China Outbound 2026:Winning the Travel Retail Share of a BiggerWallet

AS APPEARED ON APTRA SPOTLIGHT

By APTRA

Published on May 4, 2026

China’s outbound recovery is no longer the story. The bigger question for 2026 is where Chinese travellers will spend, and how much of that wallet travel retail can realistically capture.

1. From Recovery to Wallet Competition

   
   

China’s outbound story is moving into a new phase. The reopening narrative is fading. What matters now is not simply whether Chinese travellers are back, but where their money goes once they travel, and which parts of the travel ecosystem are best positioned to capture it. That shift is happening against a broader global backdrop

in which international tourism fully recovered in 2024, reaching an estimated 1.4 billion international tourists worldwide, with spending continuing to grow strongly.

The macro foundation is now much firmer than it was a year ago. China’s official 2025 balance-of-payments data shows travel debit of US$254.0 billion, while the National Immigration Administration reported 167.5 million outbound trips in the same period. Together, those indicators point to a market that is no longer just reopening, but normalising at scale.

2. A US$280 Billion Travel Wallet

On top of that base, China Trading Desk’s (CTD) upper- bound 2026 scenario projects 175 million outbound trips and US$280 billion in total overseas travel spend. For travel retail, the most important part of that forecast is not only the headline total, but how

the wallet splits. In CTD’s model, around US$85 billion goes to accommodation, US$52 billion to food and beverage, US$40 billion to local transport, US$24 billion to entertainment and services, US$23 billion to travel retail, and US$56 billion to non-travel-retail shopping.

That breakdown changes the way the opportunity should be framed. Travel retail’s projected US$23 billion is meaningful in absolute terms, but it is only about 8% of the total travel wallet and less than a third of the projected shopping spend when set against the wider US$79 billion shopping pool.

3. Travel Retail Is Competing Far Beyond the Airport

Airport and duty-free retail are not just competing with each other. They are competing with downtown stores, destination malls, hotel retail, attractions, e-commerce touchpoints and every other channel that can intercept shopping intent before or during the trip. That is why 2026 should be understood as a share-of-wallet fight, not a passenger-recovery story.

4. Why Volume Is the Wrong Lens
   

This is also why volume alone is the wrong lens. CTD’s 2026 scenario makes a clear distinction between volume markets and value markets. Hong Kong and Macao remain major volume engines because they benefit from proximity, repeat behaviour, short lead

times and low friction. By contrast, long-haul destinations such as the United States and France can outperform on value because trips are longer and spend per visitor is higher.

The implication is simple: some corridors are won on frequency and speed, while others are won on basket size and itinerary share.

5. The Rise of Regional, Short-Haul Travel
   

There is supporting evidence for this corridor logic beyond CTD’s own model. A TFWA/Kearney presentation notes that Asia-Pacific travellers have become more

regionally concentrated, with the share of arrivals in Asia Pacific coming from within APAC rising from 64% in 2018 to 74% in 2023. That matters because a more intra-regional pattern generally favours shorter-haul, higher-frequency travel — exactly the kind of corridors where convenience, replenishment, gifting and quick conversion become more important than long-form discovery.

6. More Traffic Does Not Automatically Mean More Spend

   
   

At the same time, travel retail cannot assume that more traffic automatically means more spend. The same TFWA/Kearney work shows that Asia-Pacific travel retail sales in 2023 remained well below pre-pandemic levels, while spend per traveller was still below 2019 levels. In parallel, dwell time for Asia-Pacific travellers fell from 125 minutes in 2018 to 104 minutes in 2024, a decline of 16%. Those are important signals. They suggest that the challenge is no longer just getting the Chinese traveller back into the airport. It is winning a greater share of a compressed decision window in an environment where travellers have more alternatives and less idle time.

Air traffic trends reinforce the same point. IATA reported that in April 2025, international demand rose 10.8% year on year and Asia-Pacific carriers posted 10.6% traffic growth, with the region representing 33.5% of global RPK share (Revenue Passenger Kilometres). So the travel engine is strong. But strong traffic growth on its own does not solve travel retail’s economics. It just means the opportunity is there for operators who convert well. 7. What Travel Retail Has to Do Differently

The strategic conclusion is straightforward. Travel retail has to stop treating itself as the default shopping capture point and start behaving like a channel that must earn its share.

• Move Upstream

  The first requirement is to move upstream. If travel retail is competing with downtown and digital shopping, then the battle begins before the airport. The sale may close in-terminal, but the decision is increasingly formed earlier, when travellers are planning itineraries, comparing value and deciding which purchases are worth delaying until departure. That makes pre-trip visibility, reserve-and-collect, price clarity and corridor-specific planning much more important than they were in the simple recovery phase.

• Design for Conversion, Not Just Assortment The second requirement is to think in terms of conversion architecture, not just assortment. Short-haul corridors require speed, convenience and easy basket assembly. Long-haul corridors can support more premium positioning, larger baskets and more considered purchase journeys. In both cases, travel retail has to justify why the airport should be the place where the purchase happens rather than the destination city, a marketplace app, or a hotel-adjacent retail zone. The competitive set is wider now, and the bar for relevance is higher.

• Measure Capture, Not Footfall

  The third requirement is to recognise that the real metric for 2026 is not footfall but capture. A US$280 billion outbound travel wallet is large enough to create optimism, but only US$23 billion of that currently sits in projected travel retail. That means the upside lies not in retelling the recovery story, but in expanding the channel’s share of a broader shopping and experience economy.

In practical terms, the winners will be the operators and brands that connect pre-trip influence, corridor-aware merchandising, and in-terminal conversion into one continuous commercial journey.

8. The 2026 Bottom Line
   

So the story for 2026 is not that China outbound is back. It is that China outbound has become a much bigger wallet, and travel retail has to fight harder — and smarter — for its share of it.