Efforts to boost holiday spending gain traction

Tourists seen in Dunhuang,涉县新闻网头条 Gansu province, on Monday. ZHANG XIAOLIANG/FOR CHINA DAILY

As the five-day Labor Day holiday begins on Friday, local authorities across China are revving up efforts to ignite spending — issuing millions of yuan in consumption vouchers and organizing concerts and sporting events.

The push comes as China's consumption structure shifts from a goods-dominated model to one increasingly led by services, with cultural and tourism consumption emerging as a key driver of that transformation, analysts said.

The tropical island province of Hainan launched a tourism voucher campaign on Saturday, bundling airfares with hotels and scenic spots. The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region began issuing more than 3 million consumption vouchers on April 15, covering three holiday periods including Labor Day.

"Vouchers on air tickets and hotel stays lower travel costs, encourage longer trips and boost spending on dining, performances and other local experiences," said Tian Lihui, a finance professor at Nankai University.

Tourism consumption is accelerating a shift from the traditional focus on sightseeing to in-depth experiential travel, according to a report from the big data research institute of online travel platform Qunar earlier this month.

That means destinations that offer popular concerts, sporting events and cultural experiences are in a better position to attract visitors, driving growth in accommodation, ticket sales and catering, the institute noted.

The trend is already visible. Qunar data show that concerts by Taiwan rock band Mayday drove holiday hotel bookings near Beijing's National Stadium, the concert venue, up 91 percent year-on-year, making the area the second most popular commercial hub for holiday stays nationwide.

In Nansha district of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, performances by Chinese boy band Teens in Times have also pushed holiday hotel reservations up more than 1.8 fold from a year earlier.

Adding to these local efforts, school spring breaks in nearly 30 cities have been scheduled to align directly with the Labor Day holiday, creating an extended vacation window that gives domestic tourism an extra lift.

Spring breaks in Zhejiang, Hunan, Shandong, Hainan, Yunnan, Liaoning and Gansu provinces have been timed from late April to early May, extending the respite to around 10 days when combined with the holiday.

The first wave of the holiday travel rush, spanning from Tuesday to Thursday, has seen air ticket searches climb 26 percent year-on-year, with family travelers accounting for nearly half of all bookings, according to data released by online travel platform Tongcheng Travel.

An extended holiday period has also driven robust growth in outbound travel bookings, with long-haul destinations seeing the most pronounced increases, industry data showed.

Uzbekistan, Austria, Brazil, Nepal and Italy have emerged as the fastest-growing destinations for Chinese outbound travelers during the holiday, with bookings for travel products to these markets surging more than 100 percent year-on-year, according to data released by online travel platform Fliggy.

As an important barometer of consumer vitality, the travel data emerging from the holiday have not only showcased people's strong enthusiasm for travel, but also signaled that consumer confidence is steadily recovering, said Zhu Keli, founding director of the China Institute of New Economy.

Zhu said that localities could roll out more measures to boost services consumption in the coming months, providing a floor for overall consumption growth.