Consumer market warms up in Hainan's county-level areas

Tourists play at Dongjiao Coconut Forest in Wenchang, a county-level city of Hainan province on Jan 24. [Photo/IC]

In addition to popular tourist cities like Sanya and Haikou, Hainan's tourism heat expanded to more county-level areas during the Spring Festival holiday. The consumer markets in Wanning, Wenchang, Qionghai, and Lingshui show obvious recovery.

According to data from the retail platform Meituan, during the Spring Festival holiday the growth rate of retail orders in Hainan's county-level areas reached 64 percent, 20 percentage points higher than the average growth rate in Hainan province.

Taking Wanning as an example, during the Spring Festival holiday, Wanning received 651,000 tourists, an increase of 29.84 percent year on year, and the tourism revenue was 412 million yuan ($60.8 million), an increase of 35.84 percent year on year.

Hainan has an excellent ecological environment, beautiful island scenery and rich tourism resources.

In the past five years, it has continued to coordinate regional development, and improve infrastructure construction throughout the region. The railway and expressway network has been improved, with the mileage of highways and expressways increasing by 35.9 percent and 75.9 percent respectively.

Benefiting from these infrastructure improvements, the tourism market in Hainan's county-level areas developed rapidly and absorbed radiated benefits from Sanya, Haikou and other popular cities.

Hainan tourism practitioners said that even though the Spring Festival holiday has passed, Hainan's tourism heat is expected to continue until March, and the county-level areas' tourism market will continue to show strong consumption potential.