China travel and box office boom over Lunar New Year

China's Lunar New Year travel and box office showed signs of recovery as people took advantage of a holiday free of strict restraints on movement following Beijing's pivot away from its zero-Covid policy.

Bookings of hotels, guest houses, and scenic spot tickets on January 21 through January 24 exceeded the comparable period in 2019, the National Business Daily reported, citing figures from online travel agency Trip.com (9961).

Reservations for guest houses more than tripled and bookings of tourist attraction tickets jumped more than 50 percent compared to the first four days of the week-long public holiday last year, according to the report.

Outbound air ticket bookings more than quadrupled year-on-year and reservations doubled at overseas hotels, the report said. Hong Kong and Macau are the top destinations for Chinese tourists, followed by Bangkok and Singapore, it added.

About 95.9 million trips were made by road, rail, air, and waterways during the period, according to Bloomberg calculations from data released by the Ministry of Transport. That's a daily average of roughly 24 million trips, compared with an average of just 18.6 million over the course of the week in 2022.

Box office revenue, including presold tickets, hit 4.8 billion yuan (HK$5.54 billion) as of last night, according to figures from online ticketing platform Maoyan Entertainment (1896).

The figure is expected to reach a record high of 9 billion yuan over the long holiday this year.

Full River Red, a historical suspense comedy movie directed by famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou, topped the box office with sales of over 1.74 billion yuan, data from Maoyan showed.

And Chinese science fiction film Wandering Earth 2 took second place with 1.56 billion yuan in box office.

Chinese consumers traveled and took in entertainment by the tens of millions despite a surge in infections and deaths across the country in the wake of zero Covid, and the early holiday receipts could fuel optimism that overall economic recovery will be faster than anticipated.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg have upgraded their forecasts for China's growth to 5.1 percent for this year and 5 percent for 2024, up from 4.8 percent and 4.9 percent, respectively, in a December poll.