The travel industry in China is simply booming right now! Currently, many Chinese are celebrating the National Day Golden Week -- an eight-day holiday that began on October 1 and celebrates the founding of the People's Republic of China.
This year is a particularly special time for the Chinese as it marks the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. As I explained to my China Strategy readers last week, the Chinese are celebrating the end of the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists.
After a brutal four-year war, Mao Ze-dong and the Communists defeated Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in 1949. And while a tattered Nationalist force retreated to Taiwan, Mao Ze-dong settled in to Beijing and started a Communist government there.
So every year around October 1, Chinese throughout Mainland China enjoy a seven-day holiday -- no work, no school -- to celebrate China's National Day. Typically, there are fireworks and concerts held throughout the country. This year, though, Chinese government officials went all out to host the greatest National Day pageantry ever, with a massive military parade -- complete with 200,000 soldiers, jet fighters and tanks -- nearly one million volunteers, pageant and an eight-day holiday.
What's interesting is that China's Mid-Autumn Festival -- a traditional time that Chinese host family reunions -- fell in the middle of the National Holiday festivities. So, this year, many Chinese actually traveled to the numerous tourist attractions throughout Mainland China to participate in the festivities, rather than hosting family reunions.
In fact, it was reported by China's travel authorities that there was nearly an 18% increase in tourist traffic at the country's 119 most-popular tourist destinations on October 3 from the previous day. On Sunday, nearly four million Chinese visited the country's top tourist destinations, and approximately seven million traveled to Beijing for the celebration -- representing a 40% increase from last year!
Overall, the China Tourism Academy is expecting more than 200 million Chinese to travel throughout the course of the eight-day National Day holiday. That's a 13% increase over last year. And tourism revenue is expected to jump 25% to about $14.7 billion.
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