About 4.2 million visitors are due in Shanghai during this week's National Day holidays beginning today, a rise of five percent compared with the last Golden Week holiday in October, according to the Shanghai Tourism Administrative Commission.

Meanwhile, local hotels have an average of 50 percent bookings during the week. Today more than 60 percent of hotel rooms have been booked.

On the other hand, 1,594 groups of 32,271 local tourists are travelling abroad during the holiday, an increase of 40 and 30 percent respectively from last year. They are mainly leaving for Northeast and Southeast Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, Thailand and Indonesia.

Hong Kong and Macau are still among the favorite overseas destinations for Shanghai residents.

The Shanghai Sightseeing Bus Center has arranged 122 tourism routes including 39 one-day trips, 67 for two days and 16 for three days. A total of 1,657 coaches will be dispatched to Shanghai's suburban scenic spots such as Qingpu District and Chongming County, and other tourist destinations in neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.

Center officials said short journeys are popular with local residents. By Saturday morning more than 13,000 sightseeing bus tickets had been sold.

Airline tickets are also in great demand. Popular routes include the cities of Xi'an, Urumqi, Chengdu, Kunming and Qingdao.

(Shanghai Daily October 1, 2007)