Hong Kong
CNN
—
From the Great Wall to Shanghai’s waterfront Bund, China’s most famous destinations are being mobbed during the Labor Day holiday by throngs of domestic tourists who are traveling again in huge numbers after the country ended three years of strict pandemic controls.
Over 240 million holiday makers are expected to travel within or outside mainland China during the five-day break that began on Saturday, state media CCTV reported Monday, an increase of more than 20% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Beijing received nearly two million tourists on the first day of the holiday, double the number from last year, according to the Beijing Cultural and Tourism Department.
In Shanghai, over seven million tourists arrived in the city for the weekend, according to Shanghai Travel Data. Tickets to Shanghai Disneyland have been sold out until May 3, its website showed.
Police in the city of Xi’an, home to the famed ancient terracotta warriors, have warned tourists to stay away from a popular shopping street sandwiched between two popular heritage sites.
On Saturday, China Railway, logged a record high of 19.7 million railway trips with a predicted the figure on Sunday of 18 million trips.
The sheer size of the mass crowds traveling across the nation have baffled even local citizens.
“Why are there so many people? I can’t even get McDonald’s,” one internet user wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalence to Twitter.
Also known as the May Day holiday, the Labor Day break is one of three major annual holidays in China. The boom in tourism is likely to boost the Chinese economy, which is struggling to recover after the country abruptly ended its self-imposed Covid isolation late last year.
Growth got off to a solid start in 2023, with the economy expanding by 4.5% in the first quarter, as consumers went on a spending spree that is continuing with the current holiday.
Chinese travel booking website Trip.com reported domestic bookings alone had risen by 700% compared to last year, when restaurants and retailers were still largely shut due to the pandemic.
Accommodation was selling out this year weeks ahead of the holiday, pushing up prices, according to state media.
And there have been complaints of scalping.
Due to the high demand, according to state media, many Chinese tourists who had booked their accommodations early at advantageous prices were told to cancel their reservations for various reasons, forcing them to have to book again at higher costs.
A wide range of reasons was given, they reported, with internet users taking to popular Chinese social media sites such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu to complain about their plight.
One user said on Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, that she booked a place in Tianjin, a coastal city in northern China, for RMB1,777 ($257) for five days.
Not long after she saw online that the price had soared by almost double, she was told by the owner that her booking had been canceled because of Covid infections.
“But later that night, I went on to Meituan to check,” she wrote, referring to the online booking platform. “The place is still available.”
The situation has prompted state media and provincial law enforcement authorities to issue warnings on Weibo, the highly-censored equivalent of Twitter in China.
“The unscrupulous practice of these bed-and-breakfasts is ugly,” said an opinion piece posted on the social media platform by state media People’s Daily.
