Feb 19, 2002 saw China Statistic Bureau and China National Tourism Administration announce that the number of people set on tours during the Spring Festival - the golden tour period came to 51.58 million person/times, an increase of 14.7 percent as against the same period last year, reaping a revenue of RMB 22.8 billion yuan, a rise of 15 percent.

According to the statistics of the National Holiday Office, the 1st to 7th of the first lunar month saw the passenger flow on railways come to 22.98 million person/times, a rise by 6.7 percent as compared to that of last year while the air transportation witnessed a total number of 1.6140 million person/times, an increase of 20.6 percent.

There was an average increase in tour expenses during the golden tour Spring Festival, which had helped the sustainable increase as to gross tourism revenue. This is first because the tourists tended to choose the facilities and services of higher grades. In the 18 tourist-hit cities and 4 highlight areas the hotel occupancy was 10 to 30 percentage points higher than reception houses. In such cities as Harbin, Changchun, Sanya and Haikou the occupancy rate of most star-scaled hotels came to 100 percent. And secondly, it is because the grand dinner on the eve of the Spring Festival in star-scaled hotels came to form a large market. All sorts of banquets for families, happy gatherings or galas together with the promotion of reduced prices for accommodations and amusements were on big sales in these hotels, and thirdly, the tourist purchases were very brisk everywhere with some commercial centers hitting a record high in business.

( People's Daily February 20, 2002)