China's domestic travel hits record highs in 2025: official

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Domestic travel in China hit record highs both in 2025 and during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, Minister of Culture and Tourism Sun Yeli said on Saturday.

During the nine-day Spring Festival holiday from Feb. 15 to 23, the country recorded 596 million domestic trips, with tourism spending surpassing 800 billion yuan (about 115.93 billion U.S. dollars), both setting new records, Sun told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the national legislature.

For the full year of 2025, domestic trips by Chinese residents exceeded 6.5 billion, up more than 16 percent year on year, with tourism expenditure reaching 6.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 9.5 percent -- setting new records in both volume and spending, Sun added. ■