You run hotels or resorts and you want Chinese travelers back in your rooms. This report is for you. I updated it for 2026, because almost everything about this market has changed since it was first written.
Let me start with a story. In late 2024, the CEO of a 180-room beach resort group in Southeast Asia contacted us. Before 2020, Chinese guests filled 22% of his rooms. Almost all of them arrived in buses, booked by Chinese tour operators. In 2024, Chinese arrivals to his country were back to 80% of pre-pandemic levels. His Chinese occupancy was stuck at 4%. Same resort. Same beach. Same rates. The buses never came back. The travelers did, but they were booking somewhere else. I will tell you what we found, and what it did to his numbers, further down.
Olivier Verot is the founder of Gentlemen Marketing Agency (GMA), based in Shanghai since 2012. He has built China digital strategies for hotels, resorts and tourism boards across Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The Chinese Travel Market in 2026: Recovered, but Not the Same
Chinese outbound tourism grew for years before the pandemic. In 2018, Chinese tourists made 140 million trips abroad, up 13.5% from 2017, and spent close to a quarter of a trillion dollars overseas, almost double what American travelers spent. Then the market went to zero for three years. Now it is back.
Outbound trips are back to 2019 levels, and half of them are independent travelers
According to the China Tourism Academy’s 2025-2026 annual report on outbound travel, Chinese outbound trips have returned to 2019 levels. During the 2026 Chinese New Year holiday alone, border authorities processed 17.8 million entries and exits, up more than 10% per day versus the previous year. Long-haul is the surprise. Hotel bookings from Chinese travelers for destinations like Egypt, Spain, Australia and New Zealand more than doubled during the 2026 Spring Festival compared with the year before.
Here is what did not come back: the bus. Industry surveys now put independent travelers at roughly half of China’s outbound market, and among travelers under 35 the share is far higher. Chinese operators themselves report that Gen Z travelers reject checklist group tours and want depth, food, photography and niche experiences. If your China strategy still depends on tour operator allotments, you are fishing in a shrinking pond. My advice has not changed since 2019: “In China, it is not the biggest fish who survive, it is the smartest and fastest one.”
1. Move Into the Chinese Online Space
If you still have no Chinese-language presence, start here. A Chinese website hosted in China or Hong Kong gives you an owned asset inside the Chinese internet. You stop renting attention from intermediaries. You learn the rules of the game. And over time, Chinese partners start finding you instead of the other way around.
What your Chinese website needs:
- Hosting in China or Hong Kong for loading speed
- High-quality photography
- A short summary of the area, with highlights of important places
- Information about recreation and outdoor activities
- Guides to arts and culture: museums, theaters, attractions
- Packing tips
- Maps and guides
- Public transport and airport information
One warning from experience. A website alone converts nothing in 2026. It is your credibility layer, the place a Chinese travel planner lands to verify you are real. Discovery happens somewhere else entirely.
2. Xiaohongshu Is Where Chinese Travelers Choose Your Hotel
This is the biggest change since the first version of this report, so read this section twice.
Xiaohongshu (RedNote) passed 300 million monthly active users. For travel, it does not work like Instagram. It works like Google. A Chinese traveler planning a trip types real queries into the search bar: “quiet resort Phuket with kids”, “Paris hotel near Le Marais under 2000 RMB”, “hotels with good breakfast Dubai”. Then she reads notes from other Chinese guests, saves the best ones into a trip folder, and books 30 to 90 days later. We wrote a full analysis of Xiaohongshu as a search engine, and hotels are the category where this behavior is strongest.
The problem: if nobody has posted about your property in Chinese, you do not exist in those search results. Your competitor next door, with 40 guest notes and a claimed official account, takes the booking. The fix is not complicated, but it is work:
- Open and verify an official brand account, in Chinese
- Publish notes that match real search queries: room tours, breakfast reviews, “one day around the hotel” itineraries, photo spot guides
- Seed stays with mid-size travel KOLs and KOCs whose audience matches your guest profile
- Answer comments fast, in Chinese, because comment sections are where bookings are decided
Video helps everywhere in the Chinese internet. Connections are fast, mobile data is cheap, and users expect to be entertained. A 60-second room tour filmed on a phone often outperforms your official brand film.
3. Optimize for Mobile, Then for WeChat
Chinese consumers live on their phones, several hours a day. Every touchpoint you build must work on a mobile screen first. But in 2026, mobile means more than a responsive site. It means WeChat.
A WeChat official account plus a booking mini-program gives a Chinese guest something no OTA gives you: a direct channel. The guest follows your account after discovery on Xiaohongshu, asks questions in Chinese, books inside WeChat without leaving the app, and receives her confirmation, upsells and post-stay follow-up in the same thread. Hotel groups we work with use mini-programs to move repeat Chinese guests away from OTA commissions entirely. For an independent resort, even a simple mini-program with rooms, rates and a Chinese-speaking concierge chat changes conversion.
4. Accept Chinese Mobile Payment: the Hospitality Standard
In 2019 I wrote that mobile payment was an advantage. In 2026 it is table stakes. WeChat Pay’s cross-border service now covers 78 countries and regions in 36 currencies, and Alipay+ connects dozens of wallets to merchants worldwide, as reported in coverage of China’s payment connectivity push. From night markets in Malaysia to department stores in Paris, a Chinese traveler expects to scan a QR code and pay in RMB.
Why does this matter for a hotel CEO? Spend. When a Chinese guest can pay with her home wallet, her trip budget stops being limited by the cash she exchanged or the card fees she fears. She pays for the spa, the late checkout, the wine at dinner, the souvenirs in your gift shop, on impulse, the way she does at home. Nielsen found years ago that over 90% of Chinese tourists would spend more with merchants that accept Chinese mobile payment. Our client data says that finding still holds. Properties that turn on Alipay and WeChat Pay see Chinese ancillary spend rise within the first season.
We can help you set up cross-border payments
5. Fix Your Distribution: Trip.com and Fliggy
Independent Chinese travelers book through Chinese OTAs. Trip.com Group dominates, and its outbound hotel and flight bookings have climbed to roughly 140% of 2019 levels, growing close to 20% year over year, according to Skift’s reporting on the group’s results. Fliggy, Alibaba’s travel platform, takes a large share of independent outbound bookings too.
Being listed is not the same as being distributed. Your Trip.com page needs Chinese-language content, updated photos, competitive rates and reviews you actually answer. A flagship store with a maintained page ranks; a dusty listing loaded by a channel manager five years ago does not. And remember the booking window: most Chinese travelers now book less than 30 days before departure. Your rates and availability must be live and sharp inside that window, not three months out. If you still work with group business, that channel is not dead, it is just smaller and more premium. Our guide to dealing with Chinese tour operators covers how to structure those contracts.
6. Know What Chinese Guests Want, and How It Is Changing
Chinese tourists are not Western tourists, and their expectations move fast. The fundamentals I listed in 2019 still apply. What changed is who is traveling: more solo women, more multigenerational families, more retirees with time and money, fewer flag-following groups.
- Less sun
Most Chinese guests avoid sunbathing. White skin signals wealth and youth in Chinese culture. At the beach or the pool they use strong sun protection, umbrellas, and cover-ups. Shaded cabanas rent better than sun loungers.
- More food options
Chinese travelers want to try local cuisine, but they also want the comfort of home. A bowl of congee at breakfast. Rice options at dinner. Chopsticks on the table without asking. And hot water, always: many carry a small thermos, so a kettle and tea bags in the room is a cheap gesture that shows up in reviews.
- Nature and quiet
Experienced Chinese travelers increasingly choose destinations with wild nature and calm scenery. Guests from tier-1 cities want to escape pollution, density and stress. Package the walk, the view, the birdwatching, and put it on Xiaohongshu with the exact photo spot marked.
Travel community Mafengwo
Precise targeting for accommodation
Chinese accommodation priorities keep shifting. Experienced travelers hunting unique destinations are no longer obsessed with big-name luxury hotels, and booking apps make price comparison instant. Even wealthy family travelers have cooled on pure luxury. This pushes premium chains to work with Chinese KOLs and media rather than rely on brand alone. The winning combination is luxury plus authenticity. A wealthy multigenerational family books the property that offers comfort and food for the grandparents, nature for the parents, and entertainment for the kids, and they find that property through a saved Xiaohongshu note, not through a brochure.
Convenient shopping and souvenirs
Chinese guests still spend heavily on shopping, especially in Hong Kong, Singapore and Macao, and they buy luxury in Europe for the price gap and the guarantee of authenticity. Souvenirs matter more than you think: a connected traveler buys for a long list of friends and colleagues. Help them spend. Provide shopping maps, guides, transport options, and tax-refund assistance in Chinese.
7. Propose Unique Experiences and Customized Stays
Older Chinese travelers still book group tours through domestic agencies, budget-driven, famous destinations first. But the center of gravity has moved. The young generation travels with friends, as couples, as families, or alone. They research everything themselves, and FIT travelers now drive the outbound market. They care less about marble lobbies and more about a stay nobody else has posted yet. At the same time, high-end customized small-group tours are rising, because affluent Chinese travelers pay for rare experiences. A hotel that packages a private vineyard visit, a chef’s table, or a sunrise hike sells something a comparison engine cannot price.
8. Hospitality Basics: Provide Service in Chinese
Chinese guests deeply appreciate being welcomed in their own language. Leaflets, guides, and mobile-friendly content in Chinese all help. But there is a deeper reason to have Mandarin-speaking staff, and it took me years in China to fully understand it.
Many Chinese guests speak enough English to communicate, yet avoid using it with foreigners. This is not only shyness. It connects to the concept of face, “mianzi”: the fear of failing or appearing incompetent in public. The consequence for your business is real. A European guest tells you directly when something is wrong. A Chinese guest, facing a language barrier and a face risk, often says nothing. You will still hear about the problem, but later, from a partner agency, or worse, in a detailed one-star review on Chinese social media that every future planner will read on Xiaohongshu.
If you are serious about Chinese guests, put Mandarin or Cantonese speakers on staff, or at minimum run a Chinese-language chat channel through WeChat where guests can complain safely, privately, and in their own language.
Case Study: How the Resort Got Its Chinese Guests Back
Back to the resort CEO from the opening. The diagnosis took one week: his property had zero presence where Chinese FIT travelers actually plan. No Xiaohongshu account, seven old guest notes with mixed reviews and no replies, a Trip.com listing with English-only photos from 2018, no Chinese payment, no WeChat presence. His China strategy was still built for buses.
The plan ran over 14 months. Month one: claimed and verified the Xiaohongshu account, answered every existing note in Chinese, rebuilt the Trip.com flagship page with Chinese content and current photos. Months two to six: hosted eight mid-size travel KOCs, each briefed on one theme, family stays, food, the quiet beach, the photography spots. Months four onward: launched a WeChat mini-program with rooms, a Chinese concierge chat, and Alipay and WeChat Pay at every outlet. Result: Chinese room nights went from 4% to 19% of total occupancy, and 30% of those bookings came direct through the mini-program, at zero OTA commission. Total media budget was less than what the resort used to pay tour operators in commission for one strong quarter.
Conclusion
The Chinese travel market has done something rare: it disappeared, came back, and reorganized itself in five years. The volume is back to 2019. The behavior is not. Discovery moved to Xiaohongshu. Booking moved to Trip.com, Fliggy and WeChat. The group tour gave way to the independent traveler. The winners in the next decade will combine authenticity, comfort, customization, and a real presence inside the Chinese internet. It is still no place for slow, conservative companies, or for those who want results without investment.
Be fast, be smart, be adaptive, and you will win.
Work With Us
GMA has run China campaigns for hotels, resorts and destinations since 2012, from Xiaohongshu seeding to WeChat mini-program booking and Chinese OTA optimization. We start every hospitality project with an audit of your current visibility on Chinese platforms, free, no strings. Contact us here and tell us about your property.
FAQ: Attracting Chinese Travelers to Your Hotel
Do Chinese group tours still matter for hotels in 2026?
Yes, but as a segment, not a strategy. Roughly half of Chinese outbound travel is now independent, and the share is much higher among travelers under 35. Group business survives at two ends: budget senior groups and high-end customized small groups. Treat operator contracts as base-load occupancy, and build your growth on FIT travelers who find you through Xiaohongshu and book through Trip.com or your own WeChat channel.
How long does it take for a hotel to see results on Xiaohongshu?
Plan for six to twelve months. Chinese travelers save hotel notes 30 to 90 days before booking, so content published today influences stays one or two seasons later. The account needs a base of authentic notes, seeded KOC stays, and answered comments before the search algorithm trusts it. Hotels that quit after eight weeks waste their budget. Hotels that publish consistently through two booking cycles see compounding search visibility.
Do I really need Alipay and WeChat Pay if my hotel takes Visa and Mastercard?
For room payment, cards work. For everything else, you lose money without Chinese wallets. Ancillary spend, spa, dining, gift shop, tours, is impulse-driven, and Chinese guests spend more freely in their home currency through their home apps. WeChat Pay’s cross-border service already covers 78 countries, so your local acquirer very likely supports it. Setup is fast and the uplift shows within a season.
Should I list my hotel on Trip.com or build direct booking first?
Both, in that order. Trip.com gives you immediate reach into the largest Chinese booking pool, and a well-maintained flagship page doubles as social proof. Then use WeChat to convert repeat guests and referrals into direct bookings through a mini-program, commission-free. The mistake is choosing one channel forever. The OTA finds you new guests; WeChat keeps them yours.
What is the cheapest first step for a small independent hotel?
Claim your presence before spending on media. Verify your Xiaohongshu account, answer every existing Chinese note and review, fix your Trip.com page with Chinese descriptions and current photos, and put a kettle with tea bags in the rooms. Total cost is mostly staff time. These basics remove the silent objections Chinese planners have when comparing you against a property that looks alive on their platforms.
