(Yicai) March 22 -- Car rentals and tulip field tour bookings are up this year, as Chinese holidaymakers makes plans for the holiday around the Tomb Sweeping Festival next month.

Overseas auto rental is attracting a lot of searches for March 30 to April 6, according to travel agency Trip.Com. The average hire period is for nearly six days, with one-to-three day rentals almost tripling from a year ago. The top five motoring destinations are Japan, Thailand, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

Several European tours for the three-day holiday starting on April 4 have sold out, Spring International Travel Service said. The number of tours to view the tulip fields in the Netherlands and Belgium has tripled from the same period in 2019.

Some holidaymakers plan to take time off from April 1, extending what is a three-day public holiday for the Qingming Festival into an eight-day break suitable for overseas journeys.

Others plan to stay closer to home. Trip.Com data shows that searches for hotels in China over Qingming jumped 67 percent from a year ago and exceeded that of 2019. Bookings for blossom viewing tours soared more than six times, while those for hire cars more than tripled. 

Homestay platform Xiaozhu said bookings have soared nearly six times year on year. The cities of Nanjing, Wuhan, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Guangzhou are some of the popular destinations.

Editor: Emmi Laine