Chinese outbound tourist trips grow, diversify during National Day holiday

BEIJING - Chinese outbound tourist trips grew in number and diversified in destinations during the past week-long National Day holiday, official data showed Friday.

About 1.4 million Chinese people joined overseas packaged tours from Oct 1 to Oct 7, up 11.9 percent year on year, according to the data from China National Tourism Administration (CNTA).

The Republic of Korea and Japan are the top two destinations for outbound trips, while Russia stood out as the third most popular place for travel, reporting a year-on-year increase of 103.1 percent in visitors, according to CNTA.

Meanwhile, visa-free policies attracted more Chinese tourists to lesser known destinations such as Morocco, Tonga and Tunisia, which recorded visitor growth of about 400 percent year on year.

However, China's Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan saw dropping mainland tourists, which fell by about 127 percent, 162 percent and 228 percent respectively as many choose to visit them during weekends or shorter holidays, CNTA said.