Hainan beaches see influx of tourists due to summer heatwave
Wu Ruoshan, a researcher at the Tourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in addition to beaches, tourists are also interested in trips to the central part of the island covered with tropical forests, where the mountains tend to be cooler in summer than the coastline
HAIKOU /China/, July 17. /TASS/. Beach holidays on Hainan Island became especially popular during this season's abnormal heat wave in China. The number of booked rooms in Hainan's hotels increase 50% over the last six months compared with the first half of June, the Hainan Daily newspaper reported citing Feizhu, a national online platform for hotel reservations and ticket purchase.
According to the publication, demand for flights to Hainan was 30% higher than last month. At the same time, the average cost of the flight increased by 32%.
"Recently the weather has been extremely hot in many regions of our country, in some of them the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. However, it is only 29-30 degrees Celsius on Hainan right now, thanks to the sea breeze," commented Wu Ruoshan, President of the New Era Cultural Tourism Research Institute and special researcher at the ITourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He noted that in addition to beaches, tourists are also interested in trips to the central part of the island covered with tropical forests, where the mountains tend to be cooler in summer than the coastline. Vacationers are also showing great interest in duty-free shopping.
According to Feizhu, Hainan is most popular with residents of Hangzhou (east of China) and Wuhan and Changsha (central part of the country) this season. The province attracts more and more tourists from Shanghai and Beijing, from such major Chinese cities as Chengdu and Chongqing (southwest), Shenzhen (south) and Zhengzhou (center). Many vacationers go to the city of Wanning on the east coast for surfing, as well as to the small island of Wuzhizhou, which is well known among Chinese scuba divers.
Earlier, China's State Climate Center reported that more than 900 million people of the country's estimated 1.4 billion people have been affected by an abnormal heat wave for the past 30 days, something that hasn't happened in more than 60 years. According to its information, the temperature broke a historical record in some areas of China.