YICHANG -- China's railway authorities have rushed to launch passenger services to deal with the ongoing sharp boom in tourism with the offer of low-price tickets for tourist travel by train.

On Monday morning, a chartered train for inter-provincial railway travel departed from Shanghai, carrying over 300 passengers to the popular tourist destination of Yiling in Yichang City of central China's Hubei Province.

Since the beginning of spring, China Railway Shanghai Bureau Group has actively formulated high-quality railway tourism promotion plans and started the operation of chartered trains aiming for popular destinations, in order to meet the growing travel needs of passengers.

"Traveling on the railway is very convenient," said a passenger embarking on a five-day tour to the Three Gorges Dam and other attractions in Yiling.

"As elderly people, we are glad to take the train for travel," said another passenger.

General speed trains have also been included in the railway tourism promotion plans to enrich choices for passengers.

"We plan to put into operation 90 general speed tourist trains and over 20 high-speed tourist trains this year. Later on, we will operate multiple long-distance tourist train transport services with multiple stops on routes connecting Xinjiang, Gansu, the country's northeastern regions, as well as Chongqing and Chengdu in the southwest," said Li Li, vice president of Shanghai Railway International Tourism Group Co., Ltd.

In the past two months, the total number of charted trains for tourist travels departing from Shanghai already surpassed the number of those operating during the summer peak travel season in 2019.