HONG KONG, Oct 10 (Reuters Breakingviews) - China’s lackluster Golden Week holiday this year casts a dark cloud over the economy. Domestic tourism sales during the country’s annual spend-and-travel blitz fell to $40 billion, less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Wealthier regions might get a welcome spending boost from shoppers that stayed put, but the sector drives nearly 30% of Chinese consumption.
The weeklong National Day holiday, which falls every year on Oct. 1 to mark the founding of Communist China, is the most popular holiday for Chinese consumers and travelers. Before the pandemic, domestic tourists splurged some 650 billion yuan ($91 billion) during the 2019 Golden Week – over a quarter more than during the Chinese New Year festival.
This year’s dreary figures are not surprising. Beijing’s draconian zero-Covid measures have been scaring off domestic tourists. An August outbreak in the tropical island of Hainan, the country’s answer to Hawaii, resulted in some 80,000 visitors stranded. Last week, Xishuangbanna, a popular Chinese destination bordering Laos and Myanmar, went into sudden lockdown after 27 Covid-19 cases were found. Videos of armed local officials and police preventing travellers from boarding their planes went viral. Overall, domestic trips were just 422 million during Golden Week, down 18% from last year.
Instead, residents opted to spend close to home. Data from China’s largest online travel agency Trip.com (9961.HK) showed short-distance local trips made up 65% of the tourism market during the first seven days of October, with per capita spending up 30% year on year. That benefits wealthier metropolises with their own attractions to offer. Shanghai’s Haichang Ocean Park, for example, saw visitors rise 15% year on year, recovering to 90% of 2019’s level, per Citi analysts. Even online platforms like food delivery giant Meituan (3690.HK) recorded a big boost from users spending locally over the week.
Even so, a week of staycations won’t be enough to offset the broader slump in domestic tourism, which made up more than 10% of pre-pandemic GDP, and a contracting services sector. China’s Golden Week has lost its shine.
Chinese domestic tourism revenue totalled 287 billion yuan ($40 billion) during the Golden Week holiday which ran from Oct. 1 to 7, down 26% from the comparable week a year earlier, according to data released late on Oct. 7 by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It’s 56% lower than the same period in 2019.
Data released by Chinese food delivery firm Meituan showed on Oct. 6 that during the first five days of the Golden Week holiday, over 77% of the consumer spending on its platform occurred locally. Average daily local spending was 52% more than the same period in 2019.
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Beijing, crunching economic data, interviewing high-level officials, and travelling to far-flung provinces to visit factory floors and talk to local shopkeepers. Before that, she spent nearly three years in Santiago, Chile, where she built a trade news website reporting on the produce industry – and developed Spanish as a third language alongside Mandarin Chinese and English.
China’s lackluster Golden Week holiday this year casts a dark cloud over the economy. Domestic tourism sales during the country’s annual spend-and-travel blitz fell to $40 billion, less than half of pre-pandemic levels. Wealthier regions might get a welcome spending boost from shoppers that stayed put, but the sector drives nearly 30% of Chinese consumption.
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