There are still two weeks to go before the Qingming Festival, and the travel demand for flower viewing during the small and long holidays has begun to be put on the agenda. On March 21, the first day of the Qingming holiday (April 4), train tickets went on sale one after another. Qunar data shows that on the first day of sales, high-speed rail tickets to Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, Xi'an and other cities were in short supply, and there was no large-scale sell-out. Passenger flow is more frequent in the 2-hour high-speed rail circle.
According to Ctrip's statistics, during the Qingming holiday, the search popularity of domestic hotels exceeded that of the same period in 2019 and 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 67%, and the search popularity of air tickets increased by 80% year-on-year. As of March 20, the most popular destinations for domestic travel bookings for the Qingming Festival are: Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, Wuhan and Chongqing. As flower-viewing festivals begin to be held in various places, up to now, the number of bookings for flower-viewing scenic spots during the Qingming Festival has increased by more than 6 times year-on-year.
The number of bookings at Tianshui Hotel has hit a new high in a single week in the past three years
Tianshui City, which has recently been out of the circle due to spicy hot fire, continues to be "hot and hot" during the Qingming Festival. Tongcheng travel data shows that as of March 20, the search popularity of Tianshui tourism on the platform in the past week has increased by 616% compared with last week, and the hotel bookings in the past week have increased by 76% year-on-year, setting a new high in single-week hotel bookings in the past three years. Many tourists choose to transit to Tianshui through Lanzhou, and some trains from Chengdu to Lanzhou and Xi'an to Lanzhou were sold out on April 3, and some trains from Lanzhou to Tianshui on April 4 were also sold out.
Ctrip data shows that the number of travel orders in Tianshui City during the holiday increased by more than 21 times compared with the same period last year, of which post-00s tourists accounted for nearly half, followed by post-80s accounted for 28%, and post-90s accounted for 18%. Tourists mainly come from Xi'an, Lanzhou, Xianyang and Beijing. At the same time, Tianshui led a number of dark horse cities and ushered in a large number of tourists during the Qingming Festival. Up to now, Tianshui, Datong, Kaifeng, Tai'an, Qinhuangdao, Jingdezhen, Huzhou, Yantai, Xuzhou, and Tianjin have been shortlisted in the top 10 dark horse tourist destinations for the Qingming Festival with a year-on-year increase of more than 5 times in order volume.
Tianshui (Gansu) Malatang stall. Xinhua photo
For college students, special food is an important factor in the attractiveness of a city, and more than 60% of the travel experiences shared by college students on the Qunar platform are related to "eating" - and even become their main reason for traveling. The recent explosion of Tianshui Malatang, the keyword search volume increased by more than 10 times compared with last week. Zibo, which exploded last year, is also still popular.
Xiao Peng, a researcher at Qunar Big Data Research Institute, said: "Passenger structure is closely related to price. Although the spending power of college students is not as high as that of working people and parent-child travel groups, they can rely on their unique creativity and interest to make a food, an IP, and a city out of the circle on social media, thereby driving tourism development. For local cultural tourism, creating characteristic IP, caring for the travel needs of tourists, and impressing tourists with sincerity has the possibility of becoming popular. ”
The average price of air tickets decreased by 12% year-on-year, and fake passengers traveled abroad and long-haul travel
Unlike last year's single-day holiday, this year's Qingming holiday has been "spelled" into a three-day holiday. For this reason, many fake customers who "take three days off and eight days off" choose long-term travel and outbound travel during the Qingming Festival. Nandu reporter learned from the flight steward that the average daily domestic air ticket orders during the Qingming holiday in 2024 will increase by 90% year-on-year in 2023 and 190% year-on-year in 2019. The average price of domestic air tickets (economy class) during the holiday was 660 yuan, a decrease of 12% compared with 2023. The average price of international air tickets (economy class) is 2,230 yuan, down 20% year-on-year from 2023 and 5% from 2019.
Ctrip's air ticket data shows that the domestic round-trip air ticket orders of "please take three days off and eight days off" increased by more than 30% compared with the same period in 2019, of which 7 adults chose to travel in the domestic part of the holiday, and 30% chose to travel abroad, and the age of the users who traveled on the holiday was concentrated in the 90s and 80s, accounting for 27% and 26% respectively. Users of outbound travel love to go to Japan, Thailand and Singapore during the Qingming Festival, while people in China prefer to travel to Hainan, Yunnan and Sichuan.
Tuniu's latest air ticket booking data shows that the popularity of air ticket bookings in traditional popular tourist cities has increased significantly, with routes such as Beijing-Guangzhou, Beijing-Chongqing-Shanghai-Beijing, Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Kunming, Chengdu-Sanya, Kunming-Beijing, Chengdu-Shanghai, Chongqing-Beijing, and Changsha-Beijing ranking among the most popular.
According to the statistics of the Qunar platform, on April 4, Beijing-Xi'an, Shanghai-Shenzhen, Guangzhou-Xiamen, Hangzhou-Jinan, Chengdu-Kunming, Wuhan-Chongqing, Changsha-Nanjing all have air tickets of about 400 yuan on sale, the price is lower than that of high-speed rail, and some routes are even high-quality moments around 9 o'clock in the morning.
Domestic self-driving travel orders increased by 240%, and the average cost of a single unit was saved by more than 40%.
With the characteristics of flexibility, convenience and group travel, self-driving tours during the Qingming Festival continue to be the first choice for holiday travel. According to Ctrip's car rental data, the number of domestic car rental self-driving orders during the Qingming Festival in 2024 increased by 240% year-on-year, and the number of overseas car rental self-driving orders increased by 65% year-on-year.
From the perspective of the classification of people who rent cars and drive, 35% of the orders during the Qingming Festival are parent-child travel. In terms of consumption, the average cost of each order during this year's Qingming Festival is 819 yuan, which is more than 40% less than the average cost of last year. The average rental period for domestic self-driving bookings is 2.8 days, with 82% of self-driving bookings being within 3 days and 16% of bookings being 4-7 days.
Due to reasons such as spelling and vacation, cost-effective and other reasons, overseas car rental and self-driving are also very popular during the Qingming Festival. The average rental term of overseas self-driving is 5.7 days, and short-term rental orders are growing rapidly, with a lease term of 1-3 days, and overseas orders have increased by 160% year-on-year in 23 years. Japan, Thailand, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Italy, Malaysia, France, and Turkey are the top 10 destinations. During the Qingming Festival, car rental bookings in Japan, the number one self-driving destination, increased by 134% year-on-year, and Turkey, which had the highest increase, increased by 850% year-on-year.
Written by: Nandu reporter Fu Xiaoling