China Golden Week is over and despite the normalization of covid-19 prevention and control measures, many Chinese are satisfied with how they spent these last 7 days of vacation.
But does this general impression reflect the numbers? Although it may seem a cliché, but “the numbers don’t lie, and they don’t care about your feelings”.
According to monitoring data from the Cultural Tourism China Data Center, the tourism market during this year’s national holiday has declined compared to the same period last year. The total number of people who travelled on railways, highways and through domestic flights across the country is estimated to be around 63.02 million, down 30.0% over the same period in 2019 and 3.1% over the same period. At Golden Week 2020.
In addition, according to other statistics, during the national holiday (1-7 October), Chinese civil aviation carried a total of 9,291,400 passengers, with an average of 1.3 million passengers per day, almost 20% fewer. Compared to 2020; nationally, the number of domestic flights was 90,663 and the daily average is 12,952 flights a day, once again 11.27% lower than in 2020.
The pandemic certainly played a key role in this decline, with a total of 682 million domestic tourists across the country in the seven days of Golden Week 2019, and domestic tourism revenue was 649.71 billion. In 2020, the country recorded 637 million domestic tourists and achieved domestic tourism revenue of 466.56 billion.
In the seven days of the Golden Week of 2021, a total of 551 million domestic tourists were received across the country and domestic tourism revenue was 389.06 billion. However, this reduction in consumption cannot be regarded as the decline in the level of consumption of the Chinese people but should be traced back to structural changes.
Now let’s turn our attention to the e-commerce side. As people in today’s China can’t live without their apps, looking at the most common apps for payments and online shopping we can get a big picture of this year’s Golden Week performance from another perspective.
Meituan released the “National Day 2021 Golden Week Consumption Trend Report”, which shows that the top 10 cities for food consumption during the National Day holiday this year are Chengdu, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Hangzhou and Changsha. Among them, Changsha is the newcomer this year.
Additionally, food-related consumer orders in Nanchang increased 128% year-on-year, the fastest growth rate among the country’s major cities. Last year, Wuhan, severely affected by the outbreak, grew 101% year-over-year.
In conclusion, this year’s Golden Week by Chinese growth standards cannot be considered a success, but certainly the decline was lower than previously expected and this thanks to the buying power of Chinese consumers.
Keep Following EGGsist Insights to discover more!
