Holiday crowds

More than 144,000 people visited the Palace Museum in Beijing on Oct 2. Despite a small drop in the number of visitors from the previous day, it was still crowded with little standing room. [Photo by Jin Liangkuai / Xinhua]

Although the Chinese called the seven-day holiday that started Oct 1 the Golden Week, the luster wore thin for many tourists during this time of the year. According to media reports, China's major tourist attractions received 3.6 million visitors on Oct 6, up 11 percent year-on-year, based on data from 124 tourist sites across the country collected by the China National Tourism Administration.

Ticket receipts at these attractions stood at 172.8 million yuan ($28.2 million) on Oct 6, up 4.7 percent from the same period last year.

In the first six days of the holiday, 29.3 million people visited tourist sites monitored by the CNTA, spending 1.5 billion yuan on tickets.

The China Tourism Academy predicted that about 480 million trips would be made during this year's National Day holiday and tourism revenue might jump by 20 percent from a year ago to 27 million yuan.