Holiday trips within China surge after lifting of COVID curbs

By Yew Lun Tian

BEIJING, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Lunar New Year holiday trips
inside China surged 74% from last year after authorities
scrapped COVID-19 curbs that had stifled travel for three years,
media reported on Saturday.

The Lunar New Year is the most important holiday of the year
in China, when huge numbers of people working in prosperous
coastal cities head to their hometowns and villages for family
reunions.

But for three years people were told not to travel during
the holiday, with those who insisted facing the risk of snap
lockdowns, multiple COVID tests, quarantine and even
admonishment by their work units.

An estimated 226 million domestic trips were made by all
means including plane during the holiday week that ended on
Friday, state broadcaster CCTV reported, citing government
figures.

That compares with about 130 million domestic trips during
the holiday week last year, according to the transport ministry.

In the last Lunar New Year holiday before the novel
coronavirus emerged in late 2019 in the central city of Wuhan,
some 420 million trips were made internally.

As for travel abroad, inbound and outbound cross-border
trips jumped 120.5% from last year to 2.88 million, the National
Immigration Administration said on Saturday.

During the Lunar New Year holiday in 2019, 12.53 million
cross-border trips were made, the Xinhua news agency reported.

China abandoned its strict “zero COVID” policy in early
December after protests against the restrictions, allowing
people to travel and the virus to spread rapidly throughout the
country.

Holiday consumption of in-person services recovered notably,
as seen in the rebound in domestic tourism, but households are
likely to be moderate in releasing pent-up demand, given their
worsening balance sheets, analysts at Japanese brokerage Nomura
said in a research note.
(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian, additional reporting by Shanghai
newsroom; Editing by Robert Birsel and William Mallard)