Chinese tourists visiting popular island resort Hainan caught out by return ticket shortages amid Lunar New Year travel rush
- Air authorities look to lay on more flights as travellers who visited the tropical island on a whim find themselves caught out by lack of tickets
- Internet users share tips on alternative ways to get home, but many on social media say they only have themselves to blame for failing to plan ahead
The country’s biggest holiday period is well known for the mass movement of people, but some of those affected said they had turned up on a whim and decided to see how they liked the island before heading back.
“My decision to holiday in Hainan was not well planned. I found return tickets are more expensive than I expected, so I decided to wait a bit for a cheaper price,” one tourist wrote on the social media platform Weibo.
“This is my first time on a road trip to Hainan … I did not think that buying a return ticket would be a big problem,” another user said on the lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu. “But now I have learned my lesson.”
The province experienced a significant surge in passenger traffic during the holiday, with an overall year-over-year gain of more than 30 per cent, provincial authorities said.
The influx of visitors means return plane tickets are in short supply, authorities said, forcing travellers to pay high prices for business class flights – usually 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) or above, more than five times the cost of an economy class flight at other times of the year.