(Yicai Global) March 2 -- Chinese people were already making hotel reservations for the upcoming Labor Day break in May in February, a month earlier than they used to do before the pandemic, demonstrating that the country’s tourism industry is bouncing back fast, online news outlet The Paper reported.

The number of hotel bookings made two months in advance for the May Day holiday, which runs from April 29 to May 3 this year, jumped 22 percent from a year earlier, according to online travel agency Travelgo. And in the past 30 days, the number of user searches for travel-related items over Labor Day surged 50 percent year on year.

Qunar logged an almost two-and-a-half fold leap in hotel bookings for the Labor Day holiday from 2019 as of Feb. 28, according to an insider at the travel agency. The most popular destinations were Beijing, Changsha, Xi'an, Chengdu and Shanghai.

And holiday bookings for the Labor Day long weekend on Ctrip, the country’s biggest travel platform, surged two-and-a-half fold from a year ago as of Feb. 28.

The growing demand is pushing up prices. The average price of a room at a five-star hotel in February was 12.4 percent higher than during the May Day holiday last year, according to Travelgo data.

Editor: Kim Taylor