AS the summer vacation kicks off, Shenzhen’s tourism market is taking an upturn with the COVID-19 epidemic well under control in the city, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.

Statistics from an online travel agency showed that searches for flights arriving in and departing from Shenzhen have increased by 130 percent month on month, said the Daily.

Starting from July 6, Shenzhen citizens leaving Guangdong Province would no longer need to hold a negative result of a nucleic acid test conducted within 48 hours.

Cheng Chaogong, chief researcher with LY Research Institute, said that such a change in travel policy has increased local residents’ willingness to travel. Meanwhile, tourists from other cities will have a gradually restored confidence traveling to Shenzhen as no new local cases have been reported for weeks.

Cheng expected that the tourist traffic in Shenzhen during the summer vacation will return to normal in half a month or so.

According to data, theme parks such as Happy Valley, OCT East and Window of the World will become hot spots of parent-child travel. Yangmeikeng, Jiaochangwei and Xichong beaches, as well as other open coastal resorts, also attract tourists’ attention.

A staffer with Lvmama.com, an online travel service provider, told the Daily that according to their booking data so far, popular destinations for short-distance trips for local residents this summer include Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Qingyuan and Huizhou.

In terms of long-distance trips, Yunnan, Hainan, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia are popular destinations. The long-distance trips are mostly package tours, which mostly last more than six days.

China Southern Airlines saw 112 and 117 outbound flights from Shenzhen on Sunday and Monday, respectively. The number of outbound flights has basically returned to pre-epidemic levels, according to Shenzhen Economic Daily.

Shenzhen citizens’ travel demands which have been put on hold by the epidemic are now slowly being met. The number of air passengers to East China has grown significantly, with Shanghai and Hangzhou being popular destinations, said the Daily.