The floral display at the entrance of the Hangzhou Asian Games Village. [Photo/hangzhou2022.cn]

After tickets for the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday season went on sale on Sept 15, tickets for trains heading to Hangzhou quickly sold out.

According to booking data from online travel agencies such as Ctrip, Qunar, Fliggy, and Tongcheng, the tourism buzz in Hangzhou has surged to the top three nationwide, following only Beijing and Shanghai.

Since September, tourism bookings for the upcoming National Day holiday in Hangzhou have increased five-fold compared to the same period last year. Flight bookings also saw an almost five-fold increase, while hotel bookings surged eight-fold, and international flight bookings to Hangzhou have also shown significant growth.

This year, the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays coincide, creating the potential for a new peak in domestic tourism.

Data from Ctrip indicates that bookings for domestic travel during the National Day holiday have increased by 88 percent compared to the previous week, more than quadrupling the figures from the same period last year. Popular destinations include Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Chongqing, Nanjing, Shenzhen, and Changsha. Long-haul group tour destinations are concentrated in areas suitable for autumn sightseeing, such as Burqin, Urumqi, Lanzhou, Dunhuang, and holiday destinations like Sanya, Guangzhou, and Xiamen.

As the first "Golden Week" for outbound travel after the full opening of outbound tourism, overall bookings for outbound travel have skyrocketed nearly 20-fold higher compared to the same period last year. Popular outbound destinations include Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

According to Fliggy, international flight bookings to Hangzhou during the Asian Games have increased by over 20-fold compared to the same period last year, and hotel bookings around the event venues have tripled. The data shows that tourists from within Zhejiang province, including Ningbo, Wenzhou, Taizhou, Shaoxing, Jiaxing, as well as from other provinces such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Nanjing, and international travelers from countries including Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Malaysia, are all key contributors to the surge.

A bird's-eye view of West Lake, the iconic landscape of Hangzhou. [Photo/IC]