Travelers hitting the road to enjoy China's annual eight-day holiday between September 29 to October 6 – dubbed Golden Week – surged this year, elevating the domestic tourism market to a fresh high.

Domestic trips reached 754 million in the first seven days of the holiday period, up 78.9 percent year on year, while tourism revenue surged 132.6 percent from last year to 668.09 billion yuan ($92.81 billion), data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism showed on Friday.

Willingness to travel and consume has remained at a high level during the holiday among both urban and rural residents, making this year’s Golden Week the most popular one since data monitoring began, according to Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy.

The long holiday has also boosted cross-border travel. The National Immigration Administration estimates that the average daily number of inbound and outbound trips will hit 1.58 million, three times the level of last year.

Data from the online travel platform Ctrip showed that overall outbound travel orders during the holiday surged nearly 20 times year on year, with Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia emerging as the top destinations. Thailand rolled out a five-month visa-free policy for Chinese tourists on September 25.

Sales of catering companies increased by nearly 20 percent annually in the first seven days of the holiday, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. Catering spending in Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Wuhan jumped by 30.3 percent, 19.3 percent, and 16.3 percent year on year, respectively. Reunions and wedding banquets were among the most popular forms of consumption during the period.

Meanwhile, the Chinese box office raked in a revenue exceeding 2.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of nearly 70 percent, commerce ministry data showed.