The week-long Labour Day holidays from May 1 to 7 ended yesterday.

A report from the National Holiday Affairs Office, issued yesterday evening, showed that 100 famous tourist destinations under the office's information system received slightly less visitors than the same period last year, but the revenue on entrance tickets increased 13.5 percent to 22 million yuan (US$2.65 million).

Many tourists continued on their way home yesterday, sustaining a peak in transportation that started on Monday.

The Ministry of Railways arranged 50 additional trains yesterday to make sure tourists could get home.

The nation's railway system was estimated to have carried 3.5 million passengers yesterday, a slight increase from last year's figures.

In Beijing, 27 additional trains took passengers to their home cities of Shanghai, Qingdao, Dalian and Hangzhou.

Airports also handled a large number of tourist flights.

It is expected that the Beijing Capital International Airport will have managed 690 flights, while in Guangzhou this figure will reach 550, a record high for the city during the holiday period.

International flight arrivals and departures, in particular from Japan and South Korea, are expected to have the highest increase compared with other flights.

There were reportedly no seats available on any domestic flights between big cities on the last day of the holiday. Even additional flights were said to have sold 70 per cent of their tickets.

Despite efforts made to relieve the tension in transportation, some tourists heading for big cities still had difficulty in obtaining tickets, the report noted. Therefore, inconvenience in transportation remains a factor in holding back tourists' enthusiasm, it said.

(China Daily May 8, 2002)