Golden Week travel enthusiasm fueled by incredible infrastructure, services

"The 40-room homestay that I run is fully booked for the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays," Lin Guoquan told the Global Times. Lin is a resident of Xiaohuajiang village, which is located right below the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, the world's tallest bridge, which officially opened to traffic on Sunday in Southwest China's Guizhou Province.

The trip was made possible because of the opening of the bridge, which shortened the travel time between the two sides of the bridge from the original two hours to just two minutes, the Global Times learned. On the first day of opening, the bridge and its accompanying Yundu Service Area received a large number of visitors from all over the country.

This was a vivid example of how China's incredible infrastructure is unleashing the potential of tourism, stimulating domestic consumption and inbound expenditure.

In essence, this provides tourists with more choices, observers said, adding that leveraging the country's strengths in infrastructure, China is also offering more travel products or services to optimize the supply of the tourism industry.

For example, the China Railway Kunming Branch in Southwest China's Yunnan Province on Monday announced the launch of several cross-border bullet train tourist routes between China and Laos, as well as between China and Vietnam during the National Day holidays, the Global Times learned.

Under the plan, the newly designed China-Vietnam tour package will kick off on October 1, departing from Yunnan's provincial capital Kunming. Travelers will hop on a high-speed train, effortlessly cross the border at Yunnan's Hekou county, and explore the quaint Vietnamese mountain town of Sapa, marvel at the stunning Ha Long Bay, and delve into the historic charm of Hanoi.

Alongside the new travel products, Chinese localities will also launch more than 12,000 cultural activities during the eight-day holiday, including over 300 large-scale light shows and more than 500 intangible cultural heritage exhibition events, according to a report released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Wednesday.

China's eight-day Golden Week, which this year features the unique alignment of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday, will start from October 1. The long holiday is fostering a vibrant festive ambiance across the country, unleashing people's enthusiasm for travel and spending, and reflects the strong resilience and vitality of the world's second-largest economy.

Inbound trip surge expected

Thanks to a series of favorable policies such as visa-free entry, tax refunds and an increase of flights, China's inbound tourism is regaining momentum in 2025. China is expected to record an average of 2 million daily border crossings during the upcoming eight-day holidays, the National Immigration Administration said on Sunday.

"The massive figure underscores not only robust cross-border tourism demand but also China's high-standard opening-up, demonstrating the country's stance in sharing development opportunities with the rest of the world," Chen Fengying, a research fellow at the Beijing-based China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Monday.

The Tianjin International Cruise Home Port in North China's Tianjin will receive four inbound cruises, carrying over 8,000 inbound and outbound passengers, the Tianjin Dongjiang border inspection station told Global Times on Monday.

Nana Oforiwa Kwao-Adotey, Founder &CEO of SinceShea, a Ghana-based beauty and personal care brand, recently came to China for the first time. While attending the Global Digital Trade Expo, she will travel in Hangzhou, the host city of the expo, to experience "the future" in China.

"China's AI and robotic development is mind blowing, exciting and interesting. I've watched the boxing match between humanoid robots and interacted with robotic dogs. I've also experienced new artificial intelligence technologies, which are amazing," Kwao-Adotey said.

Sun Lijuan, manager of Yiwu Hongsheng Toys Co in East China's Zhejiang Province, noticed a significant increase in customers from the five Central Asian countries and the Middle East. "Many foreign tourists and importers who travel to Zhejiang generally stop by the toy section in Yiwu International Trade City, with many looking to buy gifts for kids," Sun told the Global Times.

"Often, there are foreign tourists who point to a sample product and ask if I can sell it to them as their child will definitely love it," she said, noting that she felt proud every time foreign tourists ask this, since it proves made-in-China products are recognized and cherished as gifts.

Strong economic vitality

This year's National Day holiday, overlapping with the Mid-Autumn Festival, marks one of the year's longest festive breaks, potentially sparking an unprecedented surge in residents' travel enthusiasm, Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Monday.

According to an estimate released by the Ministry of Transport on Sunday, inter-regional passenger trips in China during the Golden Week are estimated to reach 2.36 billion, which means a daily average of 295 million passenger trips, up 3.2 percent from the same period in 2024.

The booming tourism market not only reflects the strong resilience of the cultural and tourism industry, but is also becoming the "main engine" driving consumption and boosting domestic demand.

Ahead of the Golden Week, regions across China are rushing to introduce innovative consumption scenarios, expand cultural and tourism product offerings, and accelerate consumer goods trade-in programs, further stimulating market vitality and driving the consumption sector to exhibit thriving momentum.

"As an important driver of the economy, the surge in tourism and consumption sector during the holiday will inject fresh momentum into the macro economy, contributing to the achievement of pre-set annual GDP growth target of around 5 percent," Chen said.

Analysts also pointed out that the 2025 National Day holidays will not only reignite consumer enthusiasm but also reflect new trends in China's holiday economy: a shift in consumption demand from quantity to quality, a transition in policy support from short-term stimulus to long-term mechanism building, and an evolution in industrial development from single-track growth to multi-sector integration.

The holiday economy is emerging as a key window to observe China's consumption upgrade and economic resilience, continuously injecting fresh growth momentum into high-quality development, analysts stressed.