Top news reporter Guo Shuangshuang
There are thousands of tables waiting for popular restaurants, the temple fair is crowded, tickets for many scenic spots are sold out, and it is difficult to find a room in the county. On February 15, Meituan released the 2024 Spring Festival "Eat, Drink and Play" consumption insight, showing that the life service industry has achieved a "good start", with the average daily consumption scale of the Spring Festival holiday increasing by 36% year-on-year, an increase of more than 155% compared with 2019, and the consumption scale of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Shandong and other provinces ranks among the top in the country. Consumption in areas below the fourth tier grew at the fastest year-on-year, and the sinking market ushered in a strong recovery, becoming a "new engine" to stimulate holiday economic growth. Under the trend of returning to hometown for reunion and tourism for the New Year, personalized needs such as exploring the New Year's flavor of small towns and night tours of lanterns in scenic spots have led consumption to continue to heat up and sink.
According to Meituan, the sinking market has become a "new engine" to stimulate economic growth during the Spring Festival holiday.
[The average daily consumption scale of Henan increased by 193% compared with the Spring Festival in 2019].
On February 15, Meituan released the 2024 Spring Festival "Eat, Drink and Play" consumption data, showing that the life service industry in Henan Province ushered in a "good start", with the average daily consumption scale during the Spring Festival holiday increasing by 33% year-on-year, an increase of 193% compared with the Spring Festival in 2019, and the consumption scale ranked seventh among provinces in the country. The top three prefecture-level cities in Henan Province in terms of consumption scale are Zhengzhou, Luoyang and Kaifeng.
Among them, the average daily consumption scale of Luoyang's life service industry increased by more than 62% year-on-year, with the fastest growth rate. Luoyang's Dennis Old Town Octagonal Gold Street, Xinduhui Wangfujing, and Baolong City Plaza have become the top ten popular business districts in Henan Province, accounting for nearly half of the consumption during the Spring Festival holiday.
Tourism consumption ushered in a rapid recovery. Meituan data shows that during the Spring Festival holiday, the scale of cultural tourism consumption such as accommodation and scenic spots in Henan Province increased by more than 80% year-on-year. The main sources of foreign tourists are from Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and other places.
The night economy also adds more vitality to Chinese New Year consumption. Immersive night tours such as the Year of the Dragon Light Exhibition and themed light and shadow shows have been launched in various places to boost the popularity of nighttime consumption.
Luoyang Peony Pavilion Thousand Lanterns Festival Spring Lantern Festival. Photo courtesy of the scenic spot.
The Luoyang Peony Pavilion Thousand Lantern Festival opened on February 9, and thousands of peony lanterns were polished by 200 Zigong lantern craftsmen from more than 1,000 kilometers away for 17 days. Among them, "Peony Lantern Emperor" was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest vertical lantern, with a diameter of 4503 meters, which is equivalent to more than 100 adults standing side by side, and there are more than 50,000 internal light sources alone.
According to the introduction. In the first five days of the Spring Festival, the scenic spot has received more than 40,000 tourists. During the Spring Festival, the scale of nighttime consumption in Henan Province accounted for about 52%, an increase of 44 percentage points over the same period last year.
According to Meituan data, during the Spring Festival holiday, the scale of nighttime consumption in the country accounted for about 53%, an increase of 48 percentage points over the same period last year, and the ticket price of leisure blocks increased by more than 1 times. Beijing, Qingdao, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and other places have the highest search popularity for "night play".
[There are long queues at popular restaurants, and the "homecoming party" stimulates the county's food economy].
This is a festival, this is a war! When it comes to this year's Spring Festival, a manager from Chengdu Roaring Old Hot Pot sighed in the circle of friends. Her store has 71 tables, with an average of more than nine to ten rounds of tables per day, and there is a hot trend of queuing more than 3,000 tables per day on the Meituan platform.
During the Spring Festival holiday, the orders for dishes in restaurants in many places are constantly refreshed, and the queues are constantly refreshed. Photo courtesy of a hot pot restaurant in Chengdu.
During the Spring Festival, reunion dinners and outings have become the main force of catering consumption, and restaurants around the country have also joined forces with platforms to create a "market" online and offline, effectively stimulating market potential. At present, there are more than 10,000 scenic restaurants, thousands of must-eat restaurants and nearly 6,000 county-level high-quality stores in the "Year of the Dragon" activity of Meituan Food**, and the limited-time seckill, live broadcast explosions, and New Year reunion banquets are very popular.
According to data from Meituan and Dianping, in the first five days of the Spring Festival holiday, the number of orders for multi-person dine-in** nationwide increased by 161% compared with last year, and the number of orders contributed by consumers from other places increased by 186%.
The mobile boom of visiting relatives and friends during the Spring Festival has also led to the rapid growth of catering consumption in the county. According to Meituan data, Changshu, Kunshan, Jiangyin, Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu and Tengzhou in Shandong have become the top five counties in terms of local dine-in orders, with Tengzhou growing the fastest by 173% compared to last year.
With the development of economy and society, the consumption potential of life services in domestic county areas is strong, and the first-class rate of catering stores is also steadily increasing. In the first three quarters of 2023, the number of catering merchants with dine-in** transactions in Meituan in county-level townships and townships (excluding municipal districts) increased by more than 53% compared to 2022.
["Full room" has become a key word, and "New Year's Tour" has driven the accommodation industry in small towns to rise].
During this year's Spring Festival, there are more and more groups of "tourism for the New Year". According to Meituan's data, the scale of tourism consumption has increased significantly compared with the same period in 2019 and 2023. Among them, the accommodation bookings of families and children increased by more than 70% year-on-year. With the help of multiple needs such as returning to the hometown to visit relatives and leisure travel, and with the help of cultural tourism and consumption promotion activities in various places, the accommodation industry in various places has ushered in a significant upswing from first- and second-tier cities to small counties, and many scenic spots have reproduced the popularity of "people from the crowd".
With the improvement of infrastructure, more and more niche places with delicious food and fun have been discovered, and the county hotel industry is booming, taking Yangshuo County in Guilin, Huidong County in Huizhou, Pingyao County in Jinzhong and other places as examples, the number of accommodation orders ranks among the top 10 counties in the country.
During the Spring Festival holiday, the top 10 destinations with the highest full room rate in the country.
Theme parks have always been a popular destination for Chinese New Year. According to Meituan data, during the Spring Festival, theme parks ranked first in terms of orders for all types of tourist attractions. There is a long queue in front of the attractions at Universal Beijing Resort; Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park has launched an 18-day ultra-long fireworks festival since February 3, opening the starlight night show at the same time, and pre-selling on Meituan Live in advance; 5 days before the Spring Festival holiday, the highest number of visitors to the park in a single day reached 510,000, the number of visitors increased by more than 98% year-on-year, and the "double hotels" of Shanghai Haichang Ultraman Theme Hotel and Ocean Resort Hotel were fully booked.
Fireworks show in Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park. Photo courtesy of the scenic spot.
In terms of outbound travel, Meituan has launched a "50% discount accommodation voucher" in many popular destinations around the world, and through three price comparisons per day, it helps users travel "better and cheaper". During the Chinese New Year, Meituan's overseas hotel bookings hit a record high. Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea became the most popular destinations on the platform.
During the Spring Festival holiday, Meituan's orders related to leisure and entertainment increased by 190% year-on-year, bathing centers and health massage orders increased by 210% year-on-year, and experiences such as "catching dolls" became popular all over the country, with a year-on-year increase of 350%.
The Spring Festival holiday is an important node to stimulate domestic demand and activate consumption potential. Li Jiwei, vice president of Meituan Research Institute, said that as the "capillary" of domestic economic development, during this year's Spring Festival holiday, consumption in many life service industries such as food, housing, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment improved, making a good start for the annual consumer market and demonstrating the potential of domestic demand. At the same time, the effect of new consumption agglomeration areas and festivals created in various places in promoting consumption is becoming more and more significant, a large number of cross-format linkage scenarios such as "catering +" and "cultural tourism +" have emerged, and the online and offline marketing methods of the platform have been continuously renovated, and the consumer market is expected to continue to heat up in 2024.