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Average travel spending on holiday activities grew by 8.8% YoY
HANGZHOU, China, June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Fliggy, a leading online travel services platform and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988), has released insights into travel trends for the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival holiday, highlighting a sustained demand for high-quality travel experiences. Data shows that bookings for domestic customized tours surged by over 50% year-on-year (YoY), while domestic hotel packages combining accommodation with entertainment and dining options grew by 20%.
Travelers demonstrated increased spending power, with average expenses on tickets, camping experiences, and chartered tours rising by 8.8% compared to last year’s holiday period.
Staycations and cultural experiences on the rise
This year, many travelers opted for visits to theme parks or resorts with family and friends. Ticket sales for major attractions and theme parks on the first day of the holiday increased by 25% YoY, while comprehensive packages that included dining and entertainment experienced a remarkable 140% surge in bookings.
With southern China entering its rainy season, the hot and humid weather led many travelers to enjoy hotel-based retreats. Properties enhanced their offerings with traditional festival activities, such as making zongzi (glutinous rice dumplings), handcrafting five-color bracelets, and creating aromatic sachets, attracting guests seeking cultural experiences. Among all accommodation types, luxury resorts and boutique homestays recorded particularly strong booking growth during the holiday period.
Short-distance travel dominates holiday plans
During the three-day holiday, travelers favored short-distance road trips and nearby getaways. According to Fliggy data, domestic car rental bookings jumped by approximately 30% YoY, with flexible pickup and return options proving particularly popular. Top self-drive destinations included Urumqi, Chengdu, Sanya, Haikou, and Beijing.
The most popular domestic destinations included Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Chongqing, Xi’an, and Wuhan. Meanwhile, emerging locations such as Beitun (Xinjiang), Jincheng (Shanxi), Qiongzhong (Hainan), Qingyuan (Guangdong), Wuwei (Gansu), Nujiang (Yunnan), Dezhou (Shandong), Fangchenggang (Guangxi), and Kaifeng (Henan) showed the fastest booking growth, alluring travelers with their unique cultural and natural attractions in less crowded environments.
For outbound travel, the most sought-after destinations included Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, France, Indonesia, and the United States, with short-haul flights (under four hours) being particularly popular. Notably, countries such as Poland, Iceland, Finland, Bhutan, Uzbekistan, Laos, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, and Georgia experienced substantial growth in bookings, drawing travelers with their pleasant climates and distinctive cultural offerings.
About Fliggy
Fliggy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988 (HKD Counter) and 89988 (RMB Counter)), and is one of the leading online travel platforms in China. Fliggy places a strong emphasis on innovation in its products and services, catering to the increasingly personalized and diversified needs of consumers in both China and overseas markets.
Leveraging Fliggy’s advantage as part of the Alibaba ecosystem, merchants can benefit from the vast user base within the Group. Fliggy also collaborates with partners through a full-service management format, helping more merchants, especially small and medium-sized ones, easily and efficiently share opportunities enabled by digitalization.
Fliggy’s long-term strategy is to promote the digital transformation of the tourism industry, using an open platform and mechanisms to help the industry make better use of digital business infrastructure for their operations.