The eight-day Spring Festival holiday this year is expected to unleash the full potential of China's vigorous travel and consumption markets and allow traditional Chinese culture to take center stage, tourism industry insiders said.

The festive break, from Jan 28 to Feb 4, is longer by one day, with the government officially adding the eve of Chinese New Year to the public holiday calendar. This has encouraged many office employees to take two days off in advance and club the weekend preceding Spring Festival to extend their total holiday period to 11 days.

Long-haul domestic travel is expected to dominate this year's Spring Festival tourism market, according to a report jointly released by online travel agency Tuniu Corp and the China Association of Travel Services.

Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, said, "Based on leading indicators, such as urban and rural residents' willingness to travel, the degree of the tourism supply chain's recovery, tourism investment innovations and travel bookings, the tourism economy in China is expected to have a more optimistic outlook and higher-quality development in 2025."

Chinese travelers have shown an increasing interest in exploring the country's intangible cultural heritage after Spring Festival was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December.

According to the joint report, some experiential activities such as the traditional Beijing temple fair, lion dance in Guangdong province, and shehuo, a 2,000-year-old performing art form in Shaanxi province, are expected to draw tourists during the holiday.

Qi Chunguang, vice-president of Tuniu, which is based in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, said that experiencing intangible cultural heritage handicraft skills — such as traditional hairdressing with floral hairpins, tie-dyeing, paper-cutting, making rice paper and crafting lacquer ware — have garnered attention.

While cities such as Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an in Shaanxi province and Chengdu in Sichuan province are traditional cultural tourism destinations, places such as Quanzhou in Fujian province and Luoyang in Henan province have emerged as new cultural tourism hubs in recent years.

Cities steeped in cultural history such as Taiyuan and Datong in Shanxi province are riding the wave of popularity triggered by the Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong, with many travelers planning to explore ancient buildings including temples in these places.

In addition to history and culture, China's diverse topography is also playing a crucial role in tourism. While travelers from Southern China are flocking to northern destinations to experience the thrill and chill of ice-and-snow entertainment, residents of northern China are preferring destinations in the south for a warm and toasty holiday experience, the joint report found.

Rachel Lee, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China, a research institute on fast-moving consumer goods, said, "Chinese consumers have indicated a trend of continuous reallocation of expenditure toward service sectors such as dining and travel, with retail sales in these areas experiencing a 6.7 percent increase during the first three quarters of 2024."

As an important holiday for family reunions, traveling as a family serves as a major component of the Spring Festival tourism market, with more than 80 percent of travelers planning trips with their family members. The trends of parent-child travel and three generations traveling together are particularly prominent.

Qi, from Tuniu, said: "Reuniting with family members to welcome the new year and then embarking on a family trip has become a common choice of Chinese consumers. The peak of departures for travel is expected to occur on the second day of the new year."

He added that travelers coming from first-tier cities and those born in the 1980s account for a chunk of consumers who have booked travel products for the holiday.

Meanwhile, Chinese travelers are indicating a more diversified demand for overseas travel. Short-haul destinations with convenient transportation, visa-free policies and high cost-effectiveness have seen increasing popularity.

Outbound tourism products with high unit price and scarce resources are also highly favored by consumers, according to the joint report.

The reopening of the Notre-Dame, five years after the iconic cathedral in Paris, France, was gutted in a fire, has attracted attention. More Chinese consumers are including a visit to the cathedral on their itineraries, while many group tours have been sold out, the report found.