High-end hotels get boost from holiday bookings

Young Chinese consumers who returned to their hometowns during the Spring Festival holiday this year also brought their urban spending habits back with them. Instead of staying at home, they opted for rooms at local luxury hotels, driving the significant growth of hotel bookings in small towns.

China's travel and consumption markets were boosted by hundreds of millions of Chinese people's family reunions. This year's eight-day Spring Festival holiday, which concluded on Tuesday, saw a record high volume of passenger traffic, according to Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.

Bookings at hotels in county-level cities jumped 40 percent year-on-year, with nearly half of such bookings made by travelers between age 25 and 35, Qunar said.