2022 Dragon Boat Festival Tourism Big Data: Beijing and Shanghai "return", TOP10 list of popular travel cities

The Dragon Boat Festival holiday is coming to an end. Major online travel companies have taken stock of various tourism data during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, as well as travel consumption trends and market performance in various regions. Data show that Shanghai's full resumption of work and production before the holiday and Beijing's epidemic prevention and control have entered the final stage, driving the gradual recovery of the national tourism market. At the same time, cross-provincial travel is accelerating, rural homestays and specialty hotels are popular, and micro-vacations and camping continue to be popular, becoming the main highlights of this year's Dragon Boat Festival tourism market. Tongcheng Travel data shows that domestic hotel bookings during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday increased by 31% compared with the "May Day" holiday. Beijing and Shanghai have also returned to the top ten popular holiday travel cities. The recovery progress of some tourism formats has exceeded the same period in 2019.

Beijing and Shanghai drive the recovery of surrounding markets, and the travel popularity in the Yangtze River Delta grows fastest

Tongcheng Travel data shows that among the 10 cities with the fastest growth in domestic travel popularity during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, cities in the Yangtze River Delta account for half. Among them, Suzhou has become the city with the fastest growth in tourism popularity during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, and Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi and Yangzhou are all on the list.

In addition to the Yangtze River Delta, with the implementation of preferential ticket policies in various places, the popularity of tourism in Jiangxi and Shandong has grown rapidly. At the end of May, Tongcheng Travel and the Jiangxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism jointly launched a series of university promotion activities, issuing free tickets to Jiangxi scenic spots to students, and launching a series of activities such as Jiangxi travel blind boxes. During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, Nanchang's tourism popularity growth ranked second in the country. Shandong Province, which resumed cross-provincial travel on May 18, announced a half-price discount for tickets to 137 scenic spots before the Dragon Boat Festival, pushing Yantai and Jinan to the popularity growth list, ranking sixth and seventh in the country respectively.

The data also shows that Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Xi'an, Chongqing, Changsha, Beijing, Guiyang, Hangzhou and Shanghai are the top ten popular cities for Dragon Boat Festival travel. Beijing and Shanghai have returned to the list. Tongcheng Research Institute believes that as this round of epidemic is brought under control, the domestic business travel and tourism markets will usher in a peak in passenger flow during the summer vacation.

Shanghai's tourism industry has reached an important turning point, with scenic spots and camping areas experiencing strong recovery momentum

On June 1, Shanghai resumed work and production in full, and scenic spots, hotels, and railway stations were opened one after another. With the full recovery of Shanghai, the demand for various types of travel, such as visiting relatives, business, and travel, has surged, driving the rapid rise in tourism popularity in major cities in the Yangtze River Delta. As Shanghai fully resumed normal production and living order, the ensuing Dragon Boat Festival holiday has become an important turning point for the recovery of Shanghai's tourism industry. According to Ctrip data, starting from June 1, more than 40 local scenic spots in Shanghai were opened on the platform first, and transaction orders have been resumed on the platform. In order to welcome the orderly resumption of work in Shanghai's tourism industry, Ctrip has specially launched the "Revisit Shanghai Guide", which covers the opening information and preferential policies of Shanghai scenic spots, and promotes local resort hotels in Shanghai, treasure hunting camping, cultural and museum exhibition halls and other local trendy and interesting ways of playing, and provides users with recovery energy packages including hotel weekend coupons.

According to Ctrip data, on the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, more than 40 scenic spots in Shanghai that had resumed operations sold more than 40,000 tickets in total, equivalent to 28 tickets sold per minute. The event was exposed to 100 million people on that day, and the number of ticket searches exceeded 1.7 million. Among them, the page views of Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park increased by 1884% month-on-month.

At 10 a.m. on June 4, all tickets to Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park were sold out within 2 seconds of going on sale. The average daily ticket booking volume of Shanghai Happy Valley during the Dragon Boat Festival increased by more than 7 times compared with the average daily ticket volume in March. Judging from the admission situation in the first two days of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the top 10 scenic spots were mainly zoos and forest parks. The landmark Oriental Pearl Tower is also a popular check-in spot.

The popularity of homestay camping continues to rise, and the demand for parent-child travel is strong

Driven by effective epidemic prevention and control and various favorable policies before the festival, cross-city and cross-provincial travel across the country has become more active than during the Qingming and May Day holidays. In particular, searches for personalized accommodation options such as homestays and camping have continued to increase, and parent-child travel has become a popular theme for Dragon Boat Festival travel.

According to Ctrip camping data, on the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival, non-province camping travel orders accounted for 8%, which was basically the same as May Day and 6% higher than Qingming Festival. The five northwestern provinces (Shaanxi Province, Gansu Province, Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region) are popular tourist destinations for the Dragon Boat Festival. The number of orders increased by 100% compared with the first day of the May Day holiday, and the growth rate was the same as the domestic market; it increased by 200% compared with the first day of the Qingming Festival, and the growth rate exceeded the domestic market by 50%.

However, city tours are still the mainstream of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday tourism consumption market. Tongcheng Travel data shows that during this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the attention to homestays and camping around the city continued to heat up, with homestay search popularity rising by 24% month-on-month and camping search popularity rising by 54% month-on-month. Campsites and boutique homestays in the suburbs of the city have launched "accommodation + experience" products, combining personalized accommodation with fashionable ways of playing such as frisbees and open-air movies, or traditional homestays such as making rice dumplings and sachets, giving people a richer surrounding travel experience. In addition to homestays and camping, audio-visual rooms, family rooms, and theme hotels are also popular accommodation keywords that people pay attention to during the holidays.

According to data from Tongcheng Travel, the top five popular scenic spots during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday are theme parks, zoos and botanical gardens, water parks, museums and natural scenery, among which typical parent-child tourists account for the majority of trips to scenic spots.

As the most popular scenic spots during the Dragon Boat Festival this year, the most popular theme parks in China during the holiday were Guangzhou Chimelong Paradise, Huayi Brothers Movie Park and Daya Bay Star Heights Dream Park. It is worth noting that although Shanghai Disneyland and Beijing Universal Studios have not yet resumed operations, they still attract the attention of tourists from all over the country. The search popularity of the two scenic spots ranks high among domestic theme parks.

Zoos and botanical gardens with outdoor scenes are the best choice for parents to take their children out for a walk. According to Tongcheng Travel data, Badaling Wildlife World, Beijing Wildlife Park and Wuhan Jiufeng Forest Zoo are the most popular zoos and botanical gardens during the Dragon Boat Festival. With the arrival of summer, the temperature has generally risen across the country, and water parks in various places have also become a popular choice for people to travel and play. The most popular water parks during the Dragon Boat Festival are Guangzhou Chimelong Water Park, Chongqing Sunac Water Park and Chengdu Guose Tianxiang Phase II Water Park.

The average daily orders for homestays during the Dragon Boat Festival have recovered to a level higher than before the epidemic, and the popularity of specialty hotels continues to rise

Ctrip data shows that in the two days before the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the average daily order volume of homestays on the Ctrip platform was nearly 10% higher than the same period in 2019. Compared with the first two days of this year's Qingming Festival, the average daily order volume of homestays increased by 57%. Even compared with this year's May Day holiday, it still has a slight lead.

During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the hotel packages and special hotel products on the Ctrip platform continued to maintain a significant growth momentum. Among them, the operating indicators of hotel packages, including room nights and transaction volume, were better than this year's Qingming and May Day holidays. In terms of special hotel products, special hotel products including e-sports rooms, audio-visual rooms, and parent-child rooms have achieved good performance in terms of city coverage and order growth. Ctrip data shows that on the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, the transaction volume of e-sports rooms on the Ctrip platform increased by nearly 60% compared with the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday last year.

Looking at the most popular provinces for homestay bookings, Guangdong Province’s share of homestay nights increased by nearly 14% compared to the same period last year. Among the top five most popular provinces for homestay bookings, three are concentrated in the southeast coastal areas.