The Greater Bay Area (GBA) has seen a tremendous jump in travel during the first week of the 40-day Lunar New Year travel rush, which runs between 2 February and 13 March.
According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport handled a record-breaking total of over 370,000 passengers during the rush period’s first week from 2 to 8 February, a rise of 18.8 percent year-on-year.
Pan Lei, the deputy director of the Guangzhou Baiyun Border Inspection Station, said that the airport saw a wave of people heading home for the holidays in the first week. Most of the arriving passengers consisted of migrant workers and overseas Chinese nationals looking to spend the Spring Festival in China.
Pan noted that the number of Chinese national arrivals exceeded those departing by 18.8 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese residents engaging in overseas trips jumped by 12.2 percent year-on-year, with these travellers mainly flying to destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Vietnam and Singapore.
Rail travel across Guangdong province also experienced a significant boost. Citing data from the Guangdong Transport Department, Nanfang Daily reported that the province’s train network helped to facilitate 10.63 million trips in the initial week of the travel rush, up 7.8 percent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, vehicular trips in Guangdong reached 193.69 million, a growth of 0.14 percent over the same period in 2025. Journeys made via marine transport hit a total of 820,500 trips, an increase of 2.66 percent, while those conducted by plane totalled 2.08 million, up 7.41 percent.
Overall, Guangdong registered roughly 207.23 million passenger trips in the first week of the travel rush, an increase of 0.62 percent year-on-year.
[See more: Guangdong handles 1.31 million passengers on first day of Lunar New Year travel rush]
Foot traffic across the GBA’s major ports has meanwhile been on the rise during the rush period as well. Zhuhai border inspection data cited by Nanfang Daily indicates that a record-breaking total of approximately 839,000 border crossings were made in the Gongbei, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hengqin and Qingmao checkpoints on 7 February.
By crossings, the Gongbei Port recorded roughly 463,000 entry and exit trips on Saturday, its highest number of single-day crossings in nearly six years.
Hengqin Port also recorded significant foot traffic on Saturday, registering around 127,000 inbound and outbound passenger crossings, as well as 13,200 vehicular crossings.
During the first week of the travel rush, Hengqin Port processed over 790,000 entries and exits, growing by 30.1 percent year-on-year. The checkpoint’s total number of crossings managed to exceed 10,000 on each day of this 7-day period.
Nationwide, Chinese authorities report that more than 1.41 billion crossborder trips were made during the initial week of the travel rush. This figure is equivalent to an average of 200 million trips per day, up 2 percent year-on-year.
Car trips were the preferred mode of travel, with the Ministry of Transport stating that 1.3 billion trips took place nationwide during the first week. This was followed by over 86 million rail trips, 4.9 million marine trips and over 16 million aviation trips.
Considered to be one of the largest yearly human migrations, the Spring Festival travel rush is characterised by hundreds of millions of people returning to their hometowns across China, resulting in increased pressure on the country’s transport system. Chinese authorities are forecasting 9.5 billion cross-regional trips during this year’s rush.
