Amid Covid Restrictions, Road Trips Are the Safest Bet for Chinese Travelers

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For China’s week-long National Day holiday, many in the country took off on adventures. However, following recent lockdowns in popular tourist destinations, more and more travelers opt out of public transportation to rely on a freer – and more hip – way of moving around: road trips.

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According to Chinese online travel agency Trip.com, car rentals in China have seen a 152% uptick compared to pre-pandemic figures. Most of this growth is due to holidays as opposed to business trips.

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Many road trip aficionados in China rely on online communities to find travel companions. On platform Douban, a group named “We love road trips” has over 22,000 members who post their rough itineraries, hoping to find someone to share car rental costs with.

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According to Simon Son, the CEO of Car Rental Business at Trip.com the boom in road trips fueled the popularity of destinations that were once merely niche, such as provinces situated in the less-developed western part of China.

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