As China enters the opening year of its 15th Five-Year Plan in 2026, the nation's tourism market has demonstrated powerful structural transformation in the first half of the year, with a record 369 million cross-border passenger trips and the evolution of "China Travel" from an online buzzword into tangible port traffic. While domestic tourism maintains steady growth in scale, consumption patterns are rapidly shifting toward lower-tier cities, with experiential depth expanding significantly. The cultural tourism sector has moved beyond simply competing for visitor numbers, officially entering a new stage focused on quality enhancement and value conversion.
According to the "2026 First Half Tourism Market Insight Report" recently released by the China Tourism Association, the domestic tourism market remained stable overall, with both domestic travel volume and total expenditure achieving double growth. Inbound tourism experienced leapfrog growth, new business formats and scenarios accelerated their emergence, and tourism consumption continued to strengthen its role in driving economic growth.
Immersive Chinese Lifestyle Experiences
Throughout the year, favorable policies including visa exemptions, transit visa-free entry, port optimization, and payment facilitation have been continuously released, steadily improving convenience for foreign visitors to China. Data released by the National Immigration Administration on July 10 shows that in the first half of this year, immigration authorities nationwide processed 369 million cross-border passenger trips, up 10.8 percent year-on-year. Inbound foreign visitors reached 22.914 million, an increase of 20.4 percent, with 17.815 million entering under visa-free arrangements, accounting for 77.7 percent and rising 30.6 percent year-on-year. Ministry of Commerce data indicates that from January to May this year, China's travel service exports reached 188.5 billion yuan, up 31.3 percent year-on-year, ranking first in growth rate among the top five service export sectors.
For many international travelers today, China's appeal as a tourism destination has expanded beyond traditional symbols such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and giant pandas to encompass comprehensive experiences including urban convenience, trendy domestic consumption, and smart living. Their itineraries now extend beyond conventional scenic spots, venturing into Yiwu's small commodities market for wholesale shopping and Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei for electronics purchases. Urban infrastructure, transportation efficiency, and a sense of safety are becoming more compelling attractions than traditional landmarks.
Beyond urban "City Walk" experiences, "Country Walk" has emerged as a new trend. This deepening and downward-expanding movement signals that inbound tourism is transitioning from mere sightseeing to experiencing Chinese lifestyles. "Localized Chinese living styles have become the core attraction of inbound tourism," said Zhao Hongyu, president of the Inbound Tourism Research Institute under China Tourism Group. As visa-free policy dividends continue to be released, the return-visit rate and consumption depth of inbound tourists have significantly improved. In particular, short-haul visitors from Japan and South Korea show consumption preferences highly aligned with domestic tourists, gradually exploring county-level destinations after completing mainstream city visits. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian travelers have become accustomed to capturing China's latest cultural tourism trends through social media platforms, creating efficient pathways for internationalizing county-level resources.
Zhao believes that converting the surging "China Travel" traffic into longer stays, deeper consumption, and stronger return-visit intentions requires focusing on differentiated Chinese characteristics. She identifies technology experiences, intangible cultural heritage techniques, and traditional Chinese medicine services as the three pillars of "Shopping in China." These "Chinese business cards" represent not merely commodity transactions but upgraded cultural experiences. "We need to reconstruct Chinese lifestyles using international business language, creating perceptible, tangible, and consumable scenarios that achieve the value leap from 'spectating' to 'consuming.' However, we must also acknowledge that shortcomings in the 'last mile' of information access, payment settlement, and language services still require accelerated improvement," Zhao added.
Shifting Consumption Logic
The flourishing inbound tourism reflects China's global tourism appeal, while structural changes in domestic tourism more directly mirror evolving mass consumption preferences. Ministry of Culture and Tourism data shows that in the first half of 2026, domestic residents made 3.463 billion trips, up 5.4 percent year-on-year, with total domestic travel spending reaching 3.21 trillion yuan, a 2.0 percent increase. Behind these figures lies a growing emphasis on cost-effectiveness and experiential quality.
Consumption logic among tourists is undergoing transformation. This year, "county-town tourism" has been particularly explosive. In early 2024, a viral video of a Chongqing blogger seeking help with an annual pig slaughter unexpectedly exploded, evolving into a rural celebration involving thousands of participants. During the May Day holiday, county-level upscale hotel consumption shares surpassed first-tier and new first-tier cities for the first time, with reverse tourism vitality continuously unleashing. From flower appreciation and spring outings to dragon boat races, from family trips and summer escapes to slow travel, more people are traveling to cities for "relaxation" and "emotional value."
"County tourism boasts rich historical heritage and distinctive folk customs while being far from urban hustle, better matching people's current demand to return to the essence of travel," said Li Xinjian, executive dean and professor of the Capital Culture and Tourism Development Research Institute at Beijing International Studies University. He believes that sustainable development of county tourism requires breaking free from the constraints of resource-dependence thinking, transitioning from resource-reliant models to innovative product formats and consumption scenarios. This involves leveraging social media to generate traffic, using resources as backdrops, integrating culture into environments, and delivering ample emotional and cognitive value to tourists through improved service quality and immersive experience creation.
From Xi'an's viral "Driver Qin Shi Huang" to the unexpected popularity of the "Turtle Immortal" at Hangzhou Tonglu OMG Heartbeat Park, immersive experiences are becoming the core competitive advantage of the cultural tourism market. Changchun Animal and Botanical Park's "Snow Cake Monkey," Tangshan Hehua Old Street's "Li Bai," and over a thousand NPCs at Kaifeng Wansuishan Martial Arts City continue to drive tourist traffic to destinations nationwide. Meanwhile, "sports plus" and "performing arts plus" models are emerging as new engines for high-quality consumption. Events including the Suzhou Super League, Ganzhou Super League, Ningxia Super League, Guangdong Super League, Fujian Super League, and the "Village Super League" use affordable "small tickets" to attract visitors, with ticket stubs connecting comprehensive consumption scenarios across dining, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping, and entertainment.
"The core logic of current tourism consumption is emotional value, and traditional 'cost-effectiveness' is being redefined. Emotional dimensions such as collective resonance, ritual significance, and community identity are becoming key factors in consumption decisions," analyzed Yang Jinsong, a researcher at the China Tourism Academy. He noted that precise content and activity design to break down industry barriers and guide collaborative coexistence across the ecosystem not only drives whole-chain consumption but also generates a "peak-shaving" effect, smoothing seasonal tourism fluctuations.
Technology Reshaping the Ecosystem
While demand-side changes unfold, supply-side innovation is also accelerating noticeably. This year, technology empowerment has moved from concept to implementation, continuously unlocking new cultural tourism consumption scenarios: Shanghai's "Li Xiaobo," Shaanxi's "Xiao Qi" intelligent agent, Sichuan's "AI Le Xiaofu," and Hangzhou West Lake's AI flower-selling robot are among the applications emerging across the country. Platform players are also making moves, with Trip.com Group and Tongcheng Travel becoming the first online travel information service platforms to integrate WeChat's AI intelligent agent in June, enabling full-process operations from itinerary planning to ticket booking.
Yang interprets this as AI's "bidirectional reshaping" of the tourism information ecosystem. On the demand side, AI flattens information asymmetry barriers through automated guides and itinerary planning, significantly reducing transaction costs. On the supply side, it enhances operational efficiency through millisecond-level responses to real-time user needs. However, he also cautions that hidden challenges lurk behind technological dividends: AI portals have become new traffic entry points, and tourists should remain vigilant against "information cocoons" created by AI precision recommendation, avoiding over-reliance that leads to homogenized experiences.
A more profound change lies in the maturing institutional philosophy of "culture and tourism plus" integration. At the policy level, the "Tourism Power Construction 15th Five-Year Plan" proposes focusing on building a modern industrial system, adhering to intelligent, green, and integrated development directions, developing new quality productive forces tailored to local conditions, shaping new development advantages, and promoting an overall leap in the tourism industry. Eight ministries including the Ministry of Commerce have issued documents accelerating "AI plus consumption" development, while Guangdong, Beijing, and other regions have successively launched "AI plus culture and tourism" development action plans, driving quality and efficiency improvements in the cultural tourism industry through technological innovation.
In early July, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism launched the 2026 National Summer Culture and Tourism Consumption Season, with over 30,000 cultural tourism consumption events planned across various regions through the end of August, issuing more than 450 million yuan in consumption vouchers. These initiatives target hot demand areas including summer escapes, family recreation, and museum tourism, increasing high-quality cultural tourism product supply and continuously releasing cultural tourism consumption potential.
Industry insiders indicate that the tourism market is expected to maintain its high-activity trajectory in the second half of the year. On one hand, the 2026 Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day "take 3 days off for 13 days" leave combination creates time conditions for long-distance in-depth travel comparable to the Spring Festival golden week. On the other hand, autumn school breaks have been densely implemented across Jiangsu, Guangdong, Hunan, Yunnan, and other provinces, with autumn breaks combined with weekends forming four-to-five-day mini holidays. This is expected to release a wave of off-peak travel around November, creating a stable incremental window for parent-child study tours and addressing the structural challenge of "imbalanced peak and off-peak seasons" in the cultural tourism market. Additionally, with visa facilitation, increased flight routes, and internationalization of cultural tourism supply taking effect, inbound tourism is also expected to maintain high-level growth.