Chinese tourists will enjoy a three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday from Sunday, and short trips with loose schedules are increasingly popular.

This festival can be traced back thousands of years and is one of the most traditional festivals in China. On the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, it is celebrated to reunite with family, admire the moon, pray for a bountiful harvest and happiness.

Compared with the level before the COVID-19 epidemic, as of September 4, the travel bookings on its platform (including hotels, car rental services and tickets to tourist attractions) had seen double-digit growth in the recent week.

Considering the shorter holiday period - from Sunday to Tuesday, working on Saturdays instead of Monday's rest days - short trips to work or live near the city are popular. Tourist attractions and folk activities with a strong Chinese cultural atmosphere, such as temple fairs and rabbit lanterns, are the common traditions of this special festival, and the number of bookings for the festival has increased.

Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are the top five tourist destinations this year. Its high popularity is attributed to the abundant tourism resources in the city center and suburbs, as well as convenient transportation options within the city and neighboring towns and tourist attractions.

Customers have also shown greater interest in wearing Hanfu for photos while traveling.

The number of tourist bookings to Shanxi and Gansu provinces is significantly increasing, as these two provinces have temples and Buddhist grotto cultural relics with thousands of years of history.

The surge in bookings for these destinations is mainly due to the recent hit video game "Black Myth: Wukong", which is based on the traditional Chinese novel "Journey to the West", and people's increasing desire to experience cultural atmosphere during holidays.

Many customers plan to take a few days off after the holiday ends in order to get a five or even eight day long vacation, and they are looking to further destinations, even overseas travel.

The overseas travel bookings for this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday exceeded the level during the three-day Loong Boat Festival in June. Short distance overseas destinations including Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand are still the first choice.