Boom time in Hainan

HOTEL room rates shot through the roof on Hainan, China's sunny island in the south, as a tourism boom there over the Chinese New Year break took even businesses by surprise.

Five-star lodgings in Sanya, the island's main resort town, went for as much as 15,000 yuan (S$3,100) a night, nearly 10 times the price of comparable rooms in China's most expensive cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Main carrier China Southern made last-minute plane diversions, adding more than 30 flights to cash in on the sudden influx of holiday tourists.

The latest surge is part of a larger Hainan craze in China that has sent the island's property and stock prices soaring to feverish levels, even as analysts remain mixed about an ambitious Beijing plan to turn the island into China's answer to Hawaii.

Early last month, the Chinese government unveiled a blueprint for transforming the country's southernmost province into a top international tourist destination by 2020.

Building on Hainan's natural strengths such as its year-long warm weather and golden beaches, the proposal - largely thin on details - discussed possible measures. They included providing visa-free travel and duty-free shopping, building a cruise centre and even developing a gaming industry, which some experts took to mean a horse-racing venue.