Passengers are seen at a platform of Nanjing Railway Station in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province, May 1, 2026. The transportation network of the country witnessed a travel peak on the first day of the May Day holiday.
China's tourism and consumption sectors saw robust vitality during the five-day May Day holidays — from stadiums in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, erupting with thunderous cheers and fans singing along in unison, to tranquil county towns like Pingtan in East China's Fujian Province, where urban families wandered along the coast, enjoyed night-market delicacies in fully booked boutique guesthouses and Shanghai's bustling bathhouses where foreign tourists soaked in steaming herbal pools and marveled at traditional massages.
The vibrant mix of cultural immersion and sporting passion during the holidays has highlighted the robust momentum of China's ongoing consumption upgrade, as well as the massive untapped potential, analysts said. The vibrant consumer market, while painting a vivid picture of the dynamics of China's domestic demand, is set to inject fresh impetus into the economy, they said.
Data from various travel platforms showed that during this year's May Day holidays, tourism has seen an upward trend in both supply and demand as many regions have aligned newly-introduced spring break with the May Day holidays, allowing longer trips and greater spending.
The extended holidays have encouraged more in-depth travel, with bookings for "treasure small-city chain tours" — involving stays in two or more cities — surging 121 percent year-on-year, according to a report sent by online travel agency qunar.com to the Global Times on Tuesday.
Also thanks to the extended holidays, hotel bookings for popular destinations on travel platform Tongcheng Travel surged more than 40 percent year-on-year, the Global Times learned.
China's May Day holiday travel surge has drawn the limelight of multiple media outlets. A report by the Travel and Tour World titled "May Day 2026 Holidays mark record-breaking domestic travel and new consumption model reshaping the future of travel" said that China's travel sector in 2026 witnessed "unprecedented momentum" during the holidays, signaling strong recovery and evolution in domestic tourism patterns.
The trend from traditional "sightseeing tourism" to "immersive experiences" has become markedly evident, with concerts, music festivals, sports events, theme park carnivals, and distinctive street markets surging in popularity and playing an increasingly central role in driving travel demand and local spending, underscoring a palpable consumption upgrade momentum, data from multiple platforms showed.
For example, hotel bookings around Zhengzhou Olympic Sports Center surged 214 percent year-on-year, boosted by multiple concerts, data from qunar.com showed. In Kaifeng, also in Central China's Henan Province, the Wansui Mountain Wuxia Theme Park drove a 205 percent increase in surrounding hotel reservations, while the Shanghai Legoland Resort contributed to a 172 percent rise in its surrounding hotel reservations, per the data.
Sports events, such as grassroots football leagues, have also been proving to be powerful drivers of tourism and consumption during the holidays. A report by Tongcheng Travel shows that the Jiangsu Football City League, coupled with other preferential travel policies, has increased hotel bookings in Suzhou by around 30 percent, while the Guangdong Football City League has driven hotel bookings in cities like Guangzhou by around 70 percent year-on-year.
Another major travel pattern shift during the holidays is that the share of high-star hotel consumption in county-level markets surpassed that of high-tier cities for the first time, according to a report by qunar.com. The report said that hotel bookings at the platform spanned 1,230 counties nationwide, covering nearly 90 percent of all counties in China. And residents from first-tier and new first-tier cities showed a stronger preference for exploring hidden-gem county towns.
A Beijing-based white collar worker surnamed Zheng just came back from his trip to Pingtan. He told the Global Times on Tuesday that he originally planned to travel to Southeast Asia during the holidays, but had to cancel the trip due to high cost and uncertainty of potential flight cancellations. "Small counties like Pingtan offered the natural wonder at a significantly lower cost, and this is the place where I can completely unwind and empty my mind," he said.
Some travel platforms also point to the massive number of inbound tourists flocking to China during the May Day holidays, which gives a strong boost to the vigorous development of new cultural and tourism consumption models. Data from HopeGoo, Tongcheng Travel's international platform, showed that bookings for inbound travel products during the May Day holidays surged 55 percent year-on-year.
Recent policy measures have called for more efforts to tap domestic demand potential, with measures to expand the supply of quality goods and services to drive consumption upgrading.