Think Tank

Improving the vacation system is conducive to promoting leisure consumption

2025-06-16   

The 2025 government work report proposes to vigorously boost consumption and implement special actions to boost consumption, among which "implementing and optimizing the vacation system to unleash the consumption potential of culture, tourism, sports, and other industries" is one of the contents of the special action. The vacation system in our country has gone through a process of increasing and optimizing statutory holidays, from single day off to double day off. Since 2025, China has added Lunar New Year's Eve and May 2nd as statutory holidays, increasing the total number of holidays for all citizens to 13 days. The total number of holidays for the year has reached 117 days. But it should be noted that not everyone can meet this vacation standard. Better implementation of paid leave, weekends, and statutory holidays will further promote leisure consumption. At present, the main contradiction in Chinese society is the contradiction between the growing demand for a better life among the people and the unbalanced and inadequate development. This contradiction is manifested macroscopically as an imbalance and insufficiency in economic and social development, and microscopically as an imbalance between people's material and spiritual, work and life. Leisure time is an important indicator to measure the level of social development, reflecting the ability of society to provide resources for it and the degree to which people attach importance to leisure life. Leisure is also a product of social development at a certain stage. With the continuous improvement of social productivity, society has the ability to provide greater material security for leisure, making it possible for people to have more leisure time. At present, China has comprehensively built a moderately prosperous society, with abundant material supply and meeting people's basic material needs. Many people are pursuing more leisure to recuperate and enjoy life. Therefore, implementing and optimizing the vacation system can be said to be timely. Currently, residents' consumption demand has expanded from material consumption to experiential consumption, and leisure consumption such as cultural tourism has become a new consumption hotspot and an important consumption growth point. Leisure consumption not only requires economic ability, but also time requirements. Time is a limited resource, and leisure consumption often requires a certain amount of time. The imbalance between work and leisure time limits people's leisure consumption. During holidays, there are crowds of people everywhere, and their enthusiasm for traveling is very high. However, due to the concentrated travel time, the travel experience is not good. Time has become an important factor restricting the expansion of such consumption. Our research results show that many people with economic ability and travel needs do not have enough time to travel, which limits their travel consumption. According to the survey, 30.6% of people have the financial ability but do not have time to travel. It can be seen that the effective demand for residents' tourism consumption is very large, but due to time constraints, many people's tourism consumption is suppressed. Especially for those who have the economic ability but do not have the time, their potential tourism demand urgently needs to be released. Therefore, increasing vacation time is very helpful in expanding people's leisure consumption such as tourism. Leisure consumption will continue to increase with the improvement of people's education level. As emphasized in Peter Hall's theory of leisure culture, leisure is not only an individual's right and choice, but also closely related to culture, values, and social structures. Leisure culture reflects a society's values and consumption habits, and influences people's lifestyle and consumption behavior. With the popularization of higher education in our country, leisure consumption is becoming a new way of life, which puts higher demands on leisure time. Leisure is a way for people to meet their needs for a better life. Leisure activities can bring deeper life values, including social connections, health maintenance, and personal development. They are of great significance for improving quality of life, promoting physical and mental health, increasing social connections, and meeting personal development needs, reflecting the spiritual dimension of a better life. Therefore, promoting experiential leisure consumption is of great significance for improving residents' quality of life and meeting the needs of a better life. Implementing and optimizing the vacation system, allowing more people to have more time for leisure consumption, not only meets the needs of residents' consumption upgrading, but also has a positive impact on economic development. From the current perspective, leisure consumption is an important lever to promote consumption and expand domestic demand. China has formed a large middle-income group, and cultural and tourism consumption is a new hotspot for its consumption upgrade. Since 2023, cultural and tourism consumption has become a bright spot in the economy of various regions and a new growth point. With the increasing enthusiasm of people for travel, the supply problem of cultural and tourism consumption has also become prominent, such as overcrowding at tourist attractions, difficulty in booking tickets, and poor travel experience. To effectively improve the cultural tourism consumption experience, the cultural tourism industry needs to increase supply, improve management level, provide good services, constantly innovate, and promote high-quality development of the industry. Firstly, it is necessary to diversify the supply. Each region should explore the cultural connotations, highlight local characteristics, use culture to light up the economy, and avoid aesthetic fatigue caused by excessive commercialization. Secondly, we need to improve our management level and avoid formalism. Efforts should be made to effectively solve the problems of difficulty in booking various tickets, scalping tickets and increasing the burden on tourists, so as to make reservations for visiting tickets "scheduled" rather than "restricted". The third is to fully utilize information technology to improve efficiency, and optimize service resources through SMS prompts, big data technology, and other means. The fourth is to improve the overall level of the service industry and avoid certain non-standard behaviors that may affect the tourism experience. (New Society)

Edit:JIAYING XIAO Responsible editor:XINYU CHEN

Source:GMW.cn

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