A software development company called 360 Technology Co. conducted a survey through collecting data from electronic ticket sales sites to measure the difficulty of booking tickets for the Chinese New Year.
The company gathered data through measurement of the length of time spent on buying a ticket for a particular destination. Of all provinces in China, users spend the most time looking for tickets to Hainan Province.
The site's data analyst, Zhang Lanpu, said that since Hainan's location is far and travel time is long, only a few trains are available.
He said, "Hainan is the southernmost island province. The number of train services available is small, and the travel times of train services to Hainan are all very long."
The average travel time to Hainan Province is 33.8 hours.
Hainan is also one of the most expensive destinations in China. According to one passenger, Lin Hongyuan, he spent more than 3,000 yuan for a business-class plane ticket from Shenzhen to Haikou.
Lin said that he was forced to buy a business class ticket because train tickets were already sold out
"Train tickets to Haikou via Guangzhou are much cheaper, but there are very few train services. I tried the browser plug-in designed to help purchase train tickets, but even that didn't help," Lin said.
Travel during the Chinese New Year is regarded as the largest human migration. Millions of citizens travel during this time of the year to reunite with families or take leisurely trips abroad.
As early as early January, routes fromTaipei to Hualien and other East Coast destinations were already sold out.
Tickets from Kaohsiung to Taitung, Taitung to Kaohsiung and express trains from Taipei to Luodong in Yilan were also sold out.