New research from China Trading Desk highlights a stable level of airport retail intent among Chinese outbound travellers, even as conversion challenges persist around price, product availability and time constraints.

Chinese New Year 2026 delivered the headline the industry wanted: Chinese travel is back, traffic is up, and confidence is returning. But an increase in Chinese travellers actually flatters to deceive. Recovery in movement is not the same as recovery in monetization. The real post-CNY story is not whether Chinese travellers moved – it’s whether brands, retailers and destinations were still relevant enough to capture the wallets moving through them.

CTD’s Q1 2026 China Outbound Travel Sentiment Survey shows a steadier market, tighter conversion windows, platform-led discovery, flight-first booking, and continued travel retail opportunity.

The financial and logistical troubles the Iran war is causing for the global aviation industry are compounding by the day, with the number of cancelled flights to Middle East hubs surpassing 23,000 since fighting began.

Thailand led the list of destinations for Chinese tourists travelling overseas during this year’s extended Lunar New Year holiday, as former favourite Japan saw arrivals plummet amid a political dispute with China over Taiwan.

Southeast Asia emerged as a favored destination for Chinese tourists during this year's Spring Festival holiday, drawing substantial visitor flows diverted from Japan, several travel agencies told the Global Times on Wednesday, after reports said that Japan had lost about 50 percent of its Chinese arrivals.

China outbound travel is back and increasingly retail-ready, but CTD’s 2026 forecast shows the real prize lies in corridor strategy, not trip numbers. China Trading Desk (CTD) has released its latest China outbound travel outlook, built on newly released 2025 official travel spend data and CTD’s destination-level travel retail modeling. According to CTD, Chinese residents generated an estimated US$254 billion in outbound travel spend in 2025 across approximately 167.5 million

China Trading Desk (CTD) has projected a US$280 billion outbound travel market for 2026, including a US$23 billion opportunity for global travel retail (GTR), as shopping behaviour rebounds unevenly across key corridors.

China Trading Desk (CTD) has released its latest China outbound travel outlook, based on newly published 2025 official travel spend data and its own destination-level travel retail modelling. CTD estimates that Chinese residents generated US$254bn in outbound travel spend in 2025 across around 167.5 million trips, based on a National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA) crossings-to-trips framework.