Flower tours accelerate recovery of China's tourism market

Flower tours have recently become a preferred choice of Chinese travelers, accelerating the recovery of China's tourism market.

Photo shows rapeseed flowers in Hanzhong city, northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. (Photo courtesy of the publicity department of  the CPC Nanzheng district committee)

As the temperature slowly climbs in spring, more and more people have made trips on weekends, and the tourism market is expected to recover rapidly, according to Yang Bo, who has been engaged in the tourism sector for nearly 10 years.

This year, the agency Yang works for rolled out over 30 travel routes for tourists looking to appreciate the beauty of flowers while launching other tourism products focusing on tourism resources. These include forest parks and ancient towns in the surrounding area of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

Photo shows blooming tulips in Xingqing Park in Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. (Chinanews.com/Li Yifan)

“To date, tourists have made 150,000 trips through our agency, and the passenger flow of some travel routes has exceeded the level seen during the same period in 2019,” Yang said.

Hanzhong, a city in Shaanxi famed for its rapeseed flowers, also picked 12 travel routes for blossom appreciation trips and released a list of 18 areas where spring blooms can be enjoyed, while southwest China’s Sichuan Province announced six flower-viewing tourist routes. Trains for “flower trips” have run in south China’s Yunnan Province for several days. A park in Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province, has held flower-themed activities such as a photo exhibition on cherry blossoms.

Photo shows a view of a park in the surrounding area of Xi’an, capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. (Chinanews.com/Li Yifan)

Data from China’s online travel giant Ctrip showed that the bookings for tourism products related to blossom appreciation skyrocketed 880 percent year on year between February and March, with provincial-level regions featuring rich flower resources such as Yunnan, east China’s Jiangsu Province and southwest China’s Xizang Autonomous Region becoming popular tourist destinations.