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Domestic travel bookings in China continued to exceed pre-pandemic levels during 2023’s summer season while overseas bookings also increased, Alibaba Group’s travel services company Fliggy shared this week.
From domestic air and train tickets to hotel reservations and guided tours, users flocked to the travel platform to make their holiday plans, Fliggy’s 2023 Summer Travel Express report revealed.
Chinese travelers are also venturing further from home.
In the last three months, orders of international tourism products increased by more than eight times year-on-year, while overseas air ticket bookings jumped by 12 times over the same period.
International destinations within a four-hour flight of major Chinese cities were trending this summer, and the top ten cities overseas with the highest booking volume on Fliggy are all located within this radius.
For many families, this was the first opportunity to vacation overseas in several years.
“At the beginning of the year, my family and I decided to go to Southeast Asia for a summer vacation. We hadn’t been out of China for three years,” a Ms. Ye from Zhejiang said in the report.
Travelers were well-prepared for their summer holidays this year, and at the start of the summer, consumers took advantage of 6.18 Mid-year Shopping Festival deals to stock up on travel gear.
On Alibaba’s digital marketplaces, 180,000 people bought watersports shoes, 1.65 million people snapped up suitcases and 930,000 people bought sunscreen masks, Alizila reported in June.
Likewise, Fliggy reported that travel orders placed during the shopping event jumped 160% year-over-year, and the number of people who made purchases doubled year-over-year.
