The Yuyuan Garden Lantern Show attracts many visitors during the Spring Festival holiday. [Photo/IC]

Shanghai became one of the most popular tourism destinations during the 2024 Spring Festival holiday.

Data from China's leading travel agencies showed that travel bookings with Shanghai as the destination doubled year-on-year during the recent Spring Festival holiday from Feb 10 to 17.

The number of hotel bookings in the city far exceeded the 2019 Spring Festival holiday, with the largest number of tourists coming from Guangdong, Sichuan, and Liaoning provinces as well as Chongqing and Beijing.

The city's outbound international flight bookings also surged during the holiday, more than eight times that of 2023 Spring Festival. Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, which have recently signed mutual visa exemptions with China, are among the top five popular countries for Chinese tourists, with Japan and Vietnam being the other two, according to data released by Mafengwo.cn, a popular online travel service in China.

Source: eastday.com