BEIJING — Gardens with floral shows and cultural activities in the Chinese capital were the most favored tourist destinations during the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, which ended on Sept 21.

Beijing's 11 municipal parks and the Museum of Chinese Gardens and Landscape Architecture received 604,000 visits during the holiday, according to the Beijing Municipal Administration Center of Parks.

Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven and Beijing Zoo rank among the top three in terms of tourist reception.

The parks held 35 series of activities such as making paper lanterns, hand-painted rabbits and dough figurines to get tourists immersed in the cultural customs of the traditional holiday.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, fell on Sept 21 this year. It is usually marked by family reunions, enjoying sights of the full moon and eating mooncakes.

On Sept 21, Beijing's tourism revenue tripled that of the festival in 2019 to reach over 137 million yuan (about $21.2 million).

The Universal Beijing Resort, currently the largest in scale worldwide, opened to the public on Sept 20, which coincided with this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday. Hotel rooms in the resort were booked out a week before the holiday.

Lin Huanjie, president of the Institute for Theme Park Studies in China, said that the opening of Universal Beijing Resort would form a "magnet effect," in boosting the tourist consumption in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which covers the sectors of transport, hotel, retail, catering and commerce.

"With Beijing as the center, areas within a two-hour drive can benefit from the theme park's effect," Lin said.

The tourism revenue of 202 major scenic spots in Beijing during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday soared to over 285.4 million yuan (about $44.1 million), up 64.9 percent compared with the figure in 2019, according to Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism.

The bureau said more than 3.09 million people visited the 202 major scenic spots in Beijing.

The top ten tourist attractions or regions included Wangfujing shopping street, Nanluoguxiang Lane, known for its well-preserved quadrangle courtyards, Shichahai Lake, the Summer Palace, the Beijing Olympic Park and the Palace Museum.

More than 1.3 million tourists traveled to the countryside during the Mid-Autumn Festival, with the total revenue growing 61.3 percent to over 191.3 million yuan compared with the figure in 2019.

A total of 324,100 people chose red tourism, which refers to visiting historical sites with a modern revolutionary legacy, over the three-day holiday across the capital. Ticket sales totaled nearly 5 million yuan.