The arrival of the New Year's Day holiday in 2024 has ignited consumers' enthusiasm for travel and stimulated the vitality of the tourism market. According to the "2024 New Year's Day and New Year's Eve Travel Report" released by Ctrip, the number of domestic New Year's Eve travel orders increased by 168% year-on-year, and the number of outbound travel orders increased by 388%.
According to the report, the overall number of travel orders during the New Year's Day holiday in Wuhan increased by 144% year-on-year; the most popular destinations for Wuhan residents to travel on New Year's Day are: Changsha, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing; the top five tourist source cities for the New Year's Day holiday in Wuhan are: Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Shenzhen; the number of outbound travel orders for Wuhan residents on New Year's Day increased by 359% year-on-year; and the favorite destinations for Wuhan residents to travel on New Year's Day are: Hong Kong, China, Japan, Thailand, Macao, Malaysia, etc.
Ctrip Research Institute believes that holiday tourism is still a rigid need for residents. As the beginning of tourism consumption in 2024, various forms of New Year's Eve activities and consumption promotion policies launched in various places during the New Year's Day holiday will continue to drive the development of the tourism economy and make a good start for the market in the new year.
In terms of transportation, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the number of flights nationwide during the New Year's Day holiday in 2024 is expected to reach 49,000, an increase of about 85.5% over the same period in 2023 and an increase of about 2.7% over the same period in 2019. According to Ctrip data, domestic air ticket bookings for the New Year's Day holiday increased by 44% month-on-month, and the average air ticket price per person is 95% of that of the 2023 New Year's Day holiday.
The new IP of cultural tourism creates a new tourism experience, and the cultural tourism activities of the destination are "hot".
Starting the new year with tourism has increasingly become an indispensable ritual in people's lives. According to the report, the top 20 popular tourist destinations for New Year's Day and New Year's Eve in 2024 are: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Xi'an, Changsha, Tianjin, Harbin, Zhengzhou, Jinan, Suzhou, Qingdao, Shenyang, Hefei and Kunming.
This year's New Year's Day Tianjin ranking has improved a lot compared with last year, thanks to the launch of nearly 200 cultural and tourism activities in Tianjin this winter, including New Year's Eve light show, happy ice and snow festival, New Year's concert, food carnival, New Year lantern exhibition, intangible cultural heritage exhibition, New Year's market and other forms. Tianjin's unremitting efforts in developing cultural tourism have also won the hearts of tourists, with Ctrip data showing that the number of travel orders in Tianjin on New Year's Day this year increased by 156% year-on-year.
This year, Harbin, which "won the hemp" with its ice and snow tours, continued to maintain superior results during the New Year's Day holiday. Harbin Ice and Snow World, which is full of thousands of people, directly announced the suspension of ticket sales on the second day of New Year's Day. According to the report, 75% of Harbin's non-local customers on New Year's Day are mainly from Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, and the number of travel orders for the three-day holiday has increased by 158% year-on-year.
In addition, the popularity of niche destinations with few people in Jingmei is still hot, and the top ten dark horse destinations on New Year's Day are: Zibo (up 1628%), Zhenjiang (up 1568%), Jiaxing (1380%), Shaoxing (1333%), Weihai (1281%), Deyang (1250%), Weifang (1081%), Jingdezhen (1037%), Tai'an (795%), and Changzhou (775%).
The concert economy has brought fire to some niche destinations, such as Ctrip and Yibin jointly held the "Ctrip Travel Time Journey 2024 Yibin Stars New Year's Eve Concert", inviting powerful singers such as powerful singer Sun Nan, ageless male god Lin Zhiying, and rock godfather Zheng Jun. Through the new model of cultural and tourism integration of "performing arts + tourism", it will attract traffic to Yibin's cultural tourism industry and lead the local cultural tourism consumption during the New Year's Day and Spring Festival holidays. According to the data, on the first day of the New Year's Day holiday, the number of online tourists in Yibin increased by 184.6% year-on-year in 2019, and the number of hotel bookings increased by 441.3% year-on-year in 2019.
Pictures of the 2024 Yibin Stars New Year's Eve Concert
Featured theme rooms add atmosphere to the festival "Walking Baby" and "Furry Child" hotel bookings doubled
During the New Year's Day holiday, there are not a few tourists who choose to "lie down and go to the ice" for leisure. According to the report, the number of domestic hotel bookings on New Year's Day increased by 177% year-on-year. Especially for parent-child families, wouldn't it be nice to choose a feng shui treasure to lie down and "walk the baby". During the New Year's Day holiday, orders for parent-child rooms on Ctrip's platform increased by 131% year-on-year.
In addition to "walking the baby", there are many young people who choose to yo their "hairy children", and more and more tourists hope to take the "hairy children" to see the scenery together during the journey. According to the report, the number of pet-friendly hotel bookings on New Year's Day in 2024 increased by 120% year-on-year, and the main customer groups are concentrated in the post-00s and post-95s.
In addition, hotels with special themes can "stand out" in the competitive market of holiday variety, with a 50% increase in bookings for hot spring hotels on New Year's Day and a 102% increase in bookings for Ctrip's themed rooms.
New Year's Day self-driving tours increased by 1.5 times year-on-year Dark Horse destinations increased by 7 times compared with last year
Self-driving tours during the 2024 New Year's Day holiday are still popular. In terms of highways, the Ministry of Transport expects that during the New Year's Day holiday in 2024, the national highway traffic will increase significantly year-on-year, with an average daily traffic of about 35.3 million vehicles, an increase of about 9% over weekdays. Ctrip data shows that the number of car rental self-driving orders on New Year's Day increased by nearly 1.5 times year-on-year, and more than 3 percent of self-driving users travel for 3-5 days.
Among them, Sanya, Chengdu and Haikou ranked among the top three popular cities for self-driving tourism on New Year's Day, while Weihai became a dark horse destination for New Year's Day tourism this year, with a year-on-year increase of more than 7 times. Self-driving travel on New Year's Day is mainly accompanied by families and friends, and in the choice of models, commercial vehicles and SUV models are more favored. At the same time, the number of bookings for new energy vehicles, which are more popular among young people, has doubled compared to last year.
It is worth mentioning that with the opening of the Hainan Island Tourist Highway running through 12 cities and counties and 1 national development zone, the popularity of self-driving tours in Hainan has increased again. According to Ctrip data, car rental orders in Sanya and Haikou on New Year's Day increased by more than 50% month-on-month, and nearly ninety percent of car rental and self-driving travel orders came from tourists from other places, among which Beijing and Shanghai accounted for a significant proportion of customers.
Private customization goes to the public, and cruise tours are back on the wish list
With the growing demand for personalized, customized travel, more and more tourists are willing to hire professional customizers to design a trip for their precious vacation. According to the report, the orders for customized tours during this year's New Year's Day holiday increased by 290% year-on-year, an increase of 25% compared with New Year's Day in 2019, and the average cost of a customized tour was about 16,700 yuan, with an average average cost of about 3,200 yuan, an increase of 12% year-on-year.
The most popular domestic destinations for custom tourists on New Year's Day this year are Harbin, Sanya, Beijing, Lijiang and Xishuangbanna, while outbound destinations are Tokyo, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore and Bali.
The highest proportion of customized users on New Year's Day travel is 30-35 years old, followed by 25-30 years old, and the post-90s generation has become the main force of customized travel; nearly 25% of users are traveling with babies, and one of every four groups of orders is a parent-child family; in addition, orders for traveling with the elderly account for 14%.
Interestingly, it can be customized from heaven to earth. During the New Year's Day holiday, the farthest users planned to go to Buenos Aires for New Year's Eve, and the earliest users booked this New Year's Day itinerary in April 2022.
In addition, as major cruise ships begin to restart routes from China, this year's New Year's Day holiday, "long-lost" cruise tours have also entered people's wish lists. According to the report, the number of cruise bookings during the New Year's Day holiday increased by 231% month-on-month, and the tickets for the first voyage of the first large domestic cruise ship "Aida Modu" on New Year's Day were sold out on the Ctrip platform one and a half months in advance.
On New Year's Day, it is expected that the average daily number of inbound and outbound passengers will increase by more than 5 times year-on-year, and the post-90s generation will account for 40%.
According to the forecast of the National Immigration Administration, the average daily number of inbound and outbound passengers at ports across the country during the New Year's Day will reach 1.56 million, an increase of more than 5 times compared with the New Year's Day holiday in 2023 and 90% of the same period in 2019.
According to Ctrip data, the number of outbound travel orders in the mainland during the New Year's Day period increased nearly 4 times year-on-year, the number of outbound air ticket bookings increased by 11% month-on-month and 265% year-on-year, and the average unit price of air tickets was nearly 60% of that during the 2023 New Year's Day holiday.
According to the report, the most popular destinations for outbound travel during the New Year's Day are: Hong Kong, China, Japan, Thailand, Macau, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, and the main groups of travel are the post-90s, post-80s and post-70s, accounting for 40%, 30% and 14% respectively, and parent-child users account for 27%. Among them, the number of orders to Hong Kong on New Year's Day increased by 603% year-on-year.
Ctrip, the world's leading travel service provider, announced that it has partnered with the Empire State Building Observation Deck in New York City to exclusively sell New Year's Day sunrise tickets, bringing the traditional Xi of Chinese New Year climbing overseas to experience with people around the world. Open to 500 slots, from February 9 to 13, visitors will have the exclusive opportunity to watch the sunrise from the iconic 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, welcoming the Year of the Dragon as a cosmopolitan city awakens.