The Spring Festival holiday is a good time to return home to travel, and it also brings about a wave of payment and consumption. Taking stock of data released by platforms such as Alipay and WeChat, we can find that during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake, while travel and consumption in many places were booming, many characteristic economies also showed great vitality. At the same time, cross-border consumption is growing rapidly.

On January 29, people selected lanterns at the Confucius Temple Lantern Market in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. (Photo by Su Yang)

This year's Spring Festival holiday, there are continuous travels in China "from south to north". According to Alipay data, northern cities that southerners love to travel include Beijing, Harbin, Chenyang, Qingdao, Xi'an, etc., while southern cities that northerners love to travel include Sanya, Kunming, Xiamen, Zhuhai, Quanzhou, etc.

In terms of outbound travel, data from Alipay and WeChat show that payments are relatively popular in Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Hong Kong, China and other places. At the same time, emerging niche destinations such as Switzerland, Austria, and Türkiye have attracted much attention, and Luxembourg has become the number of WeChat Pay offline transactions to grow at the highest rate.

At the same time, during the Spring Festival, consumption in my country's "beautiful" industries, milk tea, life and entertainment fields was also very popular.

Data from WeChat shows that the week before the festival, the number of WeChat payments in the "beautiful" industry, including hair salons, manicures and eyelashes, increased by 29% month-on-month. Among them, Shanxi, Qinghai and Shaanxi rank among the top three in search popularity growth.

During the Spring Festival, the "presence" of milk tea remained high. Among the top 30 high-frequency words in WeChat search popularity, milk tea brands occupied 5 seats; the number of WeChat payments related to the life entertainment industry increased by 41% month-on-month the week before the festival.

In addition, the green consumption model is loved by more and more people. The week before the Spring Festival holiday, Alipay car rental orders increased by 140% year-on-year, and camera rental orders increased by 180% year-on-year.

On February 3, foreign tourists visited the Ditan Spring Festival Cultural Temple Fair. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Xin

While domestic Spring Festival consumption is "changing" in a variety of ways, payment consumption for inbound tourists has also increased.

WeChat data shows that from New Year's Eve to the fifth day of the lunar month, the number of inbound tourists' consumption increased by 134% year-on-year compared with last year's Spring Festival.

Alipay data shows that from New Year's Eve to the fourth day of the New Year, the consumption amount of inbound tourists using Alipay increased by 1.5 times compared with last year's Spring Festival holiday, and the number of Chinese merchants using Alipay to receive foreign tourists has also doubled. Among them, foreign tourists who enjoy the 240-hour transit visa-free policy and the unilateral visa-free policy have increased by nearly twice the amount of consumption by Alipay compared with last year's Spring Festival holiday.

In addition to the destinations that have been popular inbound travel for a long time, this year's Spring Festival, inbound tourists who love to use Alipay to travel and consume in depth include Suzhou, Zhongshan, Foshan, Xi'an, Jiangmen, Wuxi, Quanzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Xiamen, etc.

Cultural, technology, and natural scenery are all Chinese charms in the eyes of foreigners. During this Spring Festival, Beijing Palace Museum, Summer Palace, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, Yuyuan, Sichuan Jiuzhaigou, Lijiang Yulong Snow Mountain, Zhangjiajie Wulingyuan-Tianmenshan Tourism Zone, Guangzhou Changlong Tourism Resort, Jiaxing Wuzhen Ancient Town Tourism Zone, and Chengdu Jinli Ancient Street became the top ten scenic spots for inbound tourists to use Alipay to "check in".

"The good performance of consumption during the Spring Festival shows the strong vitality, potential and resilience of my country's economy, and the enthusiasm of inbound tourism also reflects the unique charm of Chinese culture on the world stage." Wen Bin, chief economist of China Minsheng Bank, said that with the support of a series of policies to boost consumption and expand domestic demand in all aspects, it is expected that the consumption environment will continue to be optimized and the consumption momentum will be further enhanced. (Reporter Zhang Qianqian)