Domestic tourism in China hit record highs in the first half of this year, with both trips and spending posting simultaneous growth — a performance experts said underscores cultural and tourism consumption as one of the most resilient and dependable pillars of the nation's economy.
Domestic residents made 3.46 billion trips in the January-June period, up 5.4 percent year-on-year, with an increase of 178 million trips compared with the same period last year. Total spending reached 3.21 trillion yuan ($475.7 billion), up 2 percent from a year earlier, according to data released on Friday by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Urban residents accounted for 2.59 billion trips, up 5.8 percent year-on-year, while rural residents made 869 million trips, a 4.3 percent increase. Quarter-by-quarter, trips reached 1.9 billion in the first quarter, up 6 percent, and 1.56 billion in the second quarter, up 4.8 percent.
Urban residents spent 2.66 trillion yuan, up 2.2 percent, while rural residents spent 560 billion yuan, up 0.6 percent, in the first half of the year.
Yin Ping, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University's School of Economics and Management, said that the growth of both trips and spending showed that the cultural and tourism industry has entered a new stage of high-quality development across the board, fully demonstrating the sector's health and sustainability as a pillar of the national economy.
