The Year of the Snake has brought celebrations in Hawaiʻi and across Asia. It has also brought a lot of travel.
Lunar New Year is always a busy time for travel in China. It's a season for return trips to hometowns and China's government says this year is shaping up to break records.
The state-run news agency Xinhua said there will be some 9 billion trips from one place to another inside China over this holiday season, known in China as the “Spring Festival.”
That's a 40-day period on either side of this week's Lunar New Year. That travel includes more than half a billion train trips, 90 million plane trips and most of the rest going by car.
But there is another twist to this year's travel around the Lunar New Year — it's shaping up to be a year of strong growth for trips outside China. Trip.com says overall Chinese demand for orders from overseas car rentals to tickets are up by more than 70% from a year ago.
Some of the leading international destinations this year include Japan and Malaysia. South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong also made the list.
The company also said this is shaping up to be a record year for visitors coming to China over the Lunar New Year, with visitors from South Korea alone tripling in number from a year ago.
In fact, data from travel agencies show one in every five overseas visitors to China this holiday season is coming from South Korea.
