Cut-price sites attract record number of visitors
Source: Xinhua |
October 8, 2012, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA'S "Golden Week" holiday justified its title with a rise in tourism revenue, according to National Tourism Administration statistics.
The country's 119 major scenic spots received a total of 34.25 million visitors during the eight-day holiday, up 20.96 percent from the corresponding period of last year. Tourism income surged by nearly a quarter from 2011 to 1.77 billion yuan (US$278.39 million), the administration said yesterday.
Many scenic spots attracted record volumes of visitors during the longest "Golden Week" so far, which was eight days made up of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday.
Last Tuesday, 186,000 people visited the Forbidden City, or the Palace Museum, in the heart of Beijing, the largest single-day number of visitors recorded so far.
But the holiday tour spree also gave rise to complaints among the public about unpleasantly crowded scenic spots and restaurants as well as traffic congestion. On Wednesday, thousands of vehicles jammed two mountain roads winding to and out of the Lushan Mountain scenic area in eastern China.
The week witnessed a significant increase in the number of individual road travelers because of the government policy that exempted passenger cars from road tolls during the holiday. The policy resulted in unprecedented traffic and caused heavy congestion on major expressways.
According to the Ministry of Transport, a record 80.87 million people traveled by road each day during the holiday.
Meanwhile, trains carried 60.95 million passengers, up 9.4 percent year on year, while the number of airline travelers hit 7.61 million from September 29 to Saturday.
To attract tourists, more than 150 well-known scenic spots cut their ticket prices by 30 percent on average.
The huge increase in the number of tourists, however, proved to be overwhelming at times.
In Taishan Mountain, a World Heritage site where ancient Chinese emperors used to pray, ticket booths had to be temporarily closed to curb the number of visitors.
The most worrying incident took place at Huashan Mountain in Huayin City in northwest China. Dong Liwen and his wife Wang Jiao, both from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, were stabbed by two local villagers after an argument waiting in line at a ticket office.
The country's 119 major scenic spots received a total of 34.25 million visitors during the eight-day holiday, up 20.96 percent from the corresponding period of last year. Tourism income surged by nearly a quarter from 2011 to 1.77 billion yuan (US$278.39 million), the administration said yesterday.
Many scenic spots attracted record volumes of visitors during the longest "Golden Week" so far, which was eight days made up of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday.
Last Tuesday, 186,000 people visited the Forbidden City, or the Palace Museum, in the heart of Beijing, the largest single-day number of visitors recorded so far.
But the holiday tour spree also gave rise to complaints among the public about unpleasantly crowded scenic spots and restaurants as well as traffic congestion. On Wednesday, thousands of vehicles jammed two mountain roads winding to and out of the Lushan Mountain scenic area in eastern China.
The week witnessed a significant increase in the number of individual road travelers because of the government policy that exempted passenger cars from road tolls during the holiday. The policy resulted in unprecedented traffic and caused heavy congestion on major expressways.
According to the Ministry of Transport, a record 80.87 million people traveled by road each day during the holiday.
Meanwhile, trains carried 60.95 million passengers, up 9.4 percent year on year, while the number of airline travelers hit 7.61 million from September 29 to Saturday.
To attract tourists, more than 150 well-known scenic spots cut their ticket prices by 30 percent on average.
The huge increase in the number of tourists, however, proved to be overwhelming at times.
In Taishan Mountain, a World Heritage site where ancient Chinese emperors used to pray, ticket booths had to be temporarily closed to curb the number of visitors.
The most worrying incident took place at Huashan Mountain in Huayin City in northwest China. Dong Liwen and his wife Wang Jiao, both from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, were stabbed by two local villagers after an argument waiting in line at a ticket office.
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