A homestay in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/WeChat account: huzhoufabu]

Rural tourism in Huzhou, East China's Zhejiang province posted a strong recovery during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday which ended on June 5.

More than 640,000 visitors flocked to the city's rural areas during the three-day break, generating 461 million yuan ($70.92 million) in tourism revenue, according to official data from the Huzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Film and Tourism.

Huzhou's rural homestays received over 70,000 visitors during the holiday and raked in more than 40 million yuan in turnover. Their occupancy rate was 17.38 percent higher than that of January-May period.

The recovery in rural tourism can be partly attributed to a string of measures rolled out by the local government to revive the cultural and tourism sectors, which have been severely hit by the COVID-19 epidemic.

One of these measures is the temporary refund of deposits for tourism service quality to local travel agencies. To date, more than 12 million yuan worth of deposits for tourism service quality have been refunded to 74 travel agencies in Huzhou.

The city has also issued coupons worth more than 135 million yuan to encourage spending in the cultural and tourism market.

Lan Qingxia, who runs a homestay in Huzhou, said that the homestay business has been getting better thanks to an interest-free loan worth 1 million yuan offered by the local government.