With less than 10 days to go before China's Dragon Boat Festival, the travel market is ushering in the peak registration period, according to the data released by Trip.com, a leading Chinese online travel agency.
The festival falls on June 14 but the holiday starts three days earlier. Compared with the long-distance travel for the seven-day May Day holiday, travelers seem to prefer to choose short and medium distances for the weekend break.
Nearly 50 percent have registered to travel within 300 kilometers of their surrounding areas, and more than 60 percent will travel within their provinces of residence, the data shows.
Beijing is the most popular destination on the list. Other cities included are:
Shanghai, East China
Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, East China
Chengdu, Sichuan province, Southwest China
Nanjing, Jiangsu province, East China
Chongqing, Southwest China
Changsha, Hunan province, Central China
Shenzhen, Guangdong province, South China
Qingdao, Shandong province, East China
Xi'an, Shaanxi province, Northwest China
Culture-themed tourism sees a 365% increase
Tourism combined with folk culture is favored by travelers. More and more people are not satisfied with the conventional tourism products, and hope to have more choices of products containing Dragon Boat Festival cultural elements and customs.
According to data from Trip.com, orders for customized and themed tours for this year's Dragon Boat Festival were even more popular than the year before the pandemic, with orders for customized tours increasing by nearly 30 percent and themed tours by 365 percent.
Xijiang Qianhu Miao village in southwestern Guizhou province, historic scenic town Wuzhen in East China's Zhejiang province and Taierzhuang Ancient Town in East China's Shandong province are all among the most popular choices this year.
In order to meet the needs of consumers for the culture theme tourism of the festival, especially parents who are keen to bring their children to experience traditional Chinese festival culture and customs, many platforms have launched a series of culture-themed camps.
At the camps, children can experience the traditional customs of making zongzi and rowing dragon boats.