The blizzard in early 2008 foiled the Chinese New Year's travel plans of many people. In 2009 however, enthusiasm for tourism is noticeably running high. Almost all travel packages were fully booked 20 days before Chinese New Year.

In the past, travel packages during the Spring Festival could only be booked a maximum of 10 days in advance, but this year reservations can be made one month in advance. The boom in tourism is also due to the increased chances to travel to Taiwan, because this is the first holiday following the opening up of the Taiwan tourism market to Chinese mainland residents.

In addition, also overseas travel is looking very attractive. Although the traditional Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand travel package now only includes Singapore and Malaysia due to the events occurreing in Thailand, it still attracted many tourists. Travels to Europe are following the same trend. 80 to 90 percent of the China International Travel Service's overseas travel packages have already been booked.

To meet the demands of Spring Festival tourism, governments and tourism bureaus in all regions adopted various means to attract tourists in an attempt to stimulate consumption during the golden week holiday.

Experts noted that the lowering of domestic flight fuel surcharges, prices of oil products and domestic travel packages all contributed to the growth of the domestic tourism market. In addition, the appreciation of the renminbi also boosted the development of outbound tourism.

Wei Xiao'an, a tourism industry analyst, said at the recently held General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization that the consumption tendency of the Chinese in 2009 can be represented by the phrase, "saving big money, while spending little money freely," where "little money" refers to travel and recreational activity expenditures. Despite a sluggish economy, tourism consumption is booming.

By People's Daily Online