Beijing sees Mid-Autumn Festival travel peak

BEIJING, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Gardens with floral shows and cultural activities in the Chinese capital were the most favored tourist destinations during the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, which ended on Tuesday.

Beijing's 11 municipal parks and the Museum of Chinese Gardens and Landscape Architecture received 604,000 visits during the holiday, according to the Beijing Municipal Administration Center of Parks.

Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and Beijing Zoo rank among the top three in terms of tourist reception.

The parks held 35 series of activities such as making paper lanterns, hand-painted rabbits and dough figurines to get tourists immersed in the cultural customs of the traditional holiday.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, fell on Tuesday this year. It is usually marked by family reunions, enjoying sights of the full moon and eating mooncakes.

On Tuesday, Beijing's tourism revenue tripled that of the festival in 2019 to reach over 137 million yuan (about 21.2 million U.S. dollars).

The Universal Beijing Resort, currently the largest in scale worldwide, opened to the public on Monday, which coincided with this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Hotel rooms in the resort were booked out a week before the holiday.

Lin Huanjie, president of the Institute for Theme Park Studies in China, said that the opening of Universal Beijing Resort would form a "magnet effect," in boosting the tourist consumption in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which covers the sectors of transport, hotel, retail, catering and commerce.

"With Beijing as the center, areas within a two-hour drive can benefit from the theme park's effect," Lin said.