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Travelers surge during golden week

Writer: ​Zhang Qian  | Editor: Jane Chen  | From:  | Updated: 2018-10-08

Shenzhen received more than 6.03 million travelers during the weeklong National Day holiday, which ended yesterday, up 8.48 percent from the same period last year. They contributed 6.75 billion yuan (US$983 million) in tourism revenue, up 9.55 percent over last year, according to local tourism authority yesterday.

Of them, around 1.41 million visited 13 major tourist attractions in the city over the past seven days, a rise of 6.35 percent over last year’s National Day Golden Week.

Apart from theme parks, public facilities such as museums, libraries, parks and shopping malls were also popular among holidaymakers, according to the authority.

More than 6.85 million people departed or arrived in Shenzhen during the seven days, an increase of 7.8 percent over the same period last year.

The number of passengers on planes and trains kept increasing while fewer people chose to take buses, according to official data.

Nearly 4.45 million people, or 65 percent of all passengers, took trains, 3.4 percent more than last National Day holiday. Credit was given to the inauguration of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link at the end of last month.

The number of air passengers exceeded 1.01 million, increasing 7.9 percent over the same period of last year. Residents traveling in motor vehicles dropped by 9.5 percent.

The city’s railway stations saw the peak of the returning passenger flow yesterday, the last day of the holiday. In particular, the number of passengers arriving at the Shenzhen North Railway Station exceeded 200,000 yesterday.

“The number of passengers returning to the city started to increase Oct. 5, with the total number surpassing 196,000,” said Li Guilan, the chief on duty at the station yesterday.

Li said that in order to avoid jams, the station prepared itself for the rush of returning passengers.

“We collected the real-time number of arriving passengers and shared the data with other public transportation companies, like the bus companies and Metro stations, so that they could extend their service times for the arriving passengers,” she said.

The other two railway stations, namely the Shenzhen Railway Station in Luohu District and the Shenzhen East Railway Station in Longgang District, saw 90,000 and 21,400 passengers, respectively, yesterday by 6 p.m.

The National Day holiday is one of China’s major public holidays, which lasted from Oct. 1 to 7 this year. It has become an annual tourism event for Chinese people, who are increasingly well-off and willing to spend more on leisure and entertainment.

This year’s holiday was expected to create a 10-day travel rush beginning Sept. 28, with some 129 million railway trips estimated to be made, the China Railway Corporation said. A new record for daily railway passenger trips was set Oct. 1, with 16.25 million trips made nationwide, according to a Xinhua report.