China's holiday week sees strong travel, spending, highlighting vitality of consumption sector

<article><section data-type="rtext"><img data-alt="The picture shows tourists visiting a night market in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, on October 7, 2025. Photo: VCG" src="//img.huanqiucdn.cn/dp/api/files/imageDir/77074e60702bc68b4fcf21c4358e5bcf.jpeg?imageView2/2/w/750" />China's eight-day holiday week, which this year featured the unique alignment of Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holidays, witnessed robust travel numbers and consumption scenes as hundreds of millions of Chinese hit the road. The long holiday, which started on October 1 and ends on Wednesday, saw Chinese people, whether traveling or staying home, engaging in a wide range of activities, contributing to the country's consumption upgrade and injecting fresh growth momentum into high-quality development, underlining the strong resilience and vitality of the world's second-largest economy, analysts noted. Unprecedented people flows China's cross-regional passenger flows reached approximately 2.43 billion during the eight-day holiday, the People's Daily reported on Wednesday, citing data from the Ministry of Transport. Average daily passenger flows reached 304 million, rising by 6.2 percent year-on-year. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, sales at key retail and catering enterprises nationwide rose by 3.3 percent year-on-year during the first four days of the eight-day holiday. From watching drone light shows in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, taking part in a parade wearing traditional costumes in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province, to getting hands-on by drawing mural patterns in Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu Province, to enjoying marine animal performances at Ocean Park in North China's Tianjin Municipality, Chinese people have enjoyed the holidays in an increasingly diverse and personal way. Kate Sun, a Beijing-based white-collar worker, is freshly back from her holiday in tourist sites in North China's Shanxi Province. "Scenic landmarks like Datong's Yungang Grottoes and the Hanging Temple teemed with visitors during the holidays. Tickets for the Hanging Temple sold out the moment bookings opened, and even though we braced ourselves, the sheer number of people was still astonishing," Sun told the Global Times on Wednesday. "At Yungang Grottoes, visitor alerts reached 80 percent capacity around noon each day, and at a few of the most famous grottoes [at the site] the waiting time could stretch up to 40 minutes. But people generally queued patiently." Data from travel agencies revealed some of the new patterns for Chinese people's travel preferences during the holidays, one of the year's longest festive breaks, with more people traveling to smaller tourist sites and seeking a more personalized experience. Data from online travel agency Qunar.com showed that hotel bookings at hotspot domestic cities increased by 20 percent while flight ticket bookings to hot overseas destinations increased by 30 percent. In a sign of rising popularity in travel in county-level regions, flight bookings for smaller domestic airports doubled year-on-year, according to a press release Qunar sent to the Global Times on Wednesday. Online travel agency Tongcheng Travel said in a report sent to the Global Times on Wednesday that the holiday travel surge is based on twin drivers - people visiting their relatives or traveling. Hotel bookings grew by over 90 percent year-on-year for high-quality hotels in non-first-tier cities and Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region occupied the top spot for long-haul domestic flight destinations. The report noted that holiday travel has the features on high-quality growth, with smaller cities and counties and faraway destinations topping travelers' wish lists. Thanks to a series of favorable policies such as visa-free entry, tax refunds and an increase in flights, inbound tourism has also seen a marked increase. According to data from Ant Group, the mobile payment platform Alipay has seen a 40-percent increase in payments from global tourists to China in the first five days of the holiday, per the Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday. For offline shopping, by overseas visitors, in particular, the year-on-year increase has reached 200 percent, according to the company. The holiday has seen tourists immersed in a strong cultural atmosphere as cities across China combined cultural and tourism activities with sports events, auto shows and music festivals to bank on the synergy effect of consumption, observers noted. In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, where Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions hosted multiple events including firework displays and concerts, demand for cultural tourism, family visits, leisure and shopping has surged. According to estimates by Hong Kong's Immigration Department, around 1.28 million passengers from the Chinese mainland had visited the city as of late Tuesday, surpassing the record of 1.22 million from the previous year. The eight-day holiday also proved to be a bustling movie-going season for consumers. As of Wednesday, total box office takings for films screened during the 2025 National Day holiday, including presales, had exceeded 1.8 billion yuan ($253 million), according to data from online platforms. Feng Chaoyun, chairman of Zhejiang Qingfang Festive Products Co in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province, told the Global Times on Wednesday that sales of trendy products featuring China-chic and intangible cultural heritage increased by 55 percent year-on-year during the holiday period. Items such as silk embroidery, bamboo weaving and ceramics saw a rise in sales in the domestic market as well as in the overseas market, Feng said, highlighting a rising cultural awareness among young Chinese consumers. Strong economic vitality Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of the Forum 50 for Digital-Real Economies Integration, told the Global Times on Wednesday that services consumption during the holiday period saw a marked rise with the diversification of consumption scenarios. "The formation of new consumption scenarios has boosted the value added for the services industry, because when consumers are submerged in these new, integrated consumption experiences, they tend to spend more," Hu said, adding that this year's holiday is one day longer than normal, which gave people more flexibility in drawing up their travel plans. The robust consumption during the holiday reflects stabilizing expectations among consumers amid the overall improvement of the national economy, Hu said, noting that a range of economic indicators such as the producer price index and job data point to further consolidation trends in the third and fourth quarters. Analysts said that as an important driver of the economy, the surge in the tourism and consumption sectors during the holiday will inject fresh momentum into the Chinese economy, paving the way to achieve the pre-set annual GDP growth target this year. In the first eight months, consumer spending, a priority for the government's economic agenda this year, continued to gain momentum. Retail sales of consumer goods grew 3.4 percent year-on-year to 3.97 trillion yuan ($556.77 billion) in August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on September 15. China's Ministry of Commerce and eight other government departments on September 16 rolled out a package of measures to augment services consumption, part of broader efforts to spur domestic demand and unleash consumption potential. On Tuesday, the World Bank upgraded its 2025 growth forecast for China to 4.8 percent in its October 2025 East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, which is 0.3 percentage points higher than its previous projection in June for China.</section></article>

China's eight-day holiday week, which this year featured the unique alignment of Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holidays, witnessed robust travel numbers and consumption scenes as hundreds of millions of Chinese hit the road.

The long holiday, which started on October 1 and ends on Wednesday, saw Chinese people, whether traveling or staying home, engaging in a wide range of activities, contributing to the country's consumption upgrade and injecting fresh growth momentum into high-quality development, underlining the strong resilience and vitality of the world's second-largest economy, analysts noted.

Unprecedented people flows

China's cross-regional passenger flows reached approximately 2.43 billion during the eight-day holiday, the People's Daily reported on Wednesday, citing data from the Ministry of Transport. Average daily passenger flows reached 304 million, rising by 6.2 percent year-on-year.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, sales at key retail and catering enterprises nationwide rose by 3.3 percent year-on-year during the first four days of the eight-day holiday.

From watching drone light shows in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, taking part in a parade wearing traditional costumes in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province, to getting hands-on by drawing mural patterns in Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu Province, to enjoying marine animal performances at Ocean Park in North China's Tianjin Municipality, Chinese people have enjoyed the holidays in an increasingly diverse and personal way.

Kate Sun, a Beijing-based white-collar worker, is freshly back from her holiday in tourist sites in North China's Shanxi Province. "Scenic landmarks like Datong's Yungang Grottoes and the Hanging Temple teemed with visitors during the holidays. Tickets for the Hanging Temple sold out the moment bookings opened, and even though we braced ourselves, the sheer number of people was still astonishing," Sun told the Global Times on Wednesday. "At Yungang Grottoes, visitor alerts reached 80 percent capacity around noon each day, and at a few of the most famous grottoes [at the site] the waiting time could stretch up to 40 minutes. But people generally queued patiently."

Data from travel agencies revealed some of the new patterns for Chinese people's travel preferences during the holidays, one of the year's longest festive breaks, with more people traveling to smaller tourist sites and seeking a more personalized experience.

Data from online travel agency Qunar.com showed that hotel bookings at hotspot domestic cities increased by 20 percent while flight ticket bookings to hot overseas destinations increased by 30 percent.

In a sign of rising popularity in travel in county-level regions, flight bookings for smaller domestic airports doubled year-on-year, according to a press release Qunar sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

Online travel agency Tongcheng Travel said in a report sent to the Global Times on Wednesday that the holiday travel surge is based on twin drivers - people visiting their relatives or traveling. Hotel bookings grew by over 90 percent year-on-year for high-quality hotels in non-first-tier cities and Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region occupied the top spot for long-haul domestic flight destinations.

The report noted that holiday travel has the features on high-quality growth, with smaller cities and counties and faraway destinations topping travelers' wish lists.

Thanks to a series of favorable policies such as visa-free entry, tax refunds and an increase in flights, inbound tourism has also seen a marked increase.

According to data from Ant Group, the mobile payment platform Alipay has seen a 40-percent increase in payments from global tourists to China in the first five days of the holiday, per the Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday. For offline shopping, by overseas visitors, in particular, the year-on-year increase has reached 200 percent, according to the company.

The holiday has seen tourists immersed in a strong cultural atmosphere as cities across China combined cultural and tourism activities with sports events, auto shows and music festivals to bank on the synergy effect of consumption, observers noted.

In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, where Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions hosted multiple events including firework displays and concerts, demand for cultural tourism, family visits, leisure and shopping has surged.

According to estimates by Hong Kong's Immigration Department, around 1.28 million passengers from the Chinese mainland had visited the city as of late Tuesday, surpassing the record of 1.22 million from the previous year.

The eight-day holiday also proved to be a bustling movie-going season for consumers. As of Wednesday, total box office takings for films screened during the 2025 National Day holiday, including presales, had exceeded 1.8 billion yuan ($253 million), according to data from online platforms.

Feng Chaoyun, chairman of Zhejiang Qingfang Festive Products Co in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province, told the Global Times on Wednesday that sales of trendy products featuring China-chic and intangible cultural heritage increased by 55 percent year-on-year during the holiday period.

Items such as silk embroidery, bamboo weaving and ceramics saw a rise in sales in the domestic market as well as in the overseas market, Feng said, highlighting a rising cultural awareness among young Chinese consumers.

Strong economic vitality

Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of the Forum 50 for Digital-Real Economies Integration, told the Global Times on Wednesday that services consumption during the holiday period saw a marked rise with the diversification of consumption scenarios.

"The formation of new consumption scenarios has boosted the value added for the services industry, because when consumers are submerged in these new, integrated consumption experiences, they tend to spend more," Hu said, adding that this year's holiday is one day longer than normal, which gave people more flexibility in drawing up their travel plans.

The robust consumption during the holiday reflects stabilizing expectations among consumers amid the overall improvement of the national economy, Hu said, noting that a range of economic indicators such as the producer price index and job data point to further consolidation trends in the third and fourth quarters.

Analysts said that as an important driver of the economy, the surge in the tourism and consumption sectors during the holiday will inject fresh momentum into the Chinese economy, paving the way to achieve the pre-set annual GDP growth target this year.

In the first eight months, consumer spending, a priority for the government's economic agenda this year, continued to gain momentum. Retail sales of consumer goods grew 3.4 percent year-on-year to 3.97 trillion yuan ($556.77 billion) in August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on September 15.

China's Ministry of Commerce and eight other government departments on September 16 rolled out a package of measures to augment services consumption, part of broader efforts to spur domestic demand and unleash consumption potential.

On Tuesday, the World Bank upgraded its 2025 growth forecast for China to 4.8 percent in its October 2025 East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, which is 0.3 percentage points higher than its previous projection in June for China.

Unprecedented people flows

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, sales at key retail and catering enterprises nationwide rose by 3.3 percent year-on-year during the first four days of the eight-day holiday.

The report noted that holiday travel has the features on high-quality growth, with smaller cities and counties and faraway destinations topping travelers' wish lists.

Thanks to a series of favorable policies such as visa-free entry, tax refunds and an increase in flights, inbound tourism has also seen a marked increase.

Strong economic vitality