City holidaymakers prefer ‘staycation’ amid COVID curbs
Print Edition
THE “staycation” trend in China will dominate the upcoming three-day New Year holiday with the Chinese responding to the government’s call to avoid unnecessary trips outside their hometowns to curb the spread of COVID-19, travel operators said.
Almost all hot spring hotels in Shanghai have been booked for New Year’s Eve and January 1, with some rooms left for January 2.
Shanghai resident Ma Ruiting was among those who missed out for waiting too long to make a booking.
“I decided not to travel to other cities during the holiday and checked local hotels almost three weeks ago,” Ma told Shanghai Daily.
“I love hot springs and used to visit cities in the Yangtze River Delta region during the holiday. However, when I started looking for an option in Shanghai, I found there were no rooms available for New Year’s Eve, even when I dropped the idea of a room with a private hot spring.
“Now, I am checking luxury hotels with a nice view of the Huangpu River as an alternative. All in all, a holiday needs a sense of ritual.”
Bookings made in December involving travel in the city or nearby provinces or municipalities for the New Year holiday accounted for more than 50 percent of all orders, Shanghai-based online travel operator Trip.com said.
Among them, the bookings for hot spring attractions soared 40 percent from the same period last year. Hot spring trips are the No. 1 choice for “staycationers,” according to the travel platform.
Hotel bookings near hot spring attractions also surged 160 percent from the same period last year in December, it said.
Meanwhile, there has been a notable increase in the booking of amusement parks, at 94 percent, compared with the same period last year. Among them, 46 percent of the bookings were from “staycationers,” Trip.com said.
Online travel operator Tuniu.com said about 49 percent of tour products booked for the holiday involved travel within or near people’s home cities.
“Small-scale and more diversified celebration options are the trend for this year’s New Year holiday tourism,” said Zhou Weihong, deputy general manager of Shanghai Spring Tour.
Micro walking tours, sports themes, double-decker sightseeing buses, industrial and ecological attractions and educational trips, all enrich the travel options and cater to the diverse demands of “staycationers,” she said.
Many local shutterbugs prefer to celebrate the New Year by capturing the sunrise on the Bund on January 1. Museum tours, double-decker sightseeing bus tours, and walking tours along the Suzhou Creek and Huangpu River will be held during the holiday.
As Shanghai’s interprovincial group tours have resumed after the last medium-risk residential complex in the Pudong New Area was downgraded to low risk this week, more than 1,200 travelers will celebrate the holiday in Changbai Mountains in the southeast of Jilin Province between December 30 and January 1, the travel agency said.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
