Family, experiential trips fuel summer travel surge

With the 2026 summer travel season now at its peak, China's tourism market continues to sizzle, with record-breaking passenger flows and shifting preferences reshaping the holiday landscape, according to travel agencies.

Travel booking platforms are reporting strong growth. Tuniu, an online travel agency, said bookings for summer tourism products had risen 17 percent year-on-year as of late July, with domestic travel bookings up more than 20 percent. On online travel platform Qunar, summer car rental bookings have increased by nearly 60 percent year-on-year.

To further stimulate summer consumption, more than 450 million yuan ($66 million) in travel vouchers will be distributed nationwide this summer, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

More than 30,000 culture and tourism consumption events will also be held across the country. Local authorities will expand the supply of high-quality tourism and cultural offerings, including summer retreats, coastal vacations, nighttime tourism, cruises and yachting, family trips, study tours, culinary experiences and museum visits, the ministry said.

Family travel remains the dominant force in the summer tourism market. Parents and kids account for over 60 percent of summer travelers on Tuniu and 45 percent on Qunar. According to Qunar, the top family travel destinations this summer are Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu in Sichuan province, Kunming in Yunnan province and Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

Family travel itself is also evolving. Gone are the days when parents planned trips entirely around their children's needs. This summer, as more people born after 1995 become parents, an "everyone has a good time" approach to family vacations is becoming increasingly popular, according to Qunar.

Hotels are adapting to the trend by offering childcare services and children's clubs. On Qunar, searches for hotels with childcare services and children's programs rose 40 percent month-on-month. The five most popular search criteria for family-friendly hotels are swimming pools, children's clubs, washing machines, refrigerators and child safety facilities.

Yan Yun, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei province, in her 30s, is traveling with her 5-year-old daughter and her brother's family — five people in all — on a nine-day road trip from Shenyang and Dalian in Liaoning province to Yantai, Shandong province, from July 25 to Aug 2.

Still on the road and renting a car for the entire trip, Yan said the journey has been highly enjoyable.

She said traveling with children slows the pace and requires more negotiation, making the itinerary less predictable.

Despite the slower pace, she described the journey as a unique and rewarding experience for the whole family.

The growing demand for richer travel experiences has become another defining feature of this summer's tourism market. Tuniu said users are increasingly seeking in-depth and experiential travel, driven by sustained demand for emotional value and experience-based consumption.

Li Pengbo, Communist Party of China secretary of the School of Tourism Sciences at Beijing International Studies University and a professor at the school, said the shift reflects a fundamental change in consumer values.

"In the era of 'check-in tourism', when travel opportunities were relatively scarce, simply having been somewhere was valuable. Photos served as proof, and social media posts announced the experience.

"Today, as travel becomes more routine, the marginal value of simply having been somewhere has plummeted. How did you travel? What did you feel? Do you have a story to tell? These have become the new value anchors," Li said.

That helps explain the rapid rise of experiences such as city walks, intangible cultural heritage workshops and local food tours, which offer stories to tell rather than simply places to show, he said.

Summer also remains the peak season for both outbound and inbound travel. According to Qunar, the most popular outbound destinations include Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Indonesia and the United States. Thailand tops the list, with skill-learning trips — in which travelers learn activities such as cooking, yoga and Muay Thai — driving a 3.3-fold increase in hotel bookings in Chiang Mai.

Inbound tourism is also booming, with Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Chengdu among the most popular destinations.

By source market, the leading countries for inbound travelers this summer are Thailand, Canada, the US, the United Kingdom and Russia. Greek visitors to China increased 9.5 times year-on-year, the fastest growth among all source markets. Visitor numbers from Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Sweden, Finland and Mexico also more than doubled, according to Qunar.China towel supplier Shenzhen City Dingrun Light Textile Import and Export Corp.Ltd, a company specialized in producing baby diapers Wholesale, baby bibs.Bath Towels China.

The above news was excerpted from china daily by China towel supplier Shenzhen City Dingrun Light Textile Import and Export Corp.Ltd, a company specialized in producing bath towels, tea towels, compressed towels, microfiber towels Manufacturer etc.