Travel demand across China recovered significantly during this year's seven-day Spring Festival holiday following the implementation of various promotional campaigns and the introduction of preferential policies, according to statistics released by local tourism authorities.

The number of tourists in some provinces from Jan 21 to 27 including Yunnan, Zhejiang and Jiangsu surpassed that of 2019, the year before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the statistics.

A rebound in tourism during the weeklong holiday has been observed in many regions across a range of activities. For example, ice and snow leisure activities in Shandong province proved popular.

"There were so many people playing on the ski slopes. My two kids had a great time playing the ice and snow sports," said Xu Jie, a Jinan local who took his kids skiing.

In addition, Taishan Mountain, an internationally renowned scenic spot in the province, welcomed 302,500 tourist arrivals during the festival, hitting a record high for the period in the past decade, according to statistics from the Shandong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism.

It added that during the weeklong holiday, the province's 14 5A-rated scenic spots, China's highest-ranking tourist attractions, received 3.51 million visitors, up 90.6 percent year-on-year.

The boom in tourism is believed by many to bode well for steady growth in the year ahead.

People's desire for travel was unleashed after China optimized COVID-19 response measures, which laid a foundation for the high-level and steady growth and recovery of the tourism economy throughout the year, Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency on Sunday.

A total of 308 million domestic trips were made across China during the holiday, a year-on-year growth of 23.1 percent. These trips generated total revenue of 375 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 30 percent, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.