A weekend away? The prospect has brightened
Print Edition
FOR some Chinese workers, “thank goodness it’s Friday” is taking on new meaning as cities across the nation introduce extended weekends that give employees an extra half-day off.
The cities of Ji’an in Jiangxi Province and Jinzhong in Shanxi Province began the new system on April 1, encouraging government agencies and other employers to give workers Friday afternoons off, with pay.
Chongqing and cities in Hebei, Gansu, Liaoning, Anhui, Shaanxi, Shandong, Guizhou and Fujian Provinces plan to follow suit soon to deliver the benefits during the summer months, according to the published local government documents. In most cases, the extended weekends will last through October.
“I really like the idea of a longer weekend,” said Papa Ye, a market executive in Shanghai. “It will be on a more relaxed mini-break, especially during summer. It’s hard to do that with only Saturday and Sunday off.”
Ye and her husband like travelling and asked their bosses a month ago for the same Friday off. They want to go on a three-day trip to Chongqing.
The extended-weekend initiative come after the State Council, China’s cabinet, released a statement last August, urging greater flexibility in giving employees time off in the summer. The “flexible weekend policy” is aimed at boosting consumer spending, saving energy, easing traffic congestion and reducing crowds at popular scenic spots.
Of course, the new policy is not mandatory and is not expected to adversely affect manufacturing and other business operations. Government offices will continue to have staff on duty on Friday afternoons.
Tourism is an obvious beneficiary of extended weekends.
“With more flexible time, consumers, especially middle-class families, are willing to visit more sites, stay more nights in hotels and try different experiences during a weekend trip,” said Wang Chen, vice president of Tuniu.com, a Nanjing-based online tourism agency.
According to a recent survey by Ctrip, the nation’s largest online travel agent, more than 89 percent of people like the idea of a two-and-a-half day weekend. About 80 percent of respondents said they would use the extra time for travel and shopping.
According to the State Council statement, China will build more tourism infrastructure, including docks for cruise ships, campgrounds and recreational vehicle parks.
The Friday afternoon off will give travelers an edge in beating the traffic out of town and booking reservations at popular destinations, according to industry insiders. No longer will a weekend trip mean rising at 4am on Saturday to catch early flights or trains.
Tourism has become one of the new engines of growth as China tries to wean its economy off traditional reliance on now-declining infrastructure investment and exports, Li Jinzao, head of China National Tourism Administration, said in January.
Tourism investment in China in 2015 rose 42 percent from a year earlier to 1 trillion yuan (US$152 billion). The Chinese public has not lost its zeal for travel. Chinese citizens made more than 4 billion domestic trips and 120 million overseas last year, ranking first in the world, administration data show.
The longer weekend is expected to increase short-distance family trips, with automobile excursions becoming more popular, said Tuniu’s Wang. That means more revenue for hotels, restaurants and tourist sites.
In Jiangxi Province, officials said they have already seen an increase of visitors to sites such as Wuyuan Old Town, Sanqing Mountain and Poyang Lake.
For the recent three-day Qingming Festival holiday, tourists flocked to domestic destinations like Sanya, Zhuhai, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Jilin and Beijing, according to a survey of tourism websites.
According to Tuniu’s survey, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing contributed the most visitors during the festival. Even though extended weekends were not yet available in those cities, many people asked for extra time off to stretch out the weekend holiday period.
Tourism agencies are scrambling to develop new services to capture increasing travel demand.
Ly.com has designed a special “two-and-a-half day” weekend package that offers destination choices with expanded distances of up to 300 kilometers from home, or even further if high-speed rail is used. The packages are available for people departing from 40 major cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Chongqing.
Chinese workers in the past have had little flexibility in arranging time off from their jobs, said Ly.com. And the gap between demand and supply in the tourism market has continued to expand. That means bookings on weekends and public holidays are tight, traffic congestion is a nightmare and popular tourist sites are elbow-to-elbow with people.
Tourist agencies like Ly.com are encouraging more self-driving trips. For example, routes to Mountain Huang from Shanghai, with two nights’ stays, are being promoted on websites for a cost of 199 yuan.
The itinerary would be hard to handle if visitors were constrained to just Saturdays and Sundays.
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