Original title: Spring Festival travel tickets in 2022 will be available for sale today, and there will be plenty of surplus train tickets. Are there any discounts on popular air tickets?
21st Century Business Herald reporter Gao Jianghong reports from Beijing On January 3, this year’s Spring Festival travel train tickets started to be sold 15 days in advance. The 21st Century Business Herald learned from Qunar. Unlike previous years, which sold out in one second, as of 12:00 on January 3, search on Qunar platform, Beijing -Chengdu, Beijing-Changsha, Beijing Chaoyang-Harbin West, Guangzhou South-Zhanjiang West, Guangzhou South-Chengdu and many other popular routes in the past only a few second-class seats were sold out, and there are still many trains with enough tickets available Sale. Popular destinations this year are Guangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
At the same time, according to the Qunar platform, during the New Year’s Day of 2022, the number of searches for air tickets during the Spring Festival travel period increased four times from the previous week. Some cities with fewer flight routes are the first to see air ticket price increases. For example, on the Beijing-Jiamusi route, only full-price business class is available for direct flight tickets on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve, and the economy-class fares of other connecting flights are also full-price. The staggered sales of station tickets and the staggered trips of passengers make this year’s Spring Festival travel less stressful. On the Qunar platform, there are still discounted prices for air tickets on popular routes such as Beijing-Harbin, Shenzhen-Haikou and other popular Spring Festival transport routes the day before the holiday.
Perhaps the New Year’s Eve policy in many places is affecting the expectations of the Spring Festival travel market. Are you going home this Spring Festival?
Sufficient tickets for popular routes
According to Qunar data, as of 12:00 on January 3, trains departing on January 17, Beijing’s trains to Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Wuhan and other popular lines all have some remaining tickets. The trains arriving in Guangzhou are related. It was sold out instantly compared to last year. This year, there is plenty of tickets left on the first day of Spring Festival transportation. There are still surplus tickets for trains from Shenzhen to many places, which is very different from the situation in the past when one ticket was hard to find. On the Qunar platform, the most popular destinations for sales on the first day of Spring Festival travel were Guangzhou, Suzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Changsha and Nanjing.
According to Lan Xiang, the dean of the Qunar Big Data Research Institute, the reason why the first day of the Spring Festival transport this year is slightly calmer and different from previous years is that the railway department and the school have carried out cross-peak trips, plus it is still on the first day of pre-sales. The travel policies of various regions are still unclear, and the overall ticket purchase is scattered, and passengers are not eager to book tickets in advance.
In addition, the railway department has set different opening times for different railway stations. Sales start at Beijing West Railway Station at 8 am; Beijing Railway Station and Beijing Chaoyang Railway Station are available at 10 am; Beijing North Railway Station is available at 12:00; Beijing South Railway Station is available at 12:30; Beijing East Railway Station, Changping North Railway Station , Qinghe Station starts at 16:00. It is 10 o’clock at Guangzhou South Railway Station, 11 at Guangzhou Railway Station, and 11:30 at Guangzhou East Railway Station. On the first day of the Spring Festival travel season, there were no multiple trains running out.
On the other hand, the railway department has also extended the service time for ticket sales on the online platform, providing a 24-hour Internet refund service, and the deadline for refunding tickets has been extended from 25 minutes before the departure of the station to before the departure. After driving the ticket change business, the online processing channel has also been added. The latest cut-off time for standby ticket purchases has been adjusted from 6 hours before driving to 2 hours.
Passengers are staggered, and railway capacity has been further improved. Many new lines have been put into operation this year. The China-Laos Railway and the new lines of Ganshen, Anjiu, Zhangjihuai, Mujia, Hangzhou-Taiwan, and Japan-Lanzhou high-speed railways have opened and operated. Transportation capacity in Zhejiang, Shandong and other regions; the new southern section of the Beijing-Hong Kong high-speed rail from Nanchang to Shenzhen is fully connected, shortening the time and space distance between Nanchang, Hefei, Nanjing, Shanghai and other central and eastern cities and the Guangzhou-Shenzhen region, which will effectively facilitate the Spring Festival travel for people along the route Travel.
There are still discounts on difficult-to-buy routes in previous years
Although many places currently advocate “Chinese New Year in situ”, Wu Zunyou, chief expert of epidemiology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, recently stated that “in low-risk areas, there are no cases of local transmission, and there is no need to advocate for Chinese New Year in situ.” They have not been home for the New Year for two consecutive years. They expressed their feelings on Weibo that they want to go home with their parents this year. The itinerary plan was also prepared more than a month before the Spring Festival.
According to Qunar’s big data, as early as New Year’s Day, there was a significant increase in air ticket bookings during the Spring Festival, and a slight increase during the New Year’s Day holiday. From January 17 to February 2, Qunar platform ticket bookings have exceeded the 2020 Spring Festival travel season. Compared with 2021, the number of air tickets for the Spring Festival transportation to Jixi, Jiamusi, Qingyang and Kaili cities has more than doubled.
It is worth mentioning that the peak of this year’s ticket purchases has not yet arrived, and there are still discounts on popular routes that are in short supply three days before New Year’s Eve. According to Qunar’s big data, as of 12 o’clock on January 3, three days before New Year’s Eve, the lowest discount on the Shanghai-Sanya route reached 47%; the lowest discount on the Shenzhen-Haikou route was 25%, and the three-day price fluctuations were relatively small; Beijing; The lowest discount for the route to Harbin is 7.4%; for Beijing to Sanya, the lowest discount is 6.2%.
In this regard, Lan Xiang said: This year, 70% of passengers choose to book tickets within three days, while only 50% of passengers would choose to book tickets within three days before. Therefore, the peak of the Spring Festival travel ticket purchases is slightly lagging compared to previous years. According to the traffic data in the first half of this year, the main source of tourists this year is in the shape of an inverted triangle, namely Guangshen in the south, Shanghai in the east, and Chengdu and Chongqing in the west. Tourists from second-tier cities to third- and fourth-tier cities provide more tourists. .
Among them, Beijing to Jiamusi seems to have a small number of flights and a small number of passengers. But starting from January 10, the airline’s flight fare has risen to a minimum of 9 percent off. As of January 3, the two-day direct flight tickets on January 30 and January 31 have only full-price business class tickets, priced at 6000+, and the economy-class fare of other connecting flights is also full-price 2000+. For the Beijing-Chifeng route, there are up to 3 direct flights per day. From January 21 to January 30, all airline tickets in this city are full-priced in economy class. Compared to other times in January, the price has doubled.
Lan Xiang analyzed that flights were booked earlier than train tickets, and the pre-sale period of train tickets for the Spring Festival this year has been reduced from 30 days to 15 days. Air tickets that are more than 50% more expensive than train tickets will also welcome a large number of passengers. , Routes that are popular or have fewer flights are more likely to be sold out. Where to go, travelers are advised to plan their trips in advance to buy tickets to avoid peak periods.
(Author: Gao Jianghong, Editor: Li Qingyu)
.