Seoul, Bangkok, Tokyo top 3 overseas destinations for Chinese holiday travelers

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BEIJING, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Asian cities of Seoul, Bangkok and Tokyo were the top three overseas tourist destinations for China's May Day holidaymakers, in part because they can be reached within a 5-hour flight, tourism administrator said Monday.

Other destinations like Singapore and Bali Island of Indonesia were also popular for tourists during the three-day May Day holiday ending Monday, statistics from the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) showed.

For the first time, average duration of stay for overseas holidaymakers at each destination rose above two days, the CNTA quoted data from tourism agencies as saying.

About 56 percent of the non-group tourists chose to stay more than one week abroad, 12 percentage points more than the same period last year. Their reservations ranged from performances, entrance tickets to amusement items such as underwater diving.

China has been the world's largest outbound tourist market since 2012, according to the CNTA. The number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad in 2015 increased by 19.5 percent year on year to 120 million, nearly 13 times the level in 1998.