Ctrip’s 2023 Spring Festival Travel Report: Cross-border air ticket orders have increased by more than 4 times, and Southeast Asia has become a big winner in the Spring Festival stalls

According to news on January 27, Ctrip released the “2023 Spring Festival Tourism Summary Report”. The report shows that during the Spring Festival, domestic and foreign travel orders have ushered in a three-year peak, and the overall travel orders have increased by 4 times compared with the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger.

At the same time, the overall order for outbound travel during the Spring Festival increased by 640% year-on-year, the number of overseas hotel bookings by mainland tourists increased by more than 4 times year-on-year, and the order for cross-border air tickets increased by more than 4 times. Among them, Southeast Asia, which is rich in tourism resources and hospitable, has become the big winner of the Spring Festival stalls.

According to data from the Ctrip FlightAI platform, this Spring Festival, the cities with the fastest year-on-year growth in civil aviation passenger traffic include Jiujiang, Zhuhai, Xishuangbanna, Shaoguan, Dali, Zhongwei, Zhoushan, Lijiang, Jiuzhai, and Baishan.

It is worth mentioning that after the opening of cross-border travel, Chinese overseas travel orders ushered in a significant turning point during the Spring Festival this year. According to Ctrip data, during the Spring Festival this year, cross-border air ticket orders increased by more than 4 times year-on-year. Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Chiang Mai, Manila, and Bali have become the most popular cross-border travel destinations for Chinese tourists, all of which are Southeast Asian destinations.

According to data from Ctrip, during the Spring Festival, among outbound travel air ticket orders, air ticket orders for Bali increased 30 times year-on-year, Singapore increased more than 8 times, Manila exceeded 5 times, Bangkok and Phuket exceeded 4 times, and Chiang Mai and Kuala Lumpur nearly tripled.

Over the past three years, the Spring Festival holiday trend dominated by local and surrounding bookings has reversed this year. During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit, nearly 70% of hotel reservations across provinces were made on the Ctrip platform, surpassing the 2019 Spring Festival.

During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit, the number of overseas hotel bookings by mainland tourists increased by more than four times compared with last year’s Spring Festival. Among them, among the above-mentioned popular cross-border travel destinations, hotel reservations in Bangkok have increased significantly, the number of orders for the Spring Festival has increased by more than 33 times year-on-year, and the average hotel bill has increased by about 70%. In contrast, hotel spending in some popular domestic cities has increased several times.

From the second day of the Lunar New Year, scenic spots such as Xi’an City Wall, Datang Everbright City, and Lingyin Temple began to issue traffic restriction notices. According to data from Ctrip, ticket orders for scenic spots at home and abroad during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit ushered in a three-year high. Among them, ticket bookings for major domestic scenic spots soared 3.2 times year-on-year; tickets for overseas scenic spots increased by more than 60% year-on-year. In addition to the first-tier cities, Xi’an, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Luoyang, Kaifeng and other ancient cities rich in cultural and tourism resources are among the top ten most popular cities in scenic spots due to their high ticket sales.

In addition, the Spring Festival is also the peak time for night tours. On the Ctrip platform, the number of tickets for night tour scenic spots increased by nearly three times year-on-year. Appreciating lanterns, visiting temple fairs, and watching light shows, the brilliant lights add fun to the Spring Festival. According to the search volume of the platform, Zigong·Chinese Lantern World, Xi’an City Wall New Year Lantern Festival, Shanghai 2023 Yu Garden Welcome New Year (Yu Garden Lantern Festival), Xi’an Datang Furong Garden Spring Festival Lantern Festival, Beijing Longqing Gorge Ice Lantern, Kaifeng Great Song Dynasty Martial Arts City Long Live Mountain Songdu Temple Fair Lantern Festival, Chengdu Qingbaijiang Phoenix International Lantern Festival, 2023 Shenyang Spring Festival Lantern Festival, Shenzhen Bay Area Super Lantern Festival, and Nanjing China Qinhuai Lantern Festival have become the top ten popular lantern festivals during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Rabbit.

In addition to check-in at scenic spots, Ctrip data shows that during the Spring Festival, the bookings of car rental and yacht-related tourism products in Sanya increased by more than 200% year-on-year.

During the Spring Festival, the “reunion tour” with the group is also revived. According to Ctrip’s data, orders for group tours during the Spring Festival holiday increased by 4.2 times year-on-year, with an average group size of more than 3 people, and more than 80% of the orders were inter-provincial long-distance travel.

“The popularity of Spring Festival tourism is obvious to all. Taking this as a starting point, I believe that the confidence and consumption potential of Chinese tourists will be released at an accelerated pace, and the tourism market will see a considerable recovery this year,” Shen Jiani, a senior researcher at the Strategic Research Center of Ctrip Research Institute, believes. With the gradual increase of international flights in the future and the increasing convenience of travel at home and abroad, it is expected to see an obvious market explosion during the May Day holiday this year. (one orange)