In this holiday season many people have decided to come to Shanghai to celebrate the New Year, and they're spending generously.

According to Shanghai's tourism big data monitoring, the city hosted a whopping 7.18 million tourists during the three-day New Year holiday, representing a 16.27 percent increase compared with the previous year.

Additionally, tourism consumption surged to 11.81 billion yuan ($1.66 billion) – up a hefty 24 percent year-on-year. Onsite consumer payments from Dec 29 to 31 reached 25.56 billion yuan, up by 38.7 percent compared with last year, according to the Consumer Market Big Data Laboratory (Shanghai). Key business districts in Shanghai experienced an 80 percent surge in onsite foot traffic, totaling 15.48 million people during the holiday period.

Most notably, out-of-town visitors contributed significantly to the shopping spree, spending 6.5 billion yuan and making 7.05 million transactions, which increased 16.9 percent and 24.2 percent respectively compared with the previous year.