In sorting out the Golden Weeks the China’s government may, and it is very much may, give its citizens five or six more vacation days next year.

Analysts, ever quick to pluck at a straw in the wind, say the extra leisure time will probably boost China’s already flourishing travel-and-tourism sector.

Travel operators are betting on a shift to shorter, more frequent trips. This is reflected in their new vacation packages.
Analysts say the biggest travel companies are the ones most likely to benefit from the overhaul because they have the scale and network to respond to the heightened demand for road trips and weekend getaways.

The government is proposing that three traditional Chinese festivals become public holidays — and subsequently long weekends. It also wants to introduce five paid vacation days. It isn’t clear when the changes will be announced but early next year seems possible.

The upshot of the changes is that for the first time, Chinese workers will be able to decide when they want to travel stopping the chaos of Golden Weeks.

Zeng Guang, an analyst with China Jianyin Investment Securities, says that while the loss of a week-long break may mean less overseas travel by Chinese tourists there will be more domestic tours.
Source: Wall Street Journal

The ‘Golden week’ holidays should be changed. In fact, many were under the misunderstanding that a decision had been made to scrap ‘Golden week’ holidays. It would not be an unpopular decision.

According to a survey released by Ctrip and published in the Beijing News half of Chinese travelers want to abolish all ‘Golden week’ holidays, except Spring Festival.

Most wanted to retain the seven-day Spring Festival holiday when Chinese celebrate the lunar new year and which is a very important occasion of family reunion.

Ctrip is the largest consolidator of hotel accommodation and airline tickets for China’s individual travelers.

About 14% of the respondents supported scrapping all three ‘golden week’ holidays and 49.4% wanted to scrap or change the May Day and National Day ‘golden weeks’ and retain the Spring Festival holiday.
If the government scrapped one or more week-long holidays, 60.1% favored compulsory paid vacation in their place to allow every worker to arrange their own holidays.
53.3% of respondents believed the biggest advantage of the ‘golden weeks’ was ‘the right to rest and take a paid vacation’.

Paid vacation has been implemented in some joint ventures in big cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, by which workers arrange their holidays in accordance with the employer’s situation.
Source: China Daily

The National Day holiday gave an idea of how hotels respond to suppy and demand and shows, perhaps, what we can expect at the Olympics.

Zhang Wei of online travel service Ctrip.com said some popular tourist cities such as Sanya, Hangzhou, Guilin, and Xiamen raises their rates during the Golden Week. And a growing number of tourists drove up the demand for budget hotels throughout China. The Chang Long Hotel, Nanning, seen in our illustration was no exception.

Zhang Wei said, ‘Take Guilin as an example, the price for five star and four star hotels grew by 25% and 50% respectively, while the three star hotels have seen the largest price increase of 80% as they are the main choices for ordinary people.’

In contrast, the big business cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou saw prices drop in five star hotels.

During peak season, the average room price at a Beijing Prime Hotel is RMB800 to 900 ($106.5 to 119.8). During the national holiday, the price dropped about RMB200.

Li Siwe, in charge of the marking for the hotel, said, ‘In the golden week, our target clients are domestic tourists from other provinces, so we have to adjust the prices according to their budgets.’

The Shanghai Marriott Hotel Hongqiao normally charges RMB1700 to 1800, but during the upcoming holiday, the price dropped to RMB800. The management agreed the the drop in prices is all about the type of guests they recieve.

Now, after the National Holiday, it’s back to business as usual for hotels in cities like Shanghai. They will not be inexpensive.
Source: China Daily

The Golden Week concept created more problems than it solved. It strained the transport system, drove away overseas visitors — a source of revenue — and generally created havoc. In the current state of relative prosperity they are an anachronism and now the word is the government is likely to scrap up its ‘golden week’ holiday system and make public holidays of more traditional festivals by 2009.

Zhang Hui, dean of the tourism administration department at Beijing International Studies University, told a forum in Xiamen, east China’s Fujian Province the week-long May Day holiday would be shortened to one day and the National Day holiday to two days.

Zhang Hui said the conclusion was drawn from discussions among domestic tourism experts.

According to a story published in the China Youth Daily experts suggested choosing three traditional festivals as public holidays.

Zhang Hui said, ‘Experts all agree that Mid-Autumn Day should be set as a public holiday and the government can choose two more from the Lantern Festival, the Tomb-Sweeping Day, the Dragon-Boat Festival and Double Nine Day.’

In addition, compulsory paid vacations, which might be written into the labor law, would be granted to employees. This is the key. Unless these holidays are written into law then many smaller employers will simply forget about them.

In theory the law will be that each person will have a basic seven-day paid leave a year, increasing by one day for every year of employment. The longest paid leave would not exceed 14 days.

How does that compare to other countries? If you look at Germany or Australia it is woeful. On the other hand, if you look at the United States it is not too bad at all.

One confusion arises from the term ‘golden week’ of which China currently has three. They are not weeks. The are for the Spring Festival, Labor Day and National Day holidays and are actually only three days holiday as a weekend on one side of the holiday is designated as two working days.

Chinese New Year, the Lunar New Year, is something else again. It is a golden week of long, long standing-tradition and Zhang Hui said it would be preserved.
The ‘golden week’ holidays were introduced in October 1999 to boost tourism and holiday consumption. They are well past their usefulness.
Source: China.org.cn

The China National Tourist Office a surge in tourism and domestic travel in China will create jobs and boost consumption but, at the same time, it will pose a challenge as the country struggles to provide the necessary infrastructure.

China hosted 124 million visitors in 2006, including travelers from Hong Kong who accounted for more than half, and earned $33.5 billion from tourism.

Coming up are the 2008 Olympic Games and Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

The office believes, almost certainly correctly, that by 2015 China is set to become the world’s top tourist destination and will attract 200 million visitors a year.

That is a bit difficult to cope with so think of 4 million visitors a week. This is growth is already creating demand for hotels, transport and other tourism-related services. At the same time domestic tourism is booming and that has to be catered for as well.

One early and positive move would be to stop the three Golden Weeks when the whole of China seems to down tools to move from one place to another. Almost no other country in the world has anything like it and it puts an immeasurable strain on transport, accommodation and, indeed, business in general.

Shao Qiwei, chairman of the China National Tourism Administration, told a conference in Hong Kong, ‘We’re putting an emphasis on tourism so we can increase domestic consumption and increase living standards.’

Shao said that, while Americans travel on average seven times a year, Chinese now make only one domestic trip a year, but that would probably rise to two within a decade, or 2.6 billion trips.

He said, ‘Vacation travelling is becoming a trend. But there’s an imbalance between supply and demand. We don’t have enough trained staff and we are nowhere near able to meet demand for tourism services.’

According to Pacific Asia Travel Association growth in tourism will create more than 18 million jobs in China in the next decade. At the same time the whole tourist industry has a very long way to go in improving the product before it reaches true international standards.
Source: Reuters

Note first that this view comes from an official with the Chinese National Tourism Administration (CNTA) whose views may be somewhat biased.

Zhang Xiqin, deputy director of CNTA, said difficulty in getting train and plane tickets is no reason for abolishing Golden Week holidays. He said, ‘Government departments are looking at various options. Official holidays could be prolonged. Another possibility would be to link them to other traditional festivals.’

Chinese travelers spent RMB73.6 billion ($9.6 billion) during the week-long Labor Day holiday. A total of 179 million people went on tour, up 26% on last year.

Zhang said the statistics show that Golden Week holidays benefit people’s lives and promote domestic consumption, which is in line with the central government’s strategy to rebalance the economy.

Golden Week holidays also totally disrupt business, throw staggering strains on the transportation system of China and, it can be argued, do not enhance the image of a forward-looking dynamic China.
Source: China View