The growing spontaneity of travel planning among Chinese outbound travellers has been identified as a 'defining trend' in the latest China Outbound Travel Sentiment Survey for Q1 from China Trading Desk. TRBusiness assesses the indicators and what it means for travel retail in 2025 and beyond.

When we first launched the China Travel Dashboard in 2023, we set out to solve a specific problem: how to bring clarity and real-time intelligence to one of the fastest-evolving sectors in global travel — Chinese outbound tourism. What began as a tool for marketers quickly became essential for a broader set of stakeholders: financial planners, airport operators, supply chain strategists, and luxury retail managers, journalists — all trying to navigate the shifting tides of

In the 1990s, as Beijing loosened Mao-era restrictions on travel, millions of Chinese left the country for the first time, triggering a rush by companies offering group trips where these new travelers could move smoothly from charter flight to private bus to all-inclusive hotel. For decades, Chinese vacationers could be seen following umbrella-wielding guides around Kyoto, Paris or Venice—including frequent stops at shops offering everything from Eiffel Tower trinkets to $10,

Subramania Bhatt (Subbu), Founder and CEO of China Trading Desk, recently joined CGTN’s internationally broadcast podcast Chat Lounge to analyse the meteoric rise of Labubu, a China-made designer toy that has sparked a global craze from Asia to North America.

Inbound travel has emerged as a bright spot in China’s Labour Day holiday spending, while domestic tourism is seeing modest growth amid nationwide efforts to boost consumption during a heated trade war with the United States.

Advanced flight bookings from China to the US for this summer have declined, the latest data shows amid escalating trade tensions between the economic superpowers.

China is bracing for a major outbound travel surge during this year’s Labor Day Golden Week. An average of 2.15 million cross-border passenger trips are expected per day, according to the National Immigration Administration (NIA).

A recession would slow global tourism growth. Skift Research recently lowered its 2025 global travel growth forecast from 6% to 9% down to 2% to 5% due to U.S. recession and global slowdown risks being higher than at the start of the year.

Thailand is no longer one of Chinese tourists’ top five preferred destinations, a new study has shown, prompting industry executives to propose using subsidised flights to reverse the decline.