(Yicai) Feb. 24 -- Prices of flight tickets to first-tier cities from China’s southernmost Hainan province, a tropical island with special customs operations, have skyrocketed at the end of the Chinese New Year holiday as tourists get back to work.

China Southern Airlines had only a few seats left on flights from Sanya to Shenzhen yesterday and today, and they were business class tickets priced at up to CNY14,460 (USD2,100), Yicai learned. Meanwhile, most flights to Guangzhou or Beijing from Sanya were sold out yesterday and today, and only a few business class tickets were available to Shanghai.

In contrast, tickets for yesterday and today to Haikou and Sanya from the four first-tier cities were heavily discounted. For example, flights to Haikou from Beijing and Shenzhen were only CNY350 to CNY400 (USD50 to USD58) today.

Sanya was a popular destination for Chinese tourists during the Chinese New Year holiday, which ran from Feb. 15 to yesterday. In the first six days of the holiday, yachts in the city made a total of 7,034 voyages carrying 47,796 passengers, up 88 percent and 74 percent, respectively, from a year earlier, according to official data.

The massive tourist influx directly drove sales at Sanya’s offshore duty-free shops. On Feb. 19 alone, the city’s four offshore duty-free stores sold CNY252 million (USD36.5 million) worth of goods, up 263 percent from a year earlier, with the total sales for the month rising 12 percent to CNY2.8 billion (USD408.9 million) from the same period last year, according to data from the local commerce bureau.

Editor: Futura Costaglione