Mid-Autumn Festival tourism hit by Covid curbs
The number of trips taken over China's three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday shrank, with tourism revenue also falling, official data showed, as Covid-19 rules discouraged people from travelling. The number of trips made by tourists fell 16.7 percent from a year earlier to 73.4 million trips during the holiday, which ended on Monday, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Tourism earnings slumped 22.8 percent to 28.68 billion yuan, the data showed. China has been battling to contain the highly transmissible Omicron variant, imposing lockdowns of various degrees to stop its spread this year and stepping up curbs and restrictions when necessary. In the Chinese capital Beijing, people returning to work on Tuesday needed to show negative results from tests taken within 48 hours, compared with 72 hours previously. During the busy Mid-Autumn Festival, a holiday that typically involves family reunions, trips by road were down 37 percent at 48.18 million and those by boat fell 15 percent to 1.54 million, state television reported on Monday. People took 1.28 million trips within China by air, according to the CCTV report, a level nearly 60 percent lower than the corresponding holiday last year. (Reuters)