The 19th Golden Week holiday during this year's Spring Festival lived up to its name as businesses cashed in on holiday spending, according to the tallies released by the government.

The National Tourism Administration announced yesterday that 92.2 million tourists traveled across the country during the week-long holiday, a year-on-year rise of 17.7 percent.

Tourism revenues during the holiday saw a year-on-year jump of 19 percent to reach 43.8 billion yuan ($5.6 billion), the administration said.

Retail sales of consumer goods rose 15 percent year-on-year to 220 billion yuan ($28.2 billion) during the holiday, the Ministry of Commerce said.

Retail sales in the catering industry surged 18 percent compared with the figure during last year's Spring Festival holiday.

Caterers in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province saw the biggest year-on-year surge in retail sales 25 percent. The figure grew by 20 percent for caterers in Beijing.

Ninety-five percent of the restaurants in Beijing received reservations for family reunion dinners during the holiday, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The spending spree on catering is expected to last for another week, right up until the Lantern Festival on March 4.

"People seemed to be more passionate about catering than they were last year and apparently did not feel content to eat out only for the New Year's Eve dinner," said Bian Jiang, deputy secretary-general of the China Cooking Association.

"All top-, middle- and low-grade restaurants were crowded this year, while in the past people mainly went to middle-grade ones," Bian was quoted by the Economic Daily as saying.

Meanwhile, high-end household electric appliances and digital products were hot sellers in major cities.

Sales of flat screen TV sets, including liquid crystal display (LCD) and plasma screen sets, accounted for 90 percent of the total sales of color TV sets in Beijing. Sales of high-end mobile phones soared 40 percent in Gome retail stores in Chongqing.

Motorcycles priced between 3,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan ($380-620) sold well in rural areas in Hubei and Jiangsu provinces as more and more farmers opted to travel by motorcycle to make New Year visits to relatives and friends, People's Daily reported.

China has three Golden Week holidays every year the Spring Festival holiday, the May Day holiday and the National Day holiday in October.

The government created the Golden Week holidays in 1999 in the hope of encouraging people to spend more money to spur the economy.

(China Daily 02/26/2007 page2)