Holiday tourism boom leads to record highs

The recent National Day holiday bolstered China's tourism market, with both the number of tourists and tourism spending reaching record highs.

This year's holiday lasted eight days, from Oct 1 to Wednesday, as Mid-Autumn Festival — a traditional Chinese festival for appreciating the full moon — overlapped with the National Day holiday break.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism show that about 888 million domestic trips were made during the holiday, generating 809 billion yuan ($113 billion) in tourism spending.

Family trips and long-distance travel — both within China and abroad — were the most popular choices for tourists during the break, according to travel agencies.

Travel portal Tuniu reported on Wednesday that bookings on its platform recorded double-digit growth during the holiday compared with 2024. Major cities with abundant natural and cultural attractions and diverse culinary offerings — including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu in Sichuan province and Hangzhou in Zhejiang province — were among the top domestic destinations.

"We took a five-day trip to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, during the holiday," said 36-year-old Beijing resident, Zeng Jie. "My husband planned the trip because he has always wanted to try Guiyang's local specialties such as sour soup hotpot and siwawa — a type of vegetarian spring roll." She added that the province's natural scenery was another highlight of their trip.

Chinese travelers also fueled a surge in outbound tourism. The Lofoten Islands in Norway — home to around 20,000 permanent residents — experienced heavy traffic congestion as crowds of Chinese tourists flocked there during the National Day holiday. A topic about the traffic jams trended on social media platform, Sina Weibo, with several netizens commenting that "the whole world knows Chinese people are on vacation!"

According to travel platform Qunar, hotel bookings in Norway during the holiday were 1.2 times higher than during the same period in 2024. Egypt also saw a strong increase, with bookings roughly doubling year-on-year. Qunar said its users booked hotels in 4,588 cities worldwide during the holiday, with Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia ranking as the most popular overseas destinations.

Online travel agency Trip.com Group said some European destinations also benefited from the surge in Chinese tourists. Bookings to Iceland and Norway on its platform doubled, while those to Spain, Italy and Germany rose by about 70 percent.

Trip.com Group also noted a steady increase in international visitors to the Chinese mainland during the holiday, mainly from South Korea, the United States, Russia and Japan.

According to the National Immigration Administration, immigration inspection offices across the country handled about 16.34 million inbound and outbound trips by Chinese and foreign travelers during the holiday, with a daily average of 2.04 million crossings.