During the holidays, consumer markets in various places continue to heat up, and the Spring Festival economy is "hot"
During this Spring Festival holiday, my country’s consumer market continues to be hot
Website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission Chai Yaxin and Li Yunshu
The cultural tourism market is booming, with domestic tourism, outbound tourism, and inbound tourism flourishing; the box office of Spring Festival movies has reached a record high, and the attendance rate of various theaters continues to rise; traditional cultural consumption such as visiting markets, admiring lanterns, and watching performances The atmosphere is getting stronger day by day, highlighting cultural characteristics... During this Spring Festival holiday, my country's consumer market continues to be hot.
As the most popular traditional festival in China, the Spring Festival is an important window for observing consumer trends. As the Year of the Dragon kicks off during the eight-day "extended" Spring Festival holiday, the continued release of domestic demand potential further proves the resilience and vitality of the Chinese economy.
Tourists' enthusiasm for travel is accelerating, and the popularity of "North-South cross-travel" continues to grow
On February 13, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, the Olympic Sailing Center and the May Fourth Square area on the banks of Fushan Bay in Qingdao, Shandong were crowded with tourists. The layers of waves and the seagulls flying against the waves form a beautiful picture between the sea and the sky.
At 5:15 pm, at the K2 Pier of the Olympic Sailing Center, the afterglow of the setting sun shone on the sparkling sea, reflecting a "sea of oranges". Mr. Zhang from Weifang, Shandong Province, and his 7-year-old son lined up to wait to board the ship. "We traveled to Qingdao during the Chinese New Year. We took a boat out to sea to feed the seagulls two days ago. Today we took the Orange Sea Express to enjoy a romantic sunset on the sea and the night light show of Fushan Bay." Mr. Zhang said.
"During the Spring Festival holiday, tickets for popular routes are sold out almost every day." A staff member at the ticket office of Qingdao Olympic Sailing Ocean Culture Tourism Zone told reporters.
“Viewing Qingdao from the Sea” is a highlight project to improve Qingdao’s tourism quality. Since the beginning of winter, Qingdao Tourism Group has launched special routes on the basis of regular routes and in line with market demand, such as the "Orange Sea Tour around Fushan Bay", the "Memorial Ferry Route to and from the Olympic Sailing Center in Qingdao", and the "Chasing Gulls and Waves" in Charming Three Bays. Route products meet tourists’ needs for high-quality maritime travel. It is understood that during the Spring Festival this year, the number of passengers received by Qingdao's maritime routes in a single day hit a record high, and the cruise ship business received more than 10,000 passengers in a single day.
On February 17, the "2024 Year of the Dragon Spring Festival Travel Report" released by the Ctrip platform showed that during the Spring Festival holiday, domestic tourism, outbound tourism, and inbound tourism blossomed, with significant year-on-year growth and exceeding the level of the same period in 2019; domestic scenic spot ticket orders A year-on-year increase of more than 60%, overseas scenic spot ticket orders increased by more than 130% compared with 2019; the trend of tourism consumption upgrade is obvious, the average price of ticket and entertainment orders doubled year-on-year, and the per capita price of customized tourists increased by 20% year-on-year.
In the ancient city of Chaozhou, Guangdong, the lantern display with the theme of "Beautiful Chaozhou·The Age of Dragons" is gorgeous and brilliant, providing tourists with a feast of profound Lingnan culture; in Huangshan, Anhui, tourists can not only watch the "Fish Lantern" in Wangmantian Village, but also You can learn paper-cutting, make emblem pens, and watch Huangmei opera in the surrounding ancient villages... Relying on the endowment of local characteristic resources to "fancy activities", various places have launched special Spring Festival cultural and tourism activities based on local conditions around the themes of annual customs, parent-child, family, etc., to provide guidance for New Year travel. Come for fresh gameplay and diverse choices.
Go to the North to experience the ice and snow world of thousands of miles of ice and thousands of miles of snow; go to the South to enjoy the warm and humid island holidays with clear seas and blue skies... This Spring Festival, the popularity of "travel between the North and the South" continues to increase. Travel data shows that since the beginning of the Spring Festival, residents of northern cities have moved southward, and Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc. have become popular destinations for northern residents. Residents in the southern region have embarked on the journey to the north. Beijing, Xi'an, Harbin, etc. have become popular destinations for southern residents to go to the north.
"The different natural environments and cultural atmospheres in the north and south satisfy consumers' psychological demands for exploring new things." Hong Yong, associate researcher at the Institute of E-Commerce of the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, told reporters that local governments and tourism companies have strengthened their understanding of different regional markets. Publicity and marketing activities have effectively stimulated the interest of tourists from the north and the south to visit each other, which is also an important reason why the popularity of "cross-travel between the north and the south" has not diminished.
The demand for outbound tourism is accelerating, and Chinese and foreign tourists are "going in both directions" to enjoy the festival
The outbound travel market demand is accelerating and has become a highlight of the Spring Festival travel market. Alipay platform data shows that during the eight-day holiday, the amount of overseas consumption by users on the platform increased by 140% year-on-year. Among them, in Southeast Asia, driven by the visa-free policy, consumption increased by 580% year-on-year.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the lights of the landmark Petronas Towers turned "Chinese red" on the New Year's Day night; in Bangkok, Thailand, stalls on both sides of Yaowarat Road where the local Chinatown is located were filled with various New Year goods... a strong New Year flavor, This impressed Chinese tourists who visited Southeast Asia during the Spring Festival holiday. Momo from Shanghai chose to spend the long vacation in Singapore: "There are many 'Chinese dragon' decorations in the shopping malls and streets of Sands. When eating in Chinatown, Chinatown, there is a restaurant that cooks very authentic Jiangsu cuisine, and there are many New Year's goods on several nearby streets. The market is also very lively, and the Spring Festival atmosphere is full!”
After announcing a visa facilitation policy with Malaysia in November last year, China signed mutual visa exemption agreements with Singapore and Thailand in January this year. As the "visa-free circle of friends" continues to expand, it has become more convenient for Chinese citizens to travel abroad, attracting many Chinese tourists to go abroad to celebrate the New Year. Comprehensive factors such as favorable visa conditions, warm climate, degree of flight resumption, and flight distance have made Southeast Asia a popular travel destination for the Spring Festival in 2024. According to data from the Ctrip platform, during the Spring Festival, travel orders from Chinese tourists to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand increased by more than 15 times year-on-year.
"The mutual visa exemption between China and Thailand has lowered the threshold and cost of tourism, which will greatly facilitate the exchanges between the people of China and Thailand, inject strong impetus into the recovery of Thailand's tourism industry, and at the same time make 'China and Thailand one family' closer and closer." said Wu Mingyang, Vice Chairman of China Tourism Chamber of Commerce.
The significant lengthening of outbound travel distances is another notable feature of this year’s Spring Festival travel. According to Qunar platform statistics, during the Spring Festival holiday, Chinese tourists traveled to more than 100 countries around the world, and their travel orders covered more than 1,700 cities around the world; international hotel bookings increased 4.7 times year-on-year, and international air ticket bookings increased 14 times. Fliggy platform data also shows that destinations such as New Zealand, Russia, France, the United States, and Egypt are growing rapidly, with bookings increasing nearly 15 times year-on-year. Popular destinations for outbound tourism are moving from a "4-hour flight circle" to a "12-hour flight circle" Circle" expansion.
Chinese and foreign tourists "go in both directions" to enjoy the festival. During the Spring Festival, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's 2024 "Happy Spring Festival" held nearly 500 various New Year cultural exchange activities in nearly 100 countries and regions overseas. Chinese tourists celebrated the Year of China with local residents around the world. As a traditional Chinese festival, the Spring Festival also attracts tourists from all over the world to experience the splendid Chinese culture first-hand. Ctrip platform data shows that tourists from new countries that can enter China without visas, such as France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Malaysia, and Singapore, have seen significant growth. The total number of inbound travel orders on the first day of the Spring Festival holiday increased by 90% compared with 2019.
"With the continuous recovery of international routes, further improvement of entry convenience, continued repair of the inbound tourism supply chain, and active promotion of tourist destinations and market entities at all levels, the prospects for the recovery of my country's inbound tourism in 2024 are relatively optimistic." China Tourism Academy Associate researcher Liu Xiangyan said.
The popularity of China's inbound and outbound tourism is rising, helping the recovery of the international tourism market. According to the "World Tourism Barometer" released by the World Tourism Organization on January 19, the number of international tourists is expected to return to pre-epidemic levels in 2024. China's outbound and inbound tourism markets are expected to develop rapidly in 2024 due to visa facilitation and increased air transport capacity. The "China Outbound Tourism Development Report (2023-2024)" recently released by the China Tourism Academy shows that as China's tourism market momentum and residents' willingness to travel abroad increase, the pace of international tourism recovery is expected to accelerate significantly.
The Spring Festival movie market is strong, breaking the Spring Festival box office record in Chinese film history
On February 11, the second day of the Lunar New Year, at the Shenhua Light and Shadow Impression Cinema in Wenling City, Zhejiang Province, promotional boards for many Spring Festival films were placed in prominent positions, and many audiences were waiting outside the theater to enter.
A theater staff member told reporters that more moviegoers came to watch this year than in previous years, and the number of films scheduled has also increased. "At present, the two movies "Hot and Furious" and "Flying Life 2" have the highest attendance rates. They are almost full during the peak movie viewing periods in the afternoon and evening, and many viewers have purchased tickets for the first and last rows. "
"I just finished watching "Hot Hot", and the long shot before the boxing match was very exciting. After watching it, I felt that no matter when I started, I would win. If I beat myself, I would win." Ms. Fang told reporters as she walked out of the cinema that she had already watched two movies Regarding Spring Festival movies, “This year’s Spring Festival holiday is long, so I plan to watch a few more movies, but it’s hard to buy tickets during the good times. Many people watch them together as a family.”
This year’s Spring Festival movie market is booming. According to Beacon Professional Edition data, as of 17:41 on February 17, the total box office for the 2024 Spring Festival has exceeded 8 billion yuan, breaking the Spring Festival box office record in Chinese film history.
Among the Spring Festival movies, "Hot", "Flying Life 2" and "Bear Infested: Reverse Time and Space" ranked among the top three at the box office. Many viewers told reporters that the overall level of Spring Festival film creation is relatively high, and the rapid progress of domestic films is gratifying. Many films are based on family comedy elements, which are highly suitable for the movie-watching atmosphere during the schedule. They also contain thoughts on social and personal destiny and growth.
Overall, the 2024 Spring Festival movies have achieved both box office and word-of-mouth success. On February 16, the "Chinese Movie Audience Satisfaction Survey · 2024 Spring Festival" jointly released by the China Film Art Research Center and Yi En showed that the audience satisfaction score for the Spring Festival movie was 85.9 points, the highest among the 9 Spring Festival movies surveyed since 2015. 2nd place, and also ranked 4th in terms of satisfaction in all periods of the historical survey.
This Spring Festival period is not only very popular, but also has a large number of viewers "sinking" to second-, third- and fourth-tier cities along with the Spring Festival travel and cultural tourism. According to Beacon Professional Edition data from February 10 to 14, third- and fourth-tier cities have become active moviegoers, with box office share exceeding 54%, significantly higher than last year.
Some people in the industry pointed out that among various entertainment activities, watching movies is still a relatively affordable option. In recent years, domestic theater and screen resources have further "sinked", and the distribution in the east, central and west has become more balanced, covering more third- and fourth-tier cities, and projection equipment has also been upgraded. During the Spring Festival, the scale of billions of people traveling in my country and the rise of "cultural tourism craze" in various places are better integrated with film consumption, injecting new momentum into the Spring Festival film market.
The booming market supply and demand reflects the continued recovery of China's economy.
Festival consumption is an important window for observing consumption trends. Buying New Year's goods, appreciating dragon lanterns, dragon and lion dances, watching folk customs, and visiting New Year parties... From offline to online, from cities to villages, the hot consumption scenes during the Spring Festival highlight the strong New Year atmosphere.
Offline, the commercial streets are crowded with people. Big data monitoring from the Ministry of Commerce shows that on New Year’s Eve, the passenger flow and turnover of national demonstration pedestrian streets increased by 26.9% and 21.7% respectively year-on-year. In Beijing’s Wangfujing Commercial Street, merchants hung red lanterns, Chinese knots, Chinese characters “福” and other New Year ornaments in prominent places. Various New Year goods were put into festive packaging full of New Year flavor. Many merchants launched various forms of interactive and Promotions. With two naked-eye 3D screens in the department store and Maolong as the core, multi-screen digital linkage connects six public large screens in Wangfujing. The glazed golden dragon shuttles on the large screens in Jinjie, attracting tourists to stop and watch.
"On the first day of the Lunar New Year, I sold Year of the Dragon headbands at the temple fair. The business was very good. Including other food and drinks sold, the total income in one night was about 5,000 yuan." Xiaona, a businessman in Fuzhou, Fujian, told reporters that she went to temple fairs during the Spring Festival. , go wherever there are many people, "It's so awesome, I will prepare more goods next time."
New Year’s Eve dinner and reunion dining hall are popular. "My relatives are getting together and I want to book a big table for dinner, but I didn't expect it to be so tight. I can't book the restaurants I usually go to nearby, and almost all of the larger restaurants have to queue up." Ms. Li, a consumer in Fuzhou, lamented. The reporter learned that during this year’s Spring Festival, it was even “hard to get a table” for the New Year’s Eve dinner. In order to lock in consumers' demand for dine-in meals in advance, many catering companies have also launched in-store packages such as New Year's Eve dinner and reunion dinner through platforms such as Meituan and Douyin.
Online, online consumption has a strong flavor of the New Year and continues to release vitality. The "2024 National Online New Year Shopping Festival" has launched promotional activities. Many platforms have proposed "no closing" during the New Year and launched "cross-store full discounts" and other preferential activities. In the two weeks before New Year's Eve, the sales of paper towels in Alipay's live broadcast room tripled, the sales of alcohol doubled, and the sales of gold tripled.
Relevant data from the Ministry of Commerce show that sales of festive products are booming from the first to the fifth day of the Lunar New Year. The Ministry of Commerce monitors retail enterprises’ sales of green organic food and gold and silver jewelry to increase by more than 10% year-on-year. Service consumption has obviously heated up, and the accommodation turnover of key monitoring e-commerce platforms has increased by more than 60% year-on-year. Among them, the turnover of rural B&Bs around Harbin in Heilongjiang has increased by more than three times. Daily necessities are in abundance and prices are stable. One hundred large-scale agricultural and sideline products wholesale markets across the country have sufficient stocks of grain, oil, meat, poultry, eggs, and vegetables. Prices of grain, edible oil, pork, beef, mutton, chicken, and eggs are basically the same as before the holiday, and vegetable prices are higher than those before the holiday. down 1.2% previously.
"Consumption is a mirror of China's economic development. The strong supply and demand in the Spring Festival market reflects the continued recovery of China's economy." said Wu Fuxiang, director of the Industrial Economics Department of Nanjing University Business School.
2024 is the "Consumption Promotion Year" determined by the Ministry of Commerce, and various places have also spent "real money" to promote consumption. Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, has successively distributed consumer coupons totaling 80 million yuan, covering various consumption scenarios; Beijing Xicheng has coordinated 20 million yuan in funds and launched 6 car consumption coupons and 2:1 ratio financing online on the "Xicheng Consumption" platform Consumer vouchers; Shenyang, Liaoning Province, issued 30 million yuan of New Year consumer vouchers in three rounds to consumers in Shenyang, and the market's "heat" force continued to boost.
China is booming and its vitality is heating up. Attractions where "people follow the crowd", long movie viewing lists, full shopping carts, stable "vegetable baskets"... the "good start" of various markets in the Year of the Dragon is a vivid manifestation of the vitality of Chinese consumption.