Yichang received a total of 6.33 million tourists both at home and abroadto enjoy the landscape of Yichang during National Day holiday with 4 billion tourism revenue. However, the highlight is that visitors from Hubei Province or cities around Yichang city are no longer the main part of the tourists visiting Yichang during the holiday and more and more people outside of Hubei Province or even from other countries chose Yichang as their travel destination with a mid-term or long-term travel plans, ranging from two to six days.

The reporter learned that the ticket of the bullet trains and high-speed railways from all over the country to Yichang were fully booked and it was very hard to get a ticket, especially the return ticket of the bullet trains to Yichang from Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Hefei because all of them were sold out. In addition, the Three Gorges airport accommodated 41,700 passengers during these seven days, up 45.5% from the last year. Among them, more than 1,000 South Korean tourists were sent to Yichang for sightseeing by eight chartered flight from three cities of Korea, including Incheon, Cheongju and Daegu.

As the number of the high-end tourism team increase year by year, the tourist reception scales in Yichang is also constantly expanding. The comprehensive data from online booking identity information and the vehicle’s parking electric monitoring system of Three Gorges Dam indicated that the tourists visiting there outside of Hubei Province amounted to 80%. Apart from this, the reporter also learned from the agencies in the city that the proportion of tour groups visiting Yichang from outside of Hubei Province is increasing year by year. And for the tourists received by Three Gorges CITS, just Cantonese made up for 48%; and the tourists received by Xiazhou CITS from outside of Hubei Province accounted for 55% of all of the guests. “Tourists pay much more attention to the quality of tour route with the number of the one-day tourists declines and the two-days or three-days tourists increases, and the latter accounts for almost 65% of the total number,” said a worker from Three Gorges CITS. The worker also said that they found the travel arrangement of the tourists during the National Day is diversified and more rational than it used to be. In the past, it centers on sightseeing, but now tourists change their vacation to a leisure travel with the focus on experiencing life, understanding customs and seeking for leisure and happy hours.

During the holiday period the average occupancy rate of guest room in the whole city reached 82.77%, which among 4th October, the average renting rate reached 99.56% with the occupancy rate reached 100% for some star-rated hotels and the renting rate of 5 business hotels checked randomly also reached 100%. Therefore, to some extent, we can say that Yichang has gradually become a mainstream tourism market for leisure and vacation.

(Reporter Wang Ying)