Dai Bin | Tourism economy begins to prosper and enters a new cycle

The popularity of this Qingming Festival holiday is reflected in various data. Aranya is a representative local tour company. Its co-founder Ma Yin said on Weibo that on April 5, the peak number of visitors to the Qinhuangdao Aranya Park exceeded 50,000, setting a record high in history.

Inbound tourism has attracted a lot of attention with the live broadcast of the American Internet celebrity "Hyperthyroidism Brother" in my country. It is reported that at present, "Hyperthyroidism Brother" has uploaded five live broadcasts in Shanghai, Beijing, Henan, Chengdu and Chongqing on his personal channel, with a total of 35.16 million views and an average of 7.032 million views.

Overall, according to calculations by the Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the three-day Qingming Festival in 2025, the number of domestic tourists nationwide will be 126 million, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%; the total expenditure of domestic tourists will be 57.549 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7%; and the number of inbound and outbound tourists will be 2.5133 million, a year-on-year increase of 22.4%.

So, has the tourism industry entered a period of prosperity? What new development trends have emerged? For this reason, a reporter from China Economic Times interviewed Dai Bin, president of the China Tourism Academy, to discuss the development of the tourism industry.

China Economic Times: Can we say that our country’s tourism industry has begun to prosper?

Dai Bin: Judging from the data from holidays, summer vacations and snow seasons of the past two years, tourism has gone through the stages of sharp decline, deep depression and rapid recovery since 2020, and is moving towards a new cycle of prosperity and development at an obvious speed.

Like the 8-day "Intangible Cultural Heritage Version" of the Spring Festival holiday in 2025, major indicators such as the number of domestic tourists, tourism spending, travel radius, destination recreation radius and tourist satisfaction all hit historical highs.

During the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, key monitored tourist attractions, business districts, and blocks increased by 3.6% year-on-year. Among them, 5A-level tourist attractions and key leisure blocks received an average of more than 15,000 tourists per day, and the average daily passenger flow in major business districts exceeded 23,000.

Data show that the continuously improving economy, huge population size, rich natural and cultural resources and continuously improving strategic positioning have supported the long-term positive fundamentals of the tourism economy, and the domestic tourism market is steadily moving towards a new cycle of prosperity and development.

China Economic Times: What new development directions do you think the tourism industry will see?

Dai Bin: During the Qingming Festival holiday, the "three districts and one circle" including tourist attractions, resorts, historical and cultural blocks, and leisure business districts, the "four museums and one station" including museums, art galleries, libraries, science and technology museums, and cultural stations, as well as theaters and vegetable markets, together formed a new space for a better life that attracted people from near and far and was shared by hosts and guests.

A special survey shows that 10.8% of the respondents said they would participate in various folk activities while paying homage to the emperor; wearing Hanfu to check in at museums and paying homage to the emperor with ancient rituals have become the "spring limited edition" for young tourists; healing camping, stress-relieving farming experiences, spring fresh food on the tip of the tongue and local specialties in the trunk have greatly enhanced the abundance and quality of spring rural tourism; the boundaries between tourism and traditional industries such as leisure, sports, culture, commerce, shopping, and catering are becoming increasingly blurred, and diversified integration has injected new impetus into the tourism consumption market.

In the future, along with the new cycle of tourism economic prosperity and development, there will also be tourism demand with both diversity and personalization, as well as increasingly rational tourism consumption. First, there will be an increase in self-service and free travel groups, with high-speed rail and self-driving as the main modes of travel. Traditional travel agencies are difficult to intervene, and group tours are mainly concentrated in the elderly, study tours and outbound tour groups. Second, the experience scene has shifted from closed and charged tourist attractions to relatively open urban parks, museums, theme parks, resorts, historical and cultural blocks, cinemas, theaters and urban business districts, making it difficult to form marketable tourism products. Even if combined with tourist routes, it is not easy to form a charging model. Third, the rigid demand for long-distance transportation and small destination transportation, including aviation, high-speed rail, and car rental, has increased significantly, while the demand for accommodation, catering, shopping, sightseeing and cultural entertainment has become more flexible. Fourth, the market behaviors such as special forces tourism, reverse tourism, flat-substitution tourism, and white-label consumption dominated by young people, coupled with the increase in first-time experiencers of tourism brought about by the sinking of the market, have made the tourism market present a new feature of "vast land and thin soil".

China Economic Times: "Hyperthyroidism Brother" came to my country to live broadcast tourism and became popular all over the world. How is the development of inbound tourism? How long will it take for it to become a strong support for my country's tourism industry?

Dai Bin: Inbound tourism by foreigners and residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan achieved unexpected growth, and outbound tourism recovered rapidly. With the release of the visa, immigration, port and consumer payment facilitation policy effects, the national and local governments have continuously increased their efforts in promoting foreign cultural exchanges and tourism, and inbound tourism has entered a new channel for rapid recovery and a new stage of prosperity and development. With the increase in opening up to the outside world, more and more public cultural and leisure venues have become a new space for a better life shared by hosts and guests, meeting the diversified, personalized and quality needs of inbound tourists.

China Economic Times: How can tourism companies achieve further growth in the future as tourism consumption becomes increasingly rational?

Dai Bin: In the new development stage, the competitiveness of enterprises increasingly depends on the ability to discover new demands, rather than policy access and the monopoly of production factors. Whether willing or not, the shift of travel agencies to travel services, star-rated hotels to tourism accommodation, and A-level tourist attractions and resorts to the broad tourism reception industry are all irreversible trends in the new era.

Strengthening the systematic and in-depth research on the tourism market and consumer demand, thinking clearly about which demands are effective demands that can form market space, and then discovering those potential demands that have not yet been discovered, are realistic issues that travel agents must answer and answer well. Travel agencies should allocate more energy and resources to consumer demand surveys, product development and quality assurance, rather than sighing at the flowing water, and there is no need to dance with the rhetoric of selling anxiety and creating confrontation. In the short term, high-level demand leads to high-quality supply, and high-quality supply meets high-level demand. With the advancement of science and technology and social changes, supply will also create new demands. Artificial intelligence, big data, satellite navigation, unmanned driving, low-altitude flight and advanced manufacturing, literary and artistic creation are changing people's lifestyles at an obvious speed and are reshaping the contemporary tourism industry with unprecedented strength.

Reporter | Zhang Limin Editor | Liu Xin Source | China Economic Times Please indicate the source for reprinting