China’s 2025 summer outbound travel season marked a strong recovery, with international flights up 9.8% year-on-year and demand surging for Europe, South Asia, and Central Asia. Travellers favoured premium hotels and longer family stays, while students shifted to higher-quality, in-depth trips. Shopping remained central, led by fashion and luxury goods, with cross-border transactions on WeChat Pay increasing by 34%. Top trending destinations included Spain, Austria, Italy, Cr

China’s 2025 “Super Golden Week” is set to ignite record-breaking travel and spending as the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival combine into an eight-day holiday. In 2024, Golden Week saw 7.6 million border crossings, up 33.2 per cent year on year, while international flights climbed 38.2 per cent. This year demand is even stronger, with bookings already surging for visa-free hotspots in Southeast Asia and long-haul escapes to Europe. Alongside booming outbound tourism, ret

From multi-tiered family vacations and evolving gifting behaviour during Qixi Festival, to viral debates on Japanese tourism and international etiquette—China's netizens are reflecting, reshaping, and reacting to what matters. Here's your 9-topic roundup from Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Zhihu.

When Gao Huasheng, a university professor from Shanghai, began planning a two-week family holiday to San Francisco earlier this year, he worried about exposing his children to scenes of drug use or even gun violence.

From healing getaways to cultural clashes abroad, this week’s trending stories across Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Zhihu reveal how Chinese consumers are reshaping travel, lifestyle, and market momentum. Here’s your curated snapshot.

Chinese consumers and travellers are back: digital-first, affluent and spontaneous. Platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin drive discovery as premium, experience-focused, value-conscious behaviour reshapes engagement in 2025.

This August, conversations across China’s leading digital platforms reveal a tourism landscape shaped by youth spontaneity, celebrity-driven campaigns, and evolving attitudes towards safety and relaxation. From Weibo’s policy updates to Douyin’s viral road trips, Xiaohongshu’s female-led getaways, Baidu’s humorous “loser tourism,” and Zhihu’s family concerns, the highlights showcase how emotion, economy, and lifestyle are redefining Chinese travel in 2025.

Japan Tourism Surge Amid Tragedy A 55-year-old Chinese tourist was killed on railway tracks in Japan. From Jan–Jun 2025, China ranked 2nd with 4.71M visitors, up 50% YoY, driven by cherry blossom, autumn leaves, and ski seasons.

This is not just another think-piece. It’s a do-list for every player in travel retail – airport operators, duty-free retailers, luxury brands, airlines and DMOs. Why? Because the customer has changed. It’s now the She Economy that sets the pace: she researches upstream on RED (Xiaohongshu) and Douyin, compares by reflex, and still wants human help at the point of truth. If your part of the journey can’t show proof in one scan and assistance within ten metres, then you’re l