Consumption booms during Spring Festival holiday

A boy holding a dragon-shaped lantern watches a show at a Spring Festival temple fair in Yancheng county, East China's Shandong province, Feb 12, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's consumption in catering, accommodation, tourism, retail and entertainment was heating up during this year's Spring Festival holiday from Feb 10 to Feb 17, which brought a good start to the consumer market for the Year of Loong, or Chinese Dragon.

Tourists watch a parade of penguins at the Harbin Polarpark in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, Feb 13, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Tourism:

According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 474 million domestic tourism trips were made during the holiday, an increase of 34.3 percent over the same period last year and an increase of 19 percent on a comparable basis compared with the pre-pandemic level in 2019.

Domestic tourists have spent about 632.69 billion yuan ($87.91 billion) in total, up 7.7 percent from the same holiday period in 2019.

According to the National Immigration Administration, a total of 13.52 million inbound and outbound visits were made during the holiday. The number of daily average visits was 1.69 million, a 2.8-time increase over the same holiday period last year.

People shop at Haikou International Duty-Free Shopping Complex in Haikou, South China's Hainan province, Feb 11, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Consumption:

During the first five days of the holiday, the sales of festival goods boomed. Sales of green organic food, gold, silver and jewelry from retail enterprises - monitored by the Ministry of Commerce - increased by more than 10 percent year-on-year.

According to statistics from local customs authorities of South China's Hainan province, duty-free spending was nearly 2.49 billion yuan or 8,358 yuan per capita during the holiday period.

A citizen walks past a movie poster at a cinema in Gejiu city, Southwest China's Yunnan province, Feb 15, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Box office:

As for the cinemas, the national box office during the holiday was 8.02 billion yuan, and the number of people watching movies was 163 million. The figures increased by 18.47 percent and 26.36 percent, respectively, compared with the Spring Festival holiday in 2023, both setting a new record in the same period, according to the China Film Administration.

People shop at the Beicang Cultural and Creative Block in Jiangbei district of Southwest China's Chongqing, Feb 15, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Online transactions:

China's online transactions saw a robust increase in both volume and value during the eight-day holiday, data from Chinese online payment clearing house NetsUnion Clearing Corporation, and card payment giant China UnionPay showed on Sunday.

The two platforms handled an average of 2.63 billion online transactions each day from Feb 9 to 17, up 18.6 percent from the previous Spring Festival holiday season.

The daily average transaction value involved increased 8 percent from the previous holiday period to hit 1.25 trillion yuan.

The searching volume of words such as "The Year of Loong" and "new Chinese-style" saw a rise on e-commerce platforms before the holiday. Data from JD.com showed that the sales of intangible cultural heritage goods including lanterns, New Year paintings, and embroideries jumped by 9.6 times, 175 percent and 166 percent year-on-year, respectively. The search volume of "New Year's greeting clothes" on Taobao increased by 560 percent year-on-year.

People visit a night market in the ancient city of Kashgar, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Feb 5, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]

Accommodation and catering:

Driven by demand for returning home and travelling during the holiday, the average daily sales revenue of accommodation services increased by 25.4 percent year-on-year and the average daily sales revenue of catering services grew by 31.5 percent year-on-year, said Xinhua, citing the State Taxation Administration.

Data from e-commerce platform Meituan showed that "full occupancy" became a hot word in the accommodation service industry during the holiday, with the accommodation orders of family and parent-child customers surging over 70 percent year-on-year.