(Yicai) Dec. 22 -- Chinese tourists are keen on going skiing and seeing the aurora borealis in places such as Japan, Finland, and Russia during the three-day holiday that starts a new year, per travel agencies.

Orders for skiing trips surged almost by six times this month from last month, according to a report by Trip.Com Group.

Bookings for group tours to go skiing during the upcoming holiday from Dec. 31 to Jan. 2 and Chinese New Year from Feb. 10 to 17 jumped by seven times and 17 times, respectively, from a year ago, per the operator of Ctrip and Qunar. Popular skiing destinations abroad include Japan, South Korea, Finland, and Russia. Orders to go to Finland and Sweden to see the northern lights grew by 73 percent and 10 percent, respectively, from a month ago.

For the three-day holiday, outbound bookings rose almost sixfold. Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and the United States are some of the most popular destinations. Most customers were born in the 1990s and 1980s, accounting for 39 and 30 percent of the total, respectively.

China is also attracting more foreign tourists since it started a visa-free pilot for six nations, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Malaysia. Evidently, accommodation bookings by foreign tourists in China for New Year's Day more than tripled from the same period in 2019, per Trip.Com.

Even domestic tourism is recovering quickly. Some of the biggest attractions for young adults who travel during New Year's Eve are mountain climbing, skiing, hot springs, concerts, and fireworks and the scale of such travel plans increased by almost 11 times in the past two weeks from a year ago, per Alibaba Group Holding's travel platform Fliggy.

On Tongcheng's platform, users began searching for information about fireworks on New Year’s Eve even one month in advance and the most popular destination is likely to be Shanghai Disney Resort.

Editor: Emmi Laine