Tourism in China : everything is good in the Year of the Pig

The Chinese New Year is approaching. Most of the world’s major cities will celebrate this celebration. In China, this celebration is an opportunity to go with the family or to go on holiday. There will be many tourist travellers… very many !

Almost 3 billion trips planned in China

It is this time of year again, hundreds of millions of people will cross China by rail, road and air to reunite with their families in their hometown for the Lunar New Year. The authorities forecast a total of 2.99 billion trips, up 0.6% from 2018. The season runs from January 21 to March 1, with the first day of the pig’s year being February 5.

Some train lines under test

While crowds are expected to be larger than ever, this year marks several differences. On the one hand, several high-speed train routes will be tested this season for the first time.

These include the Jiangzhan and Kunchu railways, which opened in July 2018, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong high-speed service and the Hajia railway, which opened in September 2018. As in previous years, the number of trains will be increased to cope with the massive influx of passengers.

Some lines will be saturated

Some people wishing to travel have expressed their frustration on social media about the difficulty of obtaining tickets.

On the Weibo micro-blogging site, a comment was left: « I haven’t been able to get a ticket for many years, it’s very tiring. »

73 million passengers during the New Year…

The Civil Aviation Administration of China has scheduled 532,000 flights over the 40 days, 10% more than in 2018.
A total of 73 million air trips are expected to be made during this period, an increase of 12 per cent over 2018.

7 million tourists from outside China

According to a report published by Ctrip, 7 million of them will travel abroad. People from more than 100 Chinese cities had booked their travel to nearly 500 destinations in more than 90 countries and regions.

Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore are among the most popular destinations, while the Nordic countries, the United Arab Emirates and Spain have experienced the fastest growth in Chinese visitors.

New experiences for customers from China

Visiting cultural sites or going to winter sports are on the program for a large number of tourists. They are ready to enjoy high quality travel experiences. As a reminder, the simpler visa application procedure remains one of the major factors in China’s booming outbound tourism.

In 2018, 140 million Chinese people made a trip, an increase of 13.5% year-on-year, according to the Chinese Tourism Academy.

The social credit is now in effect

China will apply for the first time its « social credit » system to flights and trains.

Since May 1, people who have committed misdeeds such as unruly behaviour on planes or smoking on trains or financial malpractice have been placed on short lists, preventing them from travelling by plane and train for a year.

Although facial recognition is not new on public transport in China, the number of stations using this technology has increased from 133 to 300 over the past year.

For those who believe in it, they can check the sites to see how this funny year of the Pig will go: www.zodiaquechinois.com/annee-du-cochon/