Bookings up, say online travel operators

There has been a significant increase of air, rail and accommodation booking since last week with the resumption of work, and tourist attractions are gradually reopening, online travel operators said on Tuesday.

The booking of air tickets had rebounded by 70 percent from last week compared with previous weeks since the coronavirus outbreak, and over 40 percent for rail tickets, Alibaba's online travel unit Fliggy said.

Nearly 50 percent hotels nationwide which have booking services on the platform have resumed operation and weekly bookings had risen by nearly 70 percent, Fliggy said.

Hospitality groups have launched "guaranteed room" campaigns for people returning to work and who need to be in quarantine first.

Shanghai-based state-owned hospitality giant Jinjiang International has more than 2,000 hotels nationwide in the scheme.

The hotels are strictly disinfected and some are providing non-contact services such as robot food delivery, self-help registration and voice control systems.

More than 4,200 hotels in over 400 cities of the Huazhu Group, one of China's largest hotel operators, have provided rooms catering to the demand of quarantine, and they are particularly popular with labor intensive industries such as express delivery, manufacturing and domestic help, Huazhu said. The daily occupancy is more than 50,000 rooms so far, it said.

It has launched intelligent non-contact services such as self-help accommodation, robot delivery and remote accommodation registration to avoid spreading infection.

Online travel operator Tongcheng said about 38.1 percent of tourist attractions in the country which it provides ticketing services for had reopened as of Monday, including Yellow Mountain, West Lake, Jiuhua Mountain, Zhouzhuang and Tongli ancient towns, Qiandao Lake, Longmen Grottoes and Wuyuan County.

Measures such as visitor number limits, online reservation, and staggered tours are taken to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Ti Gong