The National Day Golden Week marks its 18th year

In September 1999, the State Council issued the "Measures for Holidays and Commemorative Days for National Annual Festivals and Commemorative Days," deciding to increase public statutory holidays and creating three consecutive 7-day long holidays: Spring Festival, "May Day" and "October 1st." Thus the Golden Week was born.

Over the past 18 years, what has the Golden Week brought us? And how have we "changed" the Golden Week?

A great leap in scale, long-holiday travel becomes the norm

When the first National Day Golden Week arrived, the holiday travel fever that swept the country caught people off guard. According to statistics, within 7 days the number of domestic trips reached 28 million, with comprehensive tourism revenue of 14.1 billion yuan.

But the "astronomical figures" accumulated over 7 days back then could now be surpassed in less than half a day. In terms of scale, the Golden Week has climbed several orders of magnitude.

According to forecasts by the China Tourism Academy, this year's National Day Golden Week will see the domestic tourism market receive 589 million trips, with tourism revenue of 478.18 billion yuan. The number of trips is more than 20 times that of 18 years ago, and revenue has grown more than 30-fold.

Numbers are dry; memories and feelings are more vivid.

Yingzi, born in the 1950s, still clearly remembers the scene of her whole family climbing Mount Tai during the first National Day Golden Week. That was the first time her whole family traveled together. Although conditions were very limited, the happiness of the family outing and the freshness of the first long holiday have stayed in her memory ever since.

"At that time, accommodation was extremely hard to find; we queued for a long time before finally sorting it out. Before setting off, the family stewed a pot of chicken as 'dry rations.' A bowl of noodles at the summit cost 20 yuan, so we only bought one bowl for the child." Yingzi's account is both arduous and sweet.

From then on, the word "travel" jumped from the dictionary into life. Later, Yingzi traveled with her whole family every year. After retiring, she became fascinated with photography, hiking... From that first trip to Mount Tai to now, Yingzi's footprints have covered the world.

"For the first Golden Week I booked a hotel by phone. 18 years later, I still booked by phone. Only now it's called a mobile app." Speaking about what has changed and what hasn't over 18 years of Golden Weeks, Tao Zengrui, a newly retired Shanghai resident, said.

From queuing at hotels or booking by phone 18 years ago to now tapping a phone to book a trip, travel has gone from hectic to simple.

Ctrip started from a call center, and back then it was only phone bookings and store sales. By the first decade of the new century, the tourism industry shifted from offline to online, and the way people booked travel products shifted from store consultations and bookings to booking online by computer on their own.

Starting in 2010, the emergence of smartphones brought new changes, and the way travel is realized underwent another revolution. At present, the Ctrip App has accumulated more than 2.3 billion downloads, with about 70 percent of transaction value coming from mobile.

Liu Simin, vice president of the Tourism Branch of the China Future Research Society, analyzed that the booming scene of the Golden Week has never changed since the first day. As ordinary people's demand for quality of life upgrades, travel has become very simple. The rapid growth of the tourism industry, represented by the Golden Week, is the most intuitive manifestation of the achievements of reform and opening up.

More convenient transportation, travel becomes easy and effortless

"It's really getting more and more convenient. When I married out of here more than ten years ago, I had to cross 4 mountains before I could see a road." During the National Day period, Liu Hong, who does business in Fuzhou, organized her whole family to return to her hometown of Shanghang County, Longyan to visit relatives and sightsee.

During the Golden Week 18 years ago, Longyan was only an extension of the Yingtan-Xiamen Railway, and when the train reached Xinluo District, Longyan, that was the end of the line. "At that time, Longyan Station had only 3 pairs of passenger trains a day; now 60 high-speed train services a day are still not enough." Qiu Ping, former stationmaster of Longyan Station, told reporters.

"With high-speed rail, more people go out, and even more come in." Lin Yu, a staff member of the Longyan Municipal Tourism Bureau, said.

18 years ago, "high-speed rail" was still unknown. Today, high-speed rail has extended to 20,000 km. On October 1 alone, the railway sent more than 14.4 million passengers, a record high for single-day volume, even surpassing the peak of the Spring Festival travel rush.

At the same time, highways, the "greatest main force" for Chinese people's holiday travel, have also continued to extend. In 1999, only 10,000 km of expressways had been built nationwide; by the end of last year it had jumped to 96,000 km, ranking first in the world.

The rapid extension of expressways has largely benefited from the popularization of cars. Since reform and opening up, the pace of cars entering families has accelerated. Data show that China's car count has exceeded 184 million, and the country has entered an automobile society.

With cars and roads, self-driving tours, as a kind of "self-designed lifestyle," have developed rapidly. In 2015, of the roughly 4 billion domestic trips, self-driving tours accounted for more than 58.5 percent, reaching 2.34 billion trips. The National Tourism Administration forecasts that by the end of the "13th Five-Year Plan," the number of self-driving tourists will reach 5.8 billion, accounting for more than 70 percent of domestic tourist trips.

Civil aviation personnel also sigh at the huge changes. On October 1, 1999, Terminal 2 of Capital Airport began trial operation. Guo Wenbin, senior business manager of the Capital Airport Operations Control Center, recalled that back then the airport had only more than 400 flights a day, and at peak passenger times only 60,000 to 70,000 people, and the vast majority of people had no awareness of flying for travel during long holidays.

"Now there are nearly 1,700 flights a day, more than 200,000 people. Beijing Terminal 3 is already not enough, and now construction of a new airport has started again." He said.

Other tourism hardware facilities have also quickly kept up. By the end of last year, the total number of star-rated hotels nationwide reached 15,000, travel agencies reached 27,000, and various tourist scenic areas and attractions reached more than 20,000.

Convenient transportation and the gradual improvement of tourism facilities allow people to go farther and play longer. In the first half of the year, the number of domestic trips reached 2.236 billion, up 10.47 percent year on year; revenue was 1.88 trillion yuan, up 13.72 percent; the number of outbound trips reached 59.03 million, equivalent to sending out the total population of Italy.

Policies support leisure, and people are getting better at "playing"

Today, although it has not yet reached the level of "leaving at a moment's notice," it is already a fact that the number of people traveling during the Golden Week is equivalent to half the population.

Wei Xiang, associate professor at the National Academy of Economic Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who has long studied the holiday economy, believes that the Golden Week, as a successful holiday reform policy and institutional innovation in China, has achieved great success over the past 18 years. In the first 10 years, the Golden Week played a huge role in boosting domestic demand and promoting consumption; in recent years, against the backdrop of holiday reform and a series of national policies to promote tourism, the tourism environment has become increasingly standardized, and the Golden Week has released greater dividends.

In recent years, for national tourism, the state has adopted a series of important decisions, issuing China's first "National Tourism and Leisure Outline (2013-2022)," establishing tourism as a strategic pillar industry of the national economy. After the first Tourism Law officially took effect, in 2014 the State Council issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Reform and Development of the Tourism Industry," and in 2015 it adopted the "Several Opinions on Further Promoting Tourism Investment and Consumption," elevating tourism development to the level of national strategy.

Industry supervision has also been gradually updated and improved. Since the beginning of this year alone, the revised version of the Regulations on Travel Agencies began implementation, and the Measures for the Administration of Tourism Safety will also take effect on December 1, 2016.

To crack down on long-standing chaos in the industry such as low-price tours and uncivilized tourism, the National Tourism Administration has in recent years issued opinions on cracking down on organizing "unreasonably low-price tours," interim measures for the management of records of uncivilized tourism behavior, and others. The tourism market has become more standardized and orderly, and the level of civility among tourists has also greatly improved.

Wei Xiang believes that the state's efforts to promote tourism development are unprecedented in strength, depth and breadth. A series of laws, regulations and policies have provided a strong legal foundation for rectifying tourism chaos and creating a good tourism environment. Various localities have also actively innovated to create a better development environment for tourism, striving to implement the paid annual leave system for employees, encouraging staggered holidays, and stimulating tourism consumption demand. To efficiently resolve tourism disputes, Guangxi, Anhui, Henan, Yunnan, Hainan and other places have established tourism police or circuit courts.

Along with the standardization of the tourism environment and the enrichment of tourism products, people are also getting better at "playing." Customized tours, family tours, rural tours, cultural tours, and even using the Golden Week to look at homes and buy property... People's choices for Golden Week travel have become more diverse.

Li Shengwen, head of the customized travel department at Tuniu, said that the personalized demand in the current tourism market is becoming more and more obvious. Whether online or offline, using big data to drive continuous development of new personalized tourism products will be an inevitable trend, and this is also an inevitable choice for making Golden Week leisure tourism more orderly and more diverse.

What stays unchanged is the enthusiasm; what changes is the pursuit

For 18 years, although the "grand spectacle" of "traffic jams every holiday" and "huge crowds" remains unchanged, growing tourism demand, an increasingly complete tourism market and transportation extending in all directions have kept people's enthusiasm for the Golden Week unchanged. People look forward to the Golden Week, enjoy the Golden Week, and also "complain" about the Golden Week. Standing in the rising era of mass tourism, to enhance ordinary people's sense of gain from the Golden Week in the future, whether government, the tourism industry or tourists, all need to prepare.

"As Chinese people's demand for tourism and leisure continues to upgrade, the Golden Week, as a holiday arrangement, urgently needs to step out of its original policy halo and, through holiday adjustments, release greater time dividends and welcome a second spring for the policy." Wei Xiang said.

Liu Simin said that the shortage of long holidays is becoming a bottleneck for tourism development. We have already formed a "barrier lake" of huge demand for travel time, so every long holiday it bursts.

"Tourism must satisfy two conditions: first, having money, and second, having leisure. As living standards continue to rise, the first requirement is already met, and the main pain point now is time." Yang Shengbing, director of the Supervision and Management Division of the Hefei Municipal Tourism Bureau, said that in the future, while promoting guaranteed annual leave, various leave systems should be implemented, and more flexible leave methods should be explored, turning "crowded" travel into "dispersed" travel, and solving the number one problem currently restricting the healthy development of the Golden Week.

People's concepts of travel are also quietly changing. The past situation of relying on travel agencies and tour guides to do everything and taking tourist attractions as the single object of sightseeing has shifted to mainly self-guided travel, experiential tours and customized tours. At the same time, "consumption upgrading" has become the main theme of tourism. Ctrip predicts that during this year's National Day Golden Week, per capita spending on outbound tours will exceed 8,000 yuan, and per capita spending on domestic tours will also be above 800 yuan.

However, in the face of these changes, the ideal pattern of "all-for-one tourism" has not yet taken shape, and in some places tourist attractions each fight alone, while overall supporting services such as transportation, accommodation and commerce lag behind.

Monitoring data from the China Tourism Academy over the past 7 years and more show that even though places such as Xi'an, Guilin and Huangshan possess "world wonders" or landscapes renowned throughout the world, their indicators such as number of visitor arrivals, tourism revenue, tourism investment and tourist satisfaction are all lower than those of the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, which has no lack of extraordinary scenic spots.

Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, believes that tourism is a lifestyle in another place, and in the era of leisure and independent travelers, the market entities and business environment of tourism destinations have become independent factors attracting tourists to visit, and their importance has surpassed traditional natural and historical-cultural resources.

While visiting scenic spots, tourists are often keen to experience the lifestyle of another place, and are more inclined to use public facilities and commercial services originally intended for local life and local entertainment. In this sense, vigorously promoting the transformation from scenic-spot tourism to the all-for-one tourism model, integrating resources and forming industries with tourism as the guide, and realizing the transformation from small tourism at a single scenic spot to big tourism with a regional brand, will be a new issue facing Golden Week leisure tourism.

Liu Simin believes that if the tourism industry is to develop healthily, it needs a three-pronged approach: the government must do a good job in supervision; enterprises must adapt to the market and upgrade their product structure; and tourists need to change their consumption concepts, comparing not only price but also quality, forcing and promoting healthy competition and sound development in the tourism market from the demand side.