In 2025, traveling on a whim will get even easier for everyday people.
On March 17, Tongcheng Travel rolled out its “first time, worry free” service to all users, an offering it had been piloting since January to assist first-time air travelers with in-app reminders and on-the-ground guidance.
Prior to this, Tongcheng had already opened 19 membership service centers at airports and high-speed rail stations across the country, where users could access travel information, charge their phones, or get help with ticket refunds and changes.
These developments signal deeper shifts in China’s domestic travel scene.
Launching a service for first-time flyers points to a new demographic now considered valuable: residents from lower-tier cities who used to travel infrequently. The expansion of offline service infrastructure in these areas also reflects the growing appeal of smaller cities as tourist destinations.
The numbers back it up. During last year’s shorter public holidays, bookings from counties and non-first-tier cities surged. On online travel platforms, reservations involving smaller cities more than doubled year-on-year, while demand for train and flight tickets to third-tier and below cities jumped more than 200%.
These residents are traveling more, and they are becoming a new source of growth for travel companies.
During last year’s National Day holiday, Ctrip recorded a 100% and 300% year-on-year increase in average daily outbound travel orders from fourth- and fifth-tier city residents, respectively. On Qunar, over 600 users from third-tier and lower cities boarded a flight for the first time. Meanwhile, Tongcheng’s trial helped more than 20,000 users take their first flight in just two months.
This wave of data reveals rising confidence—and untapped potential—in China’s mass tourism market. Travel, once an indulgence for those with the money and time, is becoming more accessible. And as it expands, consumer preference is shifting from photo-ops and sightseeing to leisure-focused trips with higher price tags per customer.
More travelers from smaller cities
This year, National People’s Congress delegate Pang Yonghui proposed introducing a nationwide “spring and autumn holiday” system to spread out holiday traffic and ease the pressure of what he called the “tidal effect” of the holiday economy.
Pang noted that domestic tourism in China is highly concentrated around major public holidays such as the summer and winter breaks, Labor Day, and National Day. This leads to overcrowded attractions, hotel price surges, and traffic jams that diminish the consumer experience.
But the very fact that these problems persist reveals strong and rising demand. Take National Day, for instance: according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 765 million domestic trips were made during the holiday, a 5.9% year-on-year increase on a comparable basis. Total domestic tourism spending hit RMB 700.817 billion (USD 98.1 billion), up 6.3%.
Small-city residents were a key force behind that growth, and they’re heading overseas more, too. On several online platforms, outbound travel orders from residents of third-tier and below cities grew far faster than those from China’s megacities. In many of these smaller locales, bookings multiplied, while first-tier cities saw little change.
Tongcheng’s latest financial report highlights the same trend. As of the end of 2024, more than 87% of its registered users lived in non-first-tier cities. During Q4, about 70% of its new paying users on WeChat came from these markets.
With such a wide user base outside major cities, the company’s annual results offer a window into China’s mass market dynamics.
The report shows that Tongcheng served a record 1.93 billion trips in 2024, up 9.3% year-on-year. Average revenue per user rose 44%, and the average number of trips per user grew from 5.5 in 2019 to 8.1 in 2024. Its “other” revenue—mainly from its online vacation business—rose 35.5% to RMB 2.3 billion (USD 322 million).
International business was another highlight, with overseas air ticket sales rising more than 130%, and international hotel bookings up more than 110%.
This suggests that residents from non-first-tier cities are not only traveling more, but spending more, too, especially on international trips and vacation packages geared toward leisure.
Earlier, the 2023–2024 report on outbound tourism development in China predicted that outbound travel from China would exceed 87 million trips in 2023, and hit 130 million in 2024. The growth, it said, would be faster in smaller cities than in the country’s top-tier urban centers.
This deeper diffusion of outbound travel into China’s multi-tiered city hierarchy points to a shift in the country’s tourism economy—small-town residents are emerging as a significant driver of demand.
The rise is being fueled by broader shifts in consumption habits across the country, especially in service spending across non-first-tier cities.
Service retail grew 6.2% year-on-year in 2024, well above the rate for overall retail. Since August 2023, China’s National Bureau of Statistics has tracked spending on transportation, lodging, and dining. The results show that services now make up more than 40% of per capita consumer spending nationwide.
Travel, being a major form of service consumption, has naturally accelerated. Cheng Chaogong, chief researcher at Tongcheng’s research institute, said that tourism has moved from a flexible, optional category to one with “clear rigid demand”—something more people now consider essential to everyday life.
And with service consumption making up 70% of per capita spending in the US, China’s 40% rate leaves plenty of room to grow.
Interestingly, in terms of the share of consumption within disposable income, second- and third-tier city residents often show more willingness to spend than their first-tier counterparts. That’s likely because top-tier residents tend to invest or save more of their income, while small-town consumers are more inclined to spend.
Guiding new travelers on the road
As demand continues to climb, travel companies are retooling their services and offerings to meet the needs of this growing demographic—often first-time flyers or outbound travelers who care about both quality and affordability. These users also tend to have flexible schedules but more complex travel connections.
For these first-timers, Tongcheng’s new onboarding service includes both digital and in-person guidance, offering tips on baggage safety, airport security checks, and assistance from onsite staff to navigate terminals.
Before this, the company had already been targeting travel essentials through partnerships with domestic airports and train stations, opening membership service centers where travelers could ask about flight info, get route suggestions, or process refunds and ticket changes.
By the end of 2024, its 19 service centers had reportedly assisted more than 300,000 users. For less-experienced travelers from smaller cities, having an in-person help desk can take the edge off travel anxiety. For the company, it’s also a practical way to acquire new users.
Transportation, especially for round trips, has traditionally been a barrier. In the past, whether a small-town resident could access direct routes was often the deciding factor in choosing a destination. Outbound trips were especially difficult, as most international flights departed from main hubs like Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou—deterring many from planning international vacations.
Tongcheng addressed this by bundling airfare, train tickets, and ground transportation into more seamless journeys. Options like “air-to-air transfer” and “air-to-rail connection” allow travelers to book cross-modal itineraries—including subways and regional transit—in one go. This has also revived demand for smaller regional airports that had been losing traffic to high-speed rail.
For example, Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport—a facility often criticized for its distance from the city—cut transfer times from four hours to 90 minutes after launching an “air-rail connection” with Tongcheng. Meanwhile, Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport saw a 12.4% year-on-year rise in passenger throughput after joining the “air-to-air transfer” initiative. Tongcheng’s own transportation revenue rose 19.9% to RMB 7.23 billion (USD 1 billion).
Tourism platforms are evolving alongside changing leisure habits. Social media feeds are now packed with single-destination guides centered on one hotel or campsite. In response, online travel sites have begun listing options like forest hikes and boutique stays.
As leisure-driven travel gains traction across age groups, Tongcheng has started opening brick-and-mortar stores in residential communities to better serve specific needs—like seniors who prefer in-person interaction, or pet owners looking for boarding services while they are away.
The recent boom in outbound travel has created new opportunities—but also fresh challenges. Independent travelers now account for a greater share of the market, which has put pressure on traditional tour operators and their group packages. At the same time, the younger demographic driving this trend favors more personalized, fragmented, and niche travel experiences.
This has forced agencies to rethink route planning and resource allocation. Online platforms, on the other hand, are naturally better suited for individual travelers—though they face the challenge of localizing their international offerings.
Today, most major online travel players have overseas customer support teams in key cities to help users troubleshoot during their trips. Tongcheng, for example, has used its accommodation ecosystem to help Chinese hotel brands expand to countries like Japan and Malaysia.
The era of mass tourism
As small-town residents become a rising force in travel, a vast toolkit of underdeveloped services is emerging as the next frontier. These users need unique offerings—and their latent demand must be unlocked by innovation and technology.
The evolution of companies born in non-first-tier cities offers clues to the future of China’s tourism sector.
In January, DeepSeek-R1 was launched. Within two months, Tongcheng, Fliggy, and Mafengwo had integrated the model into their platforms, a sign of how artificial intelligence is quickly becoming central to the industry.
Even before this, online travel companies had been doubling down on AI investments. Ctrip and Meituan, for example, use browsing data and past purchases to recommend personalized travel plans. In March, Tongcheng completed the integration of its in-house travel AI, Chengxin, with DeepSeek, launching a new AI-integrated service for real-time bookings On March 24, Chengxin was further upgraded and rebranded as DeepTrip.com, designed to serve travelers in nine languages and boost China’s inbound tourism.
The system embeds flight, hotel, and attraction ticketing information directly into the platform. Travelers can now plan their entire trip, make decisions, and complete bookings through simple natural language conversations.
“Traditional recommendation systems rely on tag-based matching. Chengxin, however, understands implicit needs. For instance, if a user has a RMB 5,000 (USD 700) budget and wants a relaxing Labor Day trip, the system will factor in crowd forecasts, pricing trends, and personal preferences to generate a personalized itinerary that avoids congestion,” a Tongcheng representative said.
That kind of capability turns tedious, multi-step planning into a one-click experience. For users, it lowers the barrier to entry, boosting both willingness and confidence to travel.
Technologies that integrate recommendation, decision-making, and booking are making spontaneous travel more feasible. Meanwhile, smart guides and automated customer service are now standard, ensuring travelers have smoother experiences at major attractions and hotels. These advances collectively reshape the tourism industry’s operating model.
Experts have long predicted that travel will be among the earliest beneficiaries of AI adoption. Now, that prediction is being realized. With the help of macro trends—like rising service consumption, booming outbound travel from smaller cities, international flight recovery, and cultural-tourism subsidies from local governments—the wave of mass market travel seen last year looks poised to continue into 2025.
Booking data for the upcoming Qingming Festival already confirms the momentum.
According to Spring Tour, as of March 20, travel bookings for Qingming have doubled year-on-year. As of March 18, Umetrip reported more than 1.05 million domestic air ticket bookings, up roughly 12% from the same time last year. International bookings topped 480,000, representing a 24% increase.
With the Qingming holiday continuing the post-Lunar New Year travel boom, and Labor Day still weeks away, cities like Hangzhou have even added spring vacation days to bridge the gap.
Together, policy, consumer enthusiasm, and technology are fueling a clear surge. And the platforms that are closest to mass consumers—with strong market penetration—stand to benefit first.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by 36Kr Caijing.