Dragon Boat Festival sees brisk demand for products, travel
2023-06-20
In this aerial photo, tourists enjoy themselves in a verbena field in Gaopo township of Guiyang, Southwest China's Guizhou province, June 17, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua]
The traditional festivals are becoming an opportunity to boost consumption, the China Securities Journal reported on Monday.
With the Dragon Boat Festival approaching, sales of the festival-related products are rising and people's willingness to travel is improving. The festival economy is injecting vitality into the consumer market.
The sales volume of glutinous rice dumplings, known as zongzi, increased significantly recently, with the figure growing to 400-500 units from 200 units, said a worker at a supermarket in Beijing,
Moreover, some major brands have also launched festival limited edition products to attract consumers on the Dragon Boat Festival eve.
A special cake made for the Dragon Boat Festival has been sold out in our stores; usually, the festival limited products are sold out before the festival, said an employee at Beijing's time-honored snack brand Daoxiangcun.
The holiday economy and festival economy have become the flashpoints to fuel consumption, which are the strong driving forces to boost consumption and promote economic growth, said He Jianhua, a researcher and former deputy head of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
A worker makes rice dumpling, or
zongzi, at a food company in Bijie, Southwest China's Guizhou province, June 19, 2023. [Photo/VCG]
People's travel enthusiasm is high during the Dragon Boat Festival. According to travel service platform Qunar, the train tickets have been sold out in some routes such as Shanghai-Hangzhou and Shanghai-Qingdao, on June 22 (the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival).
On June 21 and 22, the booking number of the train tickets surged 30-fold from a year earlier, and the booking number of the air tickets and car rental jumped sevenfold and fourfold, respectively, said a report from the travel portal Fliggy.
A series of policies and measures to support the recovery and expansion of consumption are expected to be issued, including improving consumption environment and release potential of service consumption; stabilize automobile consumption, accelerate constructions of charging piles and energy storage, as well as transform supporting power grids, according to the China Securities Journal, citing the National Development and Reform Commission.
With the peak consumption seasons as the Dragon Boat Festival and summer vacation near, the consumer demands for leisure shopping and tourism would be released and coupled with the support of relevant consumption promotion policies, the consumer market expected to continue to maintain a steady growth in the second quarter of this year, said Shu Jueting, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Commerce, at a news conference.
