As students of all ages in China have started their summer vacation, “parent-child” travel welcomes its peak season, with museums being one of tourists’ top choices.
Tickets that have been released so far for many popular museums, including the Palace Museum in Beijing, and the Nanjing Museum in Nanjing, have all been fully booked, according to a report of thepaper.cn on Tuesday.
Data from online platforms Meituan and Dianping show that the search popularity of “museum” has increased by 61 percent month-on-month since June, with “Shaanxi History Museum”, “Shanghai Museum” and “National Museum of China” as related hot search phrases.
The top five cities searched are Xi’an, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Wuhan, with the highest proportion of search users aged 30 to 35.
According to online travel platform Ctrip, as of July 3, the number of museum orders during summer vacation increased by more than 90 percent on a yearly basis.
“Early bird tickets” for some exhibitions have also sold out early. For example, the 200,000 early bird tickets for
The Civilization of Ancient Egypt
exhibition at the Shanghai Museum, which went on sale on May 20, have been sold out by June 19, said the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism.
As of July 5, the top ten museums with a high search index on travel platform LY.com were the Palace Museum, Shaanxi History Museum, Shanghai Museum, Suzhou Museum, Luoyang Museum, Guanghan Sanxingdui Museum, Nanjing Museum, Guangdong Museum, Chengdu Museum and Henan Museum, the report said.
The popularity of museums has also triggered demand for nearby accommodations.
According to Ctrip,
The Civilization of Ancient Egypt
exhibition at the Shanghai Museum has driven summer orders of nearby hotels to a 20 percent increase year-on-year.
Data from homestay bookings and operating platform Tujia show that guest house bookings around museums nationwide jumped nearly two times compared with the same period last year.
Beijing, Chengdu, Xi’an, Chongqing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Luoyang and Zhengzhou are the most popular cities for booking guest houses around museums in China, with Luoyang and Zhengzhou seeing the highest increase in bookings, both more than doubling over the same period last year.
Summer bookings for guest house around Guanghan Sanxingdui Museum jumped by more than 15 times year-on-year, the report said, adding that bookings of guest houses near Nanjing Museum and Shaanxi History Museum increased by nearly 1.5 times and 50 percent year-on-year, respectively.