10.02M tourists, up 4.4%; it generated tourism spending of 12.34 billion yuan, up 7.4%.

Beyond traditional flower viewing and leisure formats, cultural and entertainment activities such as concerts and music festivals have also become important engines driving consumption. For example, from April 3 to 5, Jay Chou’s concert in Hangzhou boosted hotel booking volume in the surrounding area by about 1.6 times, and consumption in areas such as dining, transportation, and shopping clearly increased. In addition, basketball and football leagues held during the holiday in places such as Sichuan and Hunan also released the dividend of “traveling following the events,” and sports-event-based tourism has produced a significant pull on both foot traffic in commercial districts and consumption.

It is worth noting that this holiday is not only diversifying consumption formats and experience scenarios, but the “full-chain” characteristic of the holiday economy has become even more prominent.

For example, on the first day of the holiday, the volume of vehicle traffic on national expressways exceeded 62.67 million vehicle-trips, among which new energy vehicles accounted for more than 14 million vehicle-trips. The strong demand for self-driving trips has driven double-digit growth in consumption in scenic spots, hotels, and car rentals. At the same time, activities such as returning home for ancestor worship also bring “people’s energy” to rural areas, helping consumption spread from major cities to across the countryside. As rural tourism in many places becomes especially hot during the Qingming holiday, related cultural and tourism formats and scenarios have also become richer.

Moreover, the consumption boom during the holiday has even accelerated the rollout of some new technology applications. For instance, based on big data, planning travel with AI is becoming a new choice for family outings. Specifically, during the spring-break period, the number of daily active users for AI-type apps in spring-break areas increased by 21% compared with weekdays.

All in all, from transportation travel to energy replenishment, from cultural and tourism accommodations to catering and retail, from cultural and entertainment events to digital services, each link passes momentum to the next and reinforces one another, jointly forming a full-chain picture of the holiday economy.

This once again shows that the dividends released by the holiday economy have multi-layer and cross-field characteristics. At the same time, the release of diversified consumption demand also reflects the great resilience and potential of China’s consumer market.

To a large extent, the holiday consumption market provides us with an integrated window for observing social consumption vitality and demand characteristics, which offers important insight value for both market operators and decision-makers in cultural and tourism development.

For example, further optimizing holiday arrangements in accordance with local conditions, actively responding to trends in changes in consumption demand, and continuously innovating the forms of product and service supply can fully stimulate even greater consumption potential, enabling the “holiday economy” to play an even more important role in “expanding new space for domestic demand growth and better leveraging our country’s advantages as a large-scale market.”

Editor / Xu Qiuying

Proofreader / Wu Xingfa