The four-day May Day holiday saw over 30 million tourists visit Guangdong province, according to government data cited by GRT Radio. This staggering number, which is 6 million more than the population of Australia, is a 15.5% increase from last year’s tourist numbers.  

According to the government statistics, these visitors to our fair province generated more than RMB18 billion in revenue, a 19.1% increase over 2018.

Other interesting stats revealed in the wake of the holiday include: 1) of the 30 million visitors to Guangdong, 32% were traveling with children; 2) Guangdong was the fourth most popular destination for long-distance tourists, after Hainan, Yunnan and Fujian; 3) RMB2,600 was the average amount spent by tourists in China’s top 10 most visited cities; and 4) Chinese people born in the 1950s spent the most.

We reimagine one of Guangzhou’s most iconic sites swarmed (by emojis) over the May Day holiday. Image by Matthew Bossons/That’s

This year’s official May 1 holiday spanned four days, from May 1-4, although it hasn’t always been this way.

From 1999 to 2008, the May Day – or Labor Day – holiday was elevated to a ‘Golden Week,’ a holiday which lasts a full seven days. In the decade following 2008, the holiday was limited to a single day off work.  But this year, the holiday was stretched to four days, running from Wednesday, May 1 to Saturday, May 4, according to an official Central Government announcement released on March 22. 

But, as often happens with multi-day Chinese holidays, Sunday, April 28 and Sunday, May 5 were adjusted as workdays this year, so the number of workdays in the months of April and May remained unchanged from last year.

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To see the full list of China’s public holidays for 2019, click here.

[Cover image via Qingbao Meng/Unsplash]