Spring Festival Consumer Boom: Beijing Commercial Districts See Rising Dining Trends, Reverse New Year Celebrations Become a New Trend

During the Spring Festival holiday, the national consumer market showed a prosperous scene. Business big data monitoring indicated that, during the first four days of the holiday, the average daily sales of key retail and catering enterprises nationwide increased by 8.6% compared to the same period last year. Meanwhile, the 78 pedestrian streets (commercial districts) monitored by the Ministry of Commerce experienced simultaneous growth in both foot traffic and revenue during the first three days, with increases of 4.5% and 4.8%, respectively.

This year’s Spring Festival, with a nine-day holiday, changed people’s ways of celebrating the New Year and their travel rhythms. As “reverse reunion” became a new trend, major cities like Beijing became the New Year destinations for many families. Many young people chose not to return home all at once but instead invited their parents to reunite in their work cities. This change drove the flow of visitors on New Year’s Eve and the first day to large cities. According to transportation authorities, the total number of entries and exits in Beijing during the holiday is expected to reach 26.709 million, with an average of about 2.968 million entries and exits per day, up 3.7% year-on-year.

To welcome this consumption boom, Beijing launched over 460 New Year promotional activities under the theme “Happy Shopping for the New Spring, Beijing’s Four Seasons of Color.” Among them, the Longfu Temple New Year Market centered on “fortune” culture, featuring two performance spaces and 53 stalls, collaborating with 57 brands to create diverse consumption scenarios. Starting from the second day of the lunar new year, the market’s daily foot traffic exceeded 120,000, setting a new record since its renovation. The “Alley Market” in Daji Alley, by exploring the ancient capital’s cultural heritage, allowed citizens and tourists to experience the deep-rooted Spring Festival traditions of old Beijing. Meanwhile, the “Welcoming the God of Wealth Parade” at Blue Harbor and the “Lion King Entering Beijing” event at Sanlitun Taikoo Li combined traditional intangible cultural heritage with trendy landmarks, sparking new cultural collisions.

Catering consumption continued to heat up during the Spring Festival, with reunion scenes further amplified. A manager from Haidilao stated that the customer flow at their Beijing and Shenzhen locations on New Year’s Eve and the first day of the lunar new year increased by over 18% and 17%, respectively, compared to last year. Across the country, during the first five days of the holiday, Haidilao served over 7 million customers, with customer flow on New Year’s Eve and the first day increasing by more than 10%.

Spring Festival gatherings also boosted catering consumption. Ms. Zhang, a citizen, started booking a private room for a dinner on the fifth day of the lunar new year from the first day, but after making calls, she could only choose a relatively distant hotpot restaurant. Mr. Song decided to dine out spontaneously but faced difficulties everywhere and finally had to share a table. “Not to mention a private room, there weren’t even large tables available. In the end, the restaurant combined four-person tables into a long table for ten of us,” he said helplessly.

Data from Dianping shows that during the first four days of the holiday, the overall traffic on the “Must-Eat List” increased by nearly 40% compared to the same period last Spring Festival, with off-site traffic rising nearly 50%. Driven by the trend of “reverse New Year,” Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Chengdu ranked in the top five for overall traffic on the “Must-Eat List,” with order volumes for listed merchants increasing by 81% compared to last year’s Spring Festival. Industry insiders pointed out that the booming Spring Festival catering consumption not only reflects the continuous release of residents’ consumption potential but also demonstrates the positive effects of digital empowerment, scene innovation, and service upgrades in the catering industry.