Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note on Sunday that domestic tourism data during the Lunar New Year holiday improved from the New Year’s holiday earlier this year and the National Day Golden Week last October, but tourism revenue per head softened and remained below the pre-pandemic level.
This suggests “consumption downgrading is still widely seen,” they said.
The holiday, also called the Spring Festival, is traditionally the time hundreds of millions of people return to their hometowns by air, train or road to reunite with family members.
For international travels, China witnessed around 13.52 million inbound and outbound trips during the holiday, growing by 2.8 times from the same holiday period last year, according to the National Immigration Administration.
The total entry-exit trips during the holiday returned to 90 percent of the 2019 levels, according to the administration.
As film watching becomes one of the most popular entertainment activities during the holiday, the country’s box office revenue exceeded 8 billion yuan (US$1.11 billion) over the eight days, according to the China Film Administration, marking a new record high.
The economy has been grappling with multiple challenges including a property downturn and sluggish demand since last year, forcing policymakers to cut interest rates to spur growth even as many developed economies were focused on taming stubbornly high inflation.
As authorities are striking a delicate balancing act to support the economy at a time when signs of deflationary pressures call for more stimulus measures, China’s central bank left a key policy rate unchanged on Sunday when rolling over maturing medium term loans.