Qingming Holiday Spending Data Released: Parent-Child Educational Trip Orders Double Year-over-Year, Car Rental Orders Increase by 40%

This year’s Qingming Festival holiday overlaps with spring breaks at some schools. Demand is strong for trips such as visiting relatives and making offerings to ancestors, going outing in the countryside, traveling, and study tours, forming an end-to-end consumption scenario spanning transportation services, culture-and-tourism lodging, food and retail, and energy refueling.

According to CCTV News, data from the Ministry of Commerce show that during the holiday, the average daily sales of key retail and catering enterprises nationwide increased by 2.4% year over year. The passenger volume and revenue of 78 pedestrian streets (commercial districts) that the Ministry of Commerce monitors saw increases of 6.0% and 6.7%, respectively.

Sales at key monitored catering enterprises increased by 3.9%. Accommodation consumption at key platform hotels grew by 2.6%. The number of trips across cities increased by 15.1% year over year. Theme park consumption rose by 11.7% year over year. Orders for parent-child study tours doubled year over year, and the volume of car rental orders grew by about 40%.

Also, according to data from the Ministry of Transport, during the three-day holiday, the total cross-regional passenger flow across society is expected to reach 840 million person-trips. On the first day, passenger volumes by rail, road, and civil aviation all exceeded the peak of the same period in history. Today is the last day of the holiday. Nationwide, China Railway is expected to send 20.8 million passengers, with 1,369 additional passenger train services planned.

The time window for toll exemptions on expressways for small passenger vehicles with seven seats or fewer is valid until 24:00 today. Return-travel traffic pressure on expressways in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area and the Yangtze River Delta region is relatively high. Today, civil aviation is expected to send 1.94 million passengers. Waterway passenger volume is also expected to exceed 1.11 million.

After the start of the Qingming Festival holiday, data from the 12306 platform shows that on the first day of the holiday, tickets departing from Hong Kong West Kowloon Station to cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Changsha, and Chengdu were nearly sold out, and short-distance routes were also tight. Passenger flow through the Hong Kong West Kowloon Station border crossing hit a record high, reaching 149,700 person-trips.

Supported by family and parent-child outings, the tourism market has surged. Multiple domestic scenic spots have temporarily adopted crowd-control measures to cope with peak visitor flows.

According to data from Tongcheng Travel, among vacation products departing from April 1 to 6, the share of family and parent-child groups is close to 40%, up 17 percentage points year over year, and orders increased by nearly 200% year over year. Driven by the spring break, air ticket demand among passengers under 18 rose noticeably, increasing 47% for domestic and 22% for international, respectively.

According to data from Qunar, from April 1 to 6, the number of passengers whose travel radius is 800 kilometers or more increased by more than 30% year over year. The number of air tickets for popular routes increased by 40% year over year. Hotel bookings in destinations such as Sanya and Haikou increased by more than 40% year over year. According to data from the Fliggy platform, during the Qingming Festival holiday, domestic hotel booking room-nights increased by about 40% year over year, and the number of tickets booked for admission to domestic scenic spots increased by more than 70% year over year.

Some analysts noted that spring break consumption features scene-based integration and strong demand and supply, reflecting that the consumption mix is upgrading from traditional sightseeing to experience-based, quality-focused offerings.