As the May Day holiday approaches, reservations for homestays in Chongqing's suburbs are on the rise. Meanwhile, the bookings of resort hotels on commercial streets around scenic areas have increased sharply compared with last year. Some of Chongqing's most popular rural homestays were fully booked up to a week before the holiday.
The exterior view of one homestay in Mexin Wine Town. (Photo provided to iChongqing）
As of April 22, the order of rural homestays for the May Day holiday accounted for 51 percent, up 20 percent compared to last year. This marks the first time that the demand for rural homestays for the May Day holiday exceeds that of urban homestays, according to the travel trend data for the May Day holiday released by the homestay booking platform Tujia.
The most popular rural homestays in Chongqing are concentrated in scenic areas, including Tea Mountain Bamboo Forest Scenic Area, Nanshan Mountain, Jinyun Mountain, Fairy Mountain, Jinfo Mountain, and other scenic spots.
Hu Xiaobing, head of ECHO homestay, said that due to the continuous popularity of rural tourism, the rooms are in short supply before the holiday. "All rooms for the holiday this year have been booked up. The most popular product is the courtyard, which was booked about 20 days ago."
Hu Yang, Vice President of Tujia, said that inter-provincial travel is currently restricted, and the popularity of suburb travels and stronger supportive policies are accelerating the development of the rural homestays. The price of rural homestay is on the rise overall due to substantially improved conditions, as well as the small number of high-quality inns in rural areas compared with cities.
In addition, homestay inns and hotels in commercial streets around the scenic area also enjoy great popularity.
Among them, reservations of hotels around the Jindaoxia Scenic Area have doubled. Popular homestays like Manmanyaju have been booked up, and some room types of the River & Holiday Chongqing Jindaoxia Hotel have been fully booked. The riverside high-quality homestay inns at Mexin Wine Town also saw a sharp rise in the number of reservations for April 30 and May 1 in the past two days.
What are the most popular outing activities during the holiday this year?
According to Tujia, nature-friendly activities, fruit and vegetable picking, farming study tour, handcrafting, and gourmet tasting are the most popular activities in rural homestays. For example, visitors can enjoy the azaleas all over the mountains in Jinfo Mountain and wind themselves down by picking mulberries and taking a bath in the hot spring in Jinyun Mountain.