There is much to be thankful for living in Nanjing. While the economies of many cities struggle with their post-COVID recovery, we in the Southern Capital these days have the digital wallets of more tourists than ever helping to prop up our salaries.
¥154.216 billion in the first 6 months of this year, to be exact, an increase of 54.2 percent on the same period last year. Looking back to pre COVID, it is also an increase of 20.7 percent over the same period in 2019.
In their recent report, online travel agency, Tuniu, has put tourists to Nanjing at #2 on its list of “Top Tourist Sources for Travel in 23H1”, second only to Shanghai.
With those numbers being reliable, that’s a fine indication, if ever there was one, that Nanjing’s sphere of influence in the national tourism market has increased significantly.
And it’s not just the numbers which are up, it’s a whole new market. Visitors from other cities have replaced local citizens as the sector’s main force, now making up for 60 percent of consumption.
According to Nanjing’s smart tourism big data operation monitoring platform, in the first half of 2019, local tourists accounted for about 56 percent of the market. But this year, us locals make up just 41 percent of tourists.
Visitors from other cities in Jiangsu made up 14 percent of tourists, while 44 percent were from further afield. A report by Nanjing Daily today does not account for the missing 1 percent.
So where do all these people go once they arrive in Nanjing?
Topping the charts by a wide margin was Confucius Temple, where evening cruises on the Qinhuai River are now hard to come by. With some 25.63 million people visiting the area in the first half of the year, crowds are to be found around Confucius Temple today even after 22:00.
Next up, with almost half as many visitors so far this year, was the Zhongshan Scenic Area, attracting 13.96 million visitors, followed by the 7.33 million people who went to have fun around Xuanwu Lake.
But our city’s visitors are not just here to play, many are fond of a spot of learning too. Nanjing’s cultural and museum venues received 4.839 million tourists in the first half of 2023, representing a year-on-year surge of 348 percent.
Among them, the Nanjing Museum ranked first in terms of visitor numbers, while also popular were the Nanjing China Imperial Examination Museum, the Oriental Metropolitan Museum; The 3rd-6th Century, and the Yunjin Brocade Museum.
