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Chinese tourists are ready for an unexpected tourist windfall after the government announced on Friday that the May Day holiday would be extended by four days.
This decision surprised more than one, as China 's previous mainland holiday plan for the year, released in December, indicated that only the 1st of May, a Wednesday, would be a holiday.
But the decision to extend the schedule of Labor Day holidays until Saturday, May 4 has left the travel industry predicting that about 150 million trips will be made to the home or abroad.
However, there is a price to pay for the "extra" leave since two Sundays – April 28 and May 5 – have now been designated as working days to make up for lost time.
The announcement also encouraged organizers to plan their trips for the new vacations, with demand likely to increase in some of the most popular destinations, both domestically and internationally, potentially raising prices for flights and hotels.
Photo: AFP
In the two hours that followed the announcement of this new holiday, Ctrip, the country's largest tourism website, saw its international ticket searches increase up to five times more than the week last.
The company said it expects an increase in travel demand in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
The main destinations for holidaymakers will be Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, the United States and Italy.
The number of ticket searches for popular domestic destinations such as Chengdu, Sanya, Hangzhou, Kunming has also increased more than seven times.
Overall, it is estimated that there will be around 150 million trips in the country and abroad during this holiday period, based on trends observed on previous three- or four-day holidays.
Another tour website, lvmama.com, told the Shanghai Youth Daily that the number of searches for visits around May 1st had increased 330% within two hours of the announcement.
He Jianmin, a professor of tourism at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said that Premier Li Keqiang had announced plans to stimulate the tourism industry year-round last and that a longer vacation would help in this regard.
"Longer holidays can boost domestic demand and allow people to enjoy life under the warm spring sun," he told Jiefang Daily.
Peng Liang, an badyst at the data research center Ctrip Travel & Tourism, said longer vacations would encourage people to travel further away from home.
"Extending the holidays will greatly boost people's willingness to travel," Peng said.
Chinese tourists travel mainly during the Lunar New Year and the so-called "Gold Week" in early October, every other day of vacation.
But this concentration can lead to overcrowding in popular destinations and put a strain on the travel system, which can help make the experience less pleasant for tourists.
"More vacations can help ease these pressures and balance the peak seasons and cold seasons of the tourism industry," said Peng.
Tracy Yang, who works for a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai, said she was now planning a family vacation for May 1, but that she had not yet chosen a destination.
"It's good to still have a long vacation so I can travel," she said. "But I am a little concerned about the theft and the prices of the hotels will increase and I hope that I will not see too many people flocking to the tourist sites."
The new provisions caused a sensation online, with reports of change attracting 480 million page views and 210,000 comments on the Weibo social media platform within six hours of the announcement.
A user who said the extended vacation would be better than a day, which would have attracted 26,000 "likes", would rather be a "boring day spent at home doing nothing".
But not everyone was happy with the new arrangements.
Another Weibo user complained that he intended to get married on April 28 on the basis of the old holiday calendar.
"With only a month to go, you tell me that April 28 is a business day, do not the state authorities play me?" he wrote.
This article was first published in South China Morning Post.
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