DOMESTIC tourism is projected to shoot up during the upcoming five-day May Day holiday as flight ticket sales to popular tourist destinations have kept rising, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

Figures from online travel agency Qunar show that flight ticket bookings for this year’s May Day holiday have significantly outnumbered those of the same period in 2019, surging more than 25 times.

The average price paid for the air tickets is 924 yuan (US$141), more than 20 percent higher than that in 2019, statistics show.

Lan Xiang, president of Qunar Big Data Research Institute, said that as early as the Spring Festival, there had been significant growth in hotel bookings for the May Day holiday, because of unleashed pent-up travel demand.

Although many tourists visited relatives and traveled to other places during the Qingming Festival, most of them still choose to travel again during the May Day holiday as the holiday is longer, Lan said.

Data from Qunar show that the number of airline passengers will increase significantly starting from April 28 and reach the peak April 30, even more than that on May 1, the first day of the holiday.

For instance, the economy seats from Shenzhen to Sanya for April 30 have all been sold out and only full-priced business class seats are currently available.

As of Monday, some of the direct flights from Shenzhen to Lanzhou on April 30 and May 1 had only business class seats available on Qunar. Only full-priced economy seats were available for direct flights from Shenzhen to Linzhi and Shenzhen to Urumqi.

In terms of the average price of air tickets paid in the week before and after May 1, air ticket price for April 26 were the lowest, with an average price of 655 yuan; the average price of air tickets for April 30 reached 1,020 yuan, 10 yuan more expensive than the average price of air tickets for May 1.

Statistics also show that May 5 will be the day that sees the largest number of returning tourists during the May Day holiday. The average air ticket price for the day is 1,024 yuan. If passengers return May 6, the average ticket price will drop to 809 yuan. (Zhang Yu)