Advertisement

China’s consumers will power its coronavirus recovery, as their blockbuster May Day spending shows

  • During China’s most recent long holiday, tourism, box office revenue and consumer good sales surged, returning to pre-pandemic levels. This augurs the sustainability of China’s economic recovery through the rest of the year

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
People walk through an alley near Houhai lake in Beijing on May during the Labour Day holidays. Photo: AFP
The May Day holiday marked the first long national holiday since China almost fully relaxed its Covid-19 lockdown measures. The consumption data for those five days paints a telling picture of the recovery of domestic demand.

In order to stimulate consumption, the authorities extended the holiday to five days, making long-distance trips easier for consumers. This, coupled with pent-up demand left over from the pandemic, drove a strong consumption rebound in various sectors, as reflected by multiple data sources, media reports, as well as my own personal experience.

First of all, a strong wave of “revenge travel” was seen in the tourism market, as expected. After staying put during the last long holiday, Lunar New Year, due to tightened restrictions to contain mini-outbreaks in certain parts of the country, consumers took full advantage of May Day to travel and make up for lost time – 16 months of it.

From what I saw both on social media and as a traveller myself, many cities experienced their biggest traffic jams since the beginning of the pandemic, as road travel surged.

Official data shows that domestic tourism has fully resumed to pre-pandemic levels. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism estimated that about 230 million trips were made by domestic tourists during the holiday. On a comparable basis, this is a 19.7 per cent jump from May Day in 2020, and 3.2 per cent higher than in 2019, before the pandemic.

01:26

Chinese travellers pack tourist sites for May Day holiday as Covid-19 fears fade

Chinese travellers pack tourist sites for May Day holiday as Covid-19 fears fade

Meanwhile, tourists are increasingly chasing quality services. According to online travel agency Ctrip, hotels with high star ratings accounted for nearly 40 per cent of the total bookings for the May Day holiday, while the number of private tours booked through the platform was 3.3 times higher than for May Day in 2019.

Advertisement