Visitors fill up a scenic spot in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/Ningbo Daily]

The level of offline consumption in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province rebounded strongly during the Spring Festival holiday following the nation's optimization of COVID-19 control measures.

The sales of 50 monitored businesses, including shopping malls, supermarkets, car dealerships, hotels, and restaurants, in Ningbo totaled 693 million yuan ($99 million) during the seven-day break, which ended on Jan 27. The figure marked an increase of 4.7 percent over the same holiday period in 2019 before the COVID-19 epidemic, local authorities said.

Qiu Ting, who runs a homestay in Baiyanxia village, Ningbo's Xiangshan county, said that the rooms had already been fully booked before the holiday. 

The increasing orders bolstered Qiu's confidence that the tourism industry willl fully bounce back this year.

More than three years ago, Qiu resigned from her work as a nurse and invested 4 million yuan to transform an old house in her hometown into a homestay.

However, the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2019 inflicted severe harm on the domestic tourism sector, with Qiu's homestay being no exception. 

Her business' recovery in the wake of the waning epidemic, especially in the Spring Festival holiday, has now completely dispelled her previous concerns that all her investment would be wasted and she said she is motivated to roll out more innovative services to attract guests.

China Film Stellar International Cineplex in Cixi, a county-level city in Ningbo, saw its overall box-office earnings near 1.39 million yuan during the holiday, according to Liao Chunhua, manager at the cinema.

Despite it isn't the highest grossing Spring Festival holiday of all time for the cinema, the seven-day earnings were equivalent to nearly one third of its total last year, Liao added.