Wuxi tourism booms in Spring Festival

People enjoy plum blossom at Plum Garden. [Photo/wxrb.com]

Huishan Ancient Town crowded with visitors during the Spring Festival. [Photo/wxrb.com]

The main attractions in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, has been visited more than 2.4 million times during the Spring Festival holiday, the Wuxi tourism bureau announced on Feb 24.

The statistics shows that the total tourism revenues during the seven-day holiday exceeded 2.4 billion yuan ($384 million), up 11 percent compared to last year. The number of visitors also increased by 7.1 percent.

The attractions featuring folk customs, countryside and hot springs and family-oriented mid and long-distance trips were favored by local residents while scenic spots such as the Three Kingdoms Town and Water Margin Town were preferred by independent tourists during the Festival which run from Feb 18 to Feb 24.

Officials point to the on-line promotion on the tourism websites as the main factor behind such increased tourism activity in Wuxi. Traditional destinations such as Xihui Park and Huishan Ancient Town also attracted a large number of visitors through various sheep-themed activities as the symbol of the Chinese New Year of Sheep.

Different from previous years, the opening of metro added a new and convenient way of transportation for residents. Thanks to the metro, scenic areas such as Plum Garden, Chong'an Temple and Changguangxi Wetland Park received large number of tourists during the holiday. People can take metro to shop at the city center and visit the Nanchan Temple, Qingming Bridge and Grand Canal within close proximity. The average number of visitors every day to the Plum Garden reached around 60,000 during the holiday, up 150 percent compared to the previous year, as facilitated by the metro access.