In one of the stranger pieces of news to emerge during the COVID-19 outbreak, Wuhan has just been named as China’s most sought after post-pandemic destination.

Despite being the initial epicentre for the COVID-19 outbreak, the city of Wuhan is now at the top of Chinese travel wish lists for 2020.

According to a new joint study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Tourism Research Center and Tencent Culture and Tourism, the city of Wuhan has now overtaken Beijing as the most coveted domestic destination among Chinese citizens.

The study, which sought to understand travel needs and trends amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, took information from 15,000 questionnaires and big data from more than 20 million social media posts and forums, on top of a dozen one-to-one interviews.

The city of Wuhan has been closely associated with the novel coronavirus pandemic and remains one of the hardest hit cities in China.

Hubei province (where Wuhan is located) didn’t even appear in the top ten at the time of the last survey, and the city of Wuhan had previously ranked only eighth on the list.

The results, released on April 28th, also found that Thailand had beaten out the United States as the international destination of choice among Chinese travellers since the coronavirus outbreak, closely followed by Russia and Japan.

The survey results have become one of the biggest trending topics on Weibo.

Wuhan ended its 76-day coronavirus lockdown on Wednesday April 8th.