Majority vote for longer Oct vacation in national poll
Over 50 percent of respondents in an online poll have voted to keep the seven-day Spring Festival and National Day holidays.
This shows that there is a strong desire in China for people to have longer holidays than currently, a tourism expert told the Global Times Monday.
Nearly 3 million people voted online to choose from three different holiday proposals for 2014 from China’s holiday authorities.
The schemes, while leaving the total number of 11 public holidays unchanged, offered options for the October 1 National Day Holiday of three, five or seven days, while leaving the Spring Festival break unchanged.
Fifty-four percent voted for the seven-day October holiday, while 27.9 percent preferred the five-day break and 18.1 percent voted for three days.
“The survey results reflect the public’s desire for longer holidays,” Zhang Shangzheng, a tourism professor with Anhui University said Monday.
“People prefer longer holidays for family visits or tourism to faraway destinations.”
China’s public holidays are too short compared to more developed countries, he noted.
Some of those who chose to keep the seven-day October break said that it was simply because there was no better choice.
Others want a return to the seven-day May Day Holiday, which was dropped in 2008 in favor of the current system of several shorter holidays throughout the year.
Many appealed to lengthen the Spring Festival holiday and to increase the total number of public holidays, the Legal Mirror reported.
The paper claimed to have an “anonymous insider” that said the final results of the holiday scheme will be published a week later.