The consumer price index in January came in at 2.1 percent higher than a year earlier, up from the 1.8 percent annual gain seen in December, with airfares, movie tickets and travel prices all rising notably.
The prices of gasoline and diesel continued the upward trend with year-on-year growth of 33.4 percent and 36.3 percent, respectively, while airfare surged by 28.1 percent from a year ago.
The agency attributed the CPI rise to increases in the prices of fuel, fruits, airfare, vegetables, restaurant food, house rent and meat.
China's CPI inflation has clawed its way back above zero, with airfares recording a sizable bounce.
However, it may still take some time for outbound tourism to fully recover as the industry grapples with obstacles such as difficulties in obtaining visas and expensive airfares.
"The rapid recovery of domestic travel demand has driven an increase in airfares, making flight tickets the most heavily weighted expenditure in travel consumption," said Xiao Peng, a researcher at the big data research department of Qunar.
Apart from Beijing, the airfare to other cities showed a "good price" during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.
Currently, the average airfare price booked via Qunar was just 600 yuan, the lowest price in history, said ThePaper.
Some airline ticket prices are even cheaper than train tickets, such as the airfare from Zhengzhou to Ningbo 362 yuan while the second-class fare of high-speed train ticket price is 528 yuan.
Statistics from online travel agency Ctrip showed people were more eager to travel to mark the festival this year than in 2019, pushing airfares to major cities up by 17 percent year-on-year since the weekend.
It will offer low airfares – approximately half of what Air Astana offers today – on mostly domestic routes – but it is expected to expand onto regional international routes in the mid-term.
It will be good for the mid to long-term prospects of Air Astana, and we hope, very welcome to the Kazakhstan travelling public, who will be able to benefit from significantly cheaper airfares on domestic and regional routes".