Cross-border trips to see uptick in Spring Festival

China will see an average of 1.85 million cross-border trips every day during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, a 9.5 percent year-on-year increase, the National Immigration Administration has estimated.

A slight increase will likely occur in cross-border trips through large international airports in China during the holiday, the administration said at a statement issued on Friday.

These airports are expected to see a peak in the number of passengers making outbound trips for three days from Tuesday, the first day of the holiday, to Thursday, the administration said.

They will also likely see an influx of passengers on Feb 3 and Feb 4, the last two days of the Spring Festival holiday.

Forecasts for the average daily number of passengers making cross-border trips during the holiday from four major airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou in Guangdong province and Chengdu in Sichuan province were revealed by the administration. Shanghai Pudong International Airport will likely see as many as 95,000 such passengers on average every day, it said in the statement.

The administration added that it has required ports across the country to strengthen monitoring of cross-border travel flows during the holiday and issue related information promptly to help people arrange their trips properly.

It has also asked ports to deploy a sufficient number of staff and open enough passages to improve the efficiency of exit-entry procedures, saying that the ports should ensure Chinese travelers have to wait no more than 30 minutes in line before passing through.

LY.com, a travel agency based in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, said the eight-day Spring Festival holiday and the slight drop in the prices of international flight tickets compared with the same period last year have encouraged outbound travel.

Trip.com Group, another travel agency, said in a report released earlier this month that Japan, Thailand and Malaysia were among the popular countries for outbound travel during the Spring Festival.

Su Menghui, an intern at an internet company in Shanghai, said she will make an 11-day trip to Japan starting during the Spring Festival holiday. She will visit Wakayama and Hokkaido.

The 23-year-old said she had planned the trip about three months in advance, as longer holidays — such as National Day and Spring Festival — are her first choice for traveling abroad, though flight tickets tend to be much more expensive than usual.

She said she will also consider traveling to nearby countries, such as Japan and South Korea, during weekends. For example, a weekend is "totally sufficient" for a trip from Shanghai to Jeju Island in South Korea, she added.