The Qingming Festival, also known as the tomb sweeping festival, is expected to breathe life back into China's domestic tourism industry.

The festival falls April 4 and the long weekend is expected to be the first mini peak season of 2021, according to a Trip.com, China's largest travel services provider. A Chinese hashtag that translates to the "Qingming holidays may have 100 million traveling' (#清明假期或有1亿人次出游), has been circulating on social media since the company released its projections based on ticket sales around the festivals.

That many trips would more than double the 43.25 million trips that the China Tourism Academy reported around Qingming in 2020 - at the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns in mainland China. The figure in 2020 was a 61% fall from a year earlier and translated into an 80% drop in revenue - which fell to 8.26 billion yuan ($1.17 billion). 

But travel providers in mainland China are hoping to make up for it this year. Trip.com reports the average price for a domestic economy flight has rebounded to 96% of what it was in 2019 and that the top destination this year is Sanya, on Hainan.

But even with all the good news for China's travel industry, the specter of COVID looms large. Travel outside or into mainland China remains very difficult and many are wary of rebounds.

Mak Sing Hang, who lives in Beijing, says she is still very cautious about venturing too far, even within mainland China. 

"I still refrain from planning trips to other provinces. While restrictions seem to have lifted in China, policies can always change overnight and I don't want to risk undergoing a two-week quarantine if I travel out of Beijing to other mainland cities," Mak told Business Times. "For now, I only plan to enjoy my long weekend in the Beijing countryside." 

She has no plans to head overseas anytime soon, either.

"Domestic travel in China seems possible now as the country is rolling out mass vaccination campaigns and China starts to allow foreigners who have taken a Chinese vaccine to come. But generally speaking, international travel still seems distant. It won't resume this year for sure," said Mak. 

She also doubted a consensus on vaccine recognition between different countries should she choose to cross borders soon. 

Mainland China appears to have largely contained the virus, which makes domestic travel a possibility and opens the prospect for a rebound for the industry but the same is not true everywhere. Variants are spreading rapidly. 

But while mainland China's travel and tourism industry is optimistic, the same cannot be said for Hong Kong, where vaccinations have been slow and some restrictions are still in place.

Travel agencies in Hong Kong have little if any business and many don't expect a rebound until next year. Derek Tse, general manager at Hong Kong-based travel agency Eco-Travel Ltd., is among those that has had to cancel trips and is struggling to make it through to the end of the pandemic. 

"Because of prohibitions on large group gatherings, we've had to cancel and refund bookings for our popular EcoJet boat tours," Tse told Business Times.

Still, he remains hopeful that current restrictions in Hong Kong will be relaxed after April 14, as the government has said.