Red tourism, which refers to visiting historical sites with a modern revolutionary legacy, has become an increasingly popular choice for travelers in 2021, data from a recent report showed.

The number of searches for "red tourism" on Mafengwo, a Chinese travel service and social-networking platform, increased by 176 percent this year from a year earlier, according to the report jointly published by Mafengwo and China Tourism Academy.

Red tourist destinations in north China's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region have grown in popularity at the quickest rate nationwide, with the number of searches surging 240 percent year on year, the report said.

Some 41.7 percent of respondents to a survey in the report said they visited red tourist sites more than three times this year, and over 40 percent of them went to such places "frequently" and "voluntarily" for sightseeing and knowledge.

Red-themed homestay and live show are the favorite activities of tourists in 2021, with each of them accounting for nearly 20 percent of all activities in red tourism, according to the report.