Tickets Sold Out, Transport at Maximum Capacity as Travel Spree Continues During May Day Holidays

By Global Times

May 01, 2023 09:10 PM

People visit pit No.1 of the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, April 26, 2023. The Emperor Qinshihuang Mausoleum and Terracotta Warriors were included in the World Heritage list by UNESCO in 1987. (Xinhua/Liu Xiao)

Multiple tourist spots across China have witnessed tickets being sold out and advised visitors to reschedule their plans as number from the May Day holidays in the world’s second-largest economy continues to smash all expectations.

On Monday, authorities in Gulangyu island, the pedestrian-only island off the coast of Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, announced all the ferry tickets to the island had been sold out, suggesting tourists who have not purchased tickets to visit island on another day.

In Central China’s Wuhan city, the Yellow Crane Tower, the traditional Chinese tower also known as Huanghelou, has been at maximum receiving capacity for two days straight, roughly 40,000 people, according to its official Sina Weibo account.

Indoor venues such as museums are also seeing record numbers. At 8:30 am Monday, Ningbo Museum in East China’s Zhejiang Province said its bookings for the day had already exceeded maximum capacity, advising those who had not made reservations to reschedule or visit nearby scenic spots.

Rail trips across the nation have continued to surge after hitting a record high on Saturday, the first day of the five-day May Day holidays, when a total of 12,064 trains were in operation, facilitating 19.66 million passenger trips.

About 17.831 million passenger trips and 11,353 passenger trains were made on China’s railways on Sunday. Monday is expected to see about 16 million passenger trips and 10,815 trains in operation, China Railway announced.

Intercity transport is also busy, information from Suzhou Rail Transit showed that the maximum single-day passenger flow on Sunday for the city’s rail network has reached 2.294 million, setting a record high throughout the route’s 11 years of operation.

Chinese travelers are expected to make over 240 million trips during the five-day holiday, a growth of around 104 percent compared with 2019 – before the epidemic hit. Visits and trips will generate tourism-related revenue of over 120 billion yuan, around 83 percent of the tourism revenue earned during the same period in 2019, Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said in a recent interview with China Central Television.

The five-day May Day holidays are the first long holidays after the seven-day Spring Festival holidays in China, which was in late January. This year's May Day holidays run from April 29 to May 3.

Global Times