Cherry blossom tourism drives Chinese visitors to Japan

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As the weather turns warm, Chinese tourists are flocking to many flower tourist attractions both at home and abroad.

Ctrip, a Shanghai-based large-scale online tourism enterprise, released a Global Flower Tourism Trend Report for 2018 on Friday, which looked into the hottest floral tourist attractions around the world and Chinese tourists’ preferences.

According to the report, the search volume grew 500 percent on Ctrip, with keywords like cherry blossom, peach blossom and rape flowers.

For overseas tourism, Japan has undoubtedly become the most popular place for cherry blossom tourism and has been cited as the main reason for Chinese people visiting during March and April.

Tourists are taking selfies with cherry blossoms in Japan. /VCG Photo

The report showed that tens of thousands of Chinese tourists had signed up for the Japanese cherry blossoms sightseeing trip on Ctrip, and the bookings of related products have peaked recently.

It said 600,000 Chinese tourists are expected to view cherry blossoms in Japan this year, spending up to 8 billion yuan.

According to the statistics of the Japan National Tourism Organization, 7.35 million Chinese tourists visited Japan last year. During the cherry blossom season in March and April, Japan received over 500,000 Chinese tourists for each month.

Tourists posing for photos with cherry blossom trees in Japan. /VCG Photo

The appreciation of Chinese yuan to US dollar and Japanese yen led to a decline of between 5 percent and 10 percent in the price of a tr[p to Japan last year, the report said.

Apart from Japan, Europe and North America are popular destinations for flower tourism. According to the data of Ctrip’s overseas travel products, the Tulip Festival in the Netherlands, the Lavender Festival in France, and Cherry Blossom Festivals in Washington and Vancouver are also popular flower tourism products for Chinese tourists.