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Over 1 in 3 urban Chinese willing to travel during Festival

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-09 11:08

BEIJING: More than one third of Chinese urban residents are willing to travel during the upcoming Spring Festival vacations, according to a sampling survey.

The survey, released on Monday, was jointly conducted by Media Survey Lab of Tsinghua University and China Tourism Academy (CTA), a tourism research institute under the National Tourism Administration.

Samples were collected by telephone interviews and online survey, and there were a total of 2,695 effective respondents in the survey.

According to the CTA, more samples were collected from areas where residents show more willingness to travel.

Previous statistics revealed that urban residents in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and those in east part of China including Shandong and Jiangsu Provinces travelled more than people in other areas, the CTA told Xinhua Monday.

So samples of the survey covered more residents from such areas, the CTA said.

The survey also showed that people with monthly income of 5,000 yuan and people over 35 years of age are more likely to take a trip during the vacation.

However, there are still 32.2 percent of the respondents said they will not travel around in the festival and the rest of the respondents said they had not made decision yet.

Spring festival, China's most important traditional festival to celebrate the Lunar New Year, will fall on February 14. Chinese people are expecting a week's vacation starting from February 13, the eve of the lunar new year.