With schools and colleges closing, summer travel in 2021 is already heating up. On July 16, Shen Jiani, a senior researcher at the Strategic Research Center of Ctrip Research Institute, told the 21st Century Business Herald that this year's summer tour orders have increased by more than 10 times compared with the same period in 2020, and the number of summer travel orders across provinces has increased by 413 percent year-on-year.

At the beginning of July, the flight manager released the "2021 Summer Transport Forecast Data Report", which is expected to total 967,745 planned flights of civil aviation in 2021, an increase of 2.88% compared with 2019 and nearly 38.07% compared with 2020.

To cope with the unusually strong passenger flow, China National Railway Group (CRC) said it expects 750 million trips to be made on China's railways during the 62 days of summer travel this year, basically the same as in 2019, and nearly 14 million trips will be made on peak days. Major airlines have also increased capacity, with China Eastern airlines saying it plans to carry out 180,000 flights in July and August, with more than 5,000 of its larger aircraft. Hna plans to fly nearly 2,000 routes during the summer travel period, carrying out about 140,000 flights, carrying more than 18 million passengers, with the year-on-year growth of about 40%, exceeding the level of the same period in 2019 before the epidemic.

As the quantity goes up, so does the price. As of July 15, according to qunar, the number of domestic flights has exceeded that of the same period in 2019, with the average ticket price exceeding 1,000 yuan. Hotel bookings have exceeded the same period in 2019 by 30%, among which the proportion of high-star hotels increased by nearly 10%.

An explosion of multiple factors

The 21st Century Business Report learned from ctrip, Qunar, Tongchengtou.com, Hornet's Nest and other OTA platforms that people are willing to travel this summer, and the number of trips is expected to hit a record high.

According to ctrip statistics, this year's summer tour group and independent travel orders increased more than 10 times compared with the same period in 2020, and summer travel orders across provinces increased 413% year on year.

There are some special factors for the high numbers. Travel during the summer, there are numerous customers is the primary and middle school students and their families, China last summer in most parts of the middle and primary schools have travel restrictions, and effectively control the epidemic at home this year, the domestic middle and primary school gradually adjusted to the student summer travel restrictions, as a result, this summer, primary school students in the group (aged 8 to 18) account for more than 20% of the back, More than 300% over the same period last year.

Search and page views are the most direct reflection of what people want. Tongcheng released the "2021 Summer Vacation Resident Travel and Travel Trend Forecast Report", which showed that the search and page views of flights in July and August on tongcheng travel platform in the first two weeks of June increased by 120.2% compared with the same period in 2020 and 13.4% compared with the same period in 2019. Search page views for train tickets departing in July increased by 150% compared with normal days.

The 21st Century Business Herald also learned from rucheng, a special membership-based resort booking platform, that the number of summer bookings this year increased by 47% compared with the same period in 2019.

Due to its membership booking platform feature of "advance booking is free", the average booking rate of this summer has exceeded 90% (96.69% in July and 85.17% in August). In order to welcome the summer season, as early as May and June, Cheng began to increase the number of summer home stay, a total of 121 new hotels.

It's worth noting that there have been some changes in tourist habits compared to 2019. According to data released by Qunar, parents are less anxious to book tickets for summer vacations in 2021. In summer 2019, nearly 40% of parents booked tickets more than a month in advance. Now, less than 30% of parents book tickets more than a month in advance, while those who book tickets one to two weeks in advance have increased by nearly 10% and those who book tickets four to seven days in advance by nearly 5%. So as kids get out of school and their summer homework is done, expect travel searches to grow as parents start planning trips.

In addition, according to the survey data provided by Tongcheng, 64% of the respondents clearly said that they have travel plans this summer, and 87.4% of them plan to travel across provinces and cities.

Cheng Chaogong, chief researcher of Tongcheng Research Institute, believes that the high willingness to travel in the medium and long term indicates that residents have high confidence in tourism consumption this summer, which will be the biggest support for the recovery of the summer tourism market this year. In the summer vacation of 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, people's confidence in long-term travel was insufficient. As the epidemic prevention and control situation is stable and improving, the confidence of long-term travel consumption has been on the track of recovery since the National Day Golden Week in 2020.