China Outbound Tourism Industry Continuing its Steady Growth

With the continued international flight resumption, changed policies in overseas tourism destinations, the new patterns of international geopolitics, and in particular, highly personalized and diversified demand from Chinese travellers, the Chinese outbound tourism industry is continuing to recover and to grow steadily.

The recent statistics from the China National Immigration Administration showed that the number of inbound and outbound trips made by Chinese residents during the 2025 Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) 8 days holiday was 7.671 million, with an increase of 5% compared to the same period last year, demonstrating a strong growth potential of China's outbound tourism industry.

More industry platforms’ data further verified the growth. The "2025 Spring Festival Tourism Summary Report" released by Ctrip on February 4 th indicated that the overall number of cross-border travel orders during the 2025 Spring Festival holidays increased by 30% compared to last year. Hot outbound destinations for Chinese travellers included Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, the United States, Macau, and Vietnam etc.

In addition, Fliggy, the Alibaba's travel platform, also unveiled that the outbound tourism during this year's Spring Festival holiday continues to grow strongly. International cruises, international car rentals, and overseas one-day tours have shown high growth rates, with international cruises bookings increased by 229% year-on-year. China, Hong Kong, Macao, East Asia, and Southeast Asia remain the most popular destinations for outbound tourism, while the United States, Australia, and France also rank among the top ten destinations.

What is more, another travel platform Qunar released that their data showed during the 2025 Spring Festival Chinese tourists covered more than 2100 overseas cities worldwide, with a year-on-year increase of 50%.

As the only business to business exhibition focusing solely on outbound travel in China, China Outbound Travel and Tourism Market (COTTM) will welcome its 18th edition on 24-26 April, 2025, Beijing. COTTM provides a vital platform for international travel destinations and tourism product suppliers, especially from the long-haul and niche resource destinations, to communicate with the China tourism industry and to set up important partnerships with Chinese travel trade professionals.

By the end of January, tourism boards/ministries and destination tourism providers from Egypt, Turkey, Ireland, Albania, Iraq, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Belarus, Mongolia, Peru, Suriname, South Africa, Finland, Poland, Azerbaijan, Germany, Thailand, Nepal, Belgium, Madagascar, Maldives, Tunisia, Dominica, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Algeria,
Brunei, Australia and other countries and regions have planned to participate in COTTM2025.

As an important exhibition platform in the industry, during the past 20 years COTTM has been devoted to creating more cooperation opportunities for global tourism resource providers with Chinese outbound tourism operators, to promoting the optimization and upgrading of the industry ecosystem, and to providing value for the continuous
development of China's outbound tourism industry towards diversification, personalization, and sustainability.

COTTM Outbound Investment Forum
From 2024, COTTM launched the “COTTM Outbound Investment Forum”, committed to providing a business platform for Chinese outbound hotel brands and tourism investors with overseas project parties. It aims to export matured Chinese tourism industry solutions, advanced technologies, and equipment manufacturing to overseas destinations, and ultimately, to help overseas destinations to increase the quality of their products and services.

The 2025 COTTM Investment Forum will attract about 150 participants from investment association/government authorities, tourism investment management, hotel investors, brand management organisations, tour operators, infrastructure providers, tourism and amusement facilities and operational system providers etc.

It is projected that over 300 exhibitors from 50 destinations including overseas national tourism boards, embassies and destination resource suppliers will exhibit and a visitor audience of over 4,000 outbound tour operators from all  over China will visit COTTM2025, which will be held on 24-26 April at the New Hall of the National Agricultural Exhibition Centre in Beijing.

Source: COTTM.