Golden Week's Second Crowd: Is China Inbound Tourism the Cheapest Export Channel a Brand Can Get?
Key Takeaways
This is the first Golden Week with two separate crowds shopping in China at the same time: several hundred million domestic travellers, and a record number of foreign visitors arriving visa-free. Only the second group is still spending more than it did a year ago.
The macro case is one-sided. Foreign arrivals rose 20.4 percent in the first half of 2026, with 77.7 percent entering visa-free, while retail sales grew 0.4 percent in August and gold and jewellery fell 17.5 percent.
Inbound is not a luxury story. A foreign visitor generates about 29.1 percent of the global average in revenue per trip, and the mix is dominated by independent travellers and backpackers spending small and often. The Alipay spending map puts Jinhua, the city that contains the Yiwu wholesale market, in the national top ten.
For a Chinese brand with domestic stores, the inbound shopper is the cheapest overseas marketing available: the sale happens in Shanghai, the posting happens later on Instagram. The work is making a shop legible to someone who cannot read Chinese.
Why Does Golden Week Now Have Two Crowds Instead of One?
Every October the same figure gets quoted. Last year's combined Mid-Autumn and National Day break produced 888 million domestic trips and RMB 809.006 billion in travel spending, the largest consumption number China publishes. With three days of leave buying thirteen consecutive days off, brands are expecting a strong Golden Week. Last year's numbers say otherwise: over the same eight days sales at key retail and catering businesses rose 2.7 percent. The crowd sets records. The till does not.
The change worth arguing about is the second crowd. The National Immigration Administration counted 22.914 million foreign nationals entering China in the first half of 2026, up 20.4 percent, with 77.7 percent of them arriving visa-free. Pre-holiday booking data shows inbound air tickets up about 6 percent for this break, with Chongqing up roughly 40 percent. Domestic and foreign shoppers are now walking the same streets in the same week, in numbers that make both visible.
Which of the two deserves an October budget is a real question. China inbound tourism is much the smaller crowd, and we still think it is the better place to put the money.
Why Is China Inbound Tourism the Only Line Still Growing?
Put both crowds against the same backdrop. Retail sales grew 0.4 percent in August, with gold and jewellery down 17.5 percent. That is the market the domestic traveller is shopping in, and a seven-day holiday does not change the mood of a household that has spent the year trading down. Against it, China inbound tourism is growing at rates that belong to a different economy.
What makes that growth worth planning against is where it comes from. It is policy-made rather than mood-made, and policy is easier to forecast than sentiment. Departure tax refund stores have passed 14,000, roughly four times the total at the end of 2024, and instant refund at the point of sale went nationwide on 1 September, replacing a short list of pilot cities. A foreign shopper can now buy, claim and leave without a separate trip to the airport desk.
The result shows up in transaction data. In the first half of this year the number of foreign travellers claiming departure tax refunds rose 366 percent year on year, and the value of refunded goods and payouts grew 69 percent. Those are not the movements of a market discovering a new desire. They are the movements of a market where an existing desire stopped being inconvenient.
That distinction matters for how a brand should read the next three years. Visa-free entry and a working refund counter did not create demand for Chinese products. They removed the friction that used to make a foreign visitor decide, at the till, not to bother. Conversion changes move faster than demand changes, and they are also easier to copy, so the advantage goes to whoever sets their shop up first.
What Do Foreign Visitors in China Actually Buy?
Not what the duty-free industry assumes. Research from the commerce ministry's international trade institute puts 2025 inbound tourism revenue at US$357.3 per visit, about 29.1 percent of the global average, and sizes the ten-year gap at RMB 1 trillion to 3 trillion.
Low spend also comes down to who is arriving. Visa-free entry has lengthened stays, and the spending is going small and frequent: on this year's May holiday, foreign payment transactions in China rose 45.15 percent while transaction value rose 36.96 percent. Transactions are outrunning value, which means each purchase is getting smaller. That is how an independent traveller market spends: the money is saved on beds and transport, and the trip itself is hiking, mountains and long train rides rather than a resort.
The visitor who does spend is not chasing a discount. They are spending a budget they had already decided to spend. A hiking shoe, a backpack, a pair of glasses were on the list before they left home, and the only open question was where to buy them. Whoever takes that purchase gets the customer. Beyond it, only two kinds of item close: the one the trip itself forces them to buy, and the one that is small, light and worth filming. Departure tax refund policy has been built around exactly this band of mid-priced goods, from cultural products and Chinese beauty to smart hardware, tea and designer toys. Nobody buys something heavy, expensive or high-maintenance for the first time in the middle of a trip.
The spending map says the same thing from another angle. Alipay data for this year's May holiday showed inbound consumption up close to 70 percent, with Jinhua, the city that contains the Yiwu wholesale market, ranking in the national top ten alongside Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Yiwu is not a sightseeing destination. It is where you go to buy a large quantity of things cheaply, and its presence on that list tells you what kind of shopping is growing.
The behaviour underneath is narrower and more useful than "foreigners are shopping". It is the Chinese brand bought as a souvenir. We looked at two versions of it this summer: Pane, a Shanghai sneaker label whose store became a stop on foreign visitors' itineraries, and Songmont, whose Shanghai flagship now serves more overseas customers than domestic ones. Neither opened a store abroad. Both are leaving the country in hand luggage.
The products that travel this way share a shape. They are mid-priced rather than cheap or luxury, visibly Chinese in design rather than generic, and materially better value than the nearest equivalent at home. That combination is the reason the average spend stays low while the number of items rises, and it is also the reason the category is invisible in duty-free sales data. The foreign visitor is not replacing a European handbag purchase. They are buying something they could not have bought anywhere else.
How Does the Same Holiday Look From the Other Side of the Border?
These seven days are a gain in one direction and a loss in another. Mainland arrivals in Japan fell 59.0 percent in August to 418,000. Where Chinese travellers do land, they behave much as we described when Chinese tourists returned to Europe without their old shopping habits: present, curious, price-aware and no longer filling suitcases. The symmetry is worth naming. China is now running the inbound conversion test that Japan and Europe have been running on Chinese visitors for a decade, and it is starting from a lower base than either of them.
What Should Brands Do With These Seven Days?
For a Chinese brand with domestic retail, the inbound shopper is the cheapest overseas marketing on offer anywhere. The sale happens in Shanghai in renminbi, with no import duty, no distributor margin, no overseas rent and no customer acquisition cost. The marketing happens afterwards, for free, when the buyer photographs the purchase for an audience that has never seen the brand. What it costs is preparation: price tags and care labels in English and Korean, a tax refund sign visible from the street, staff who can finish a refund form without calling a manager, Alipay and WeChat configured to accept foreign cards, and a prepared answer to the question that always follows, which is whether you ship.
For an international brand already operating in China, the opportunity is rarer and shorter. The inbound shopper is a chance to sell at the China price to a foreign wallet. For a good many imported beauty and apparel brands the China shelf price now sits below the home-market price, and the departure refund takes more off again. A visitor who discovers that is a visitor who buys three of something. Very few international brands in China have told their store teams this is happening, let alone built a display for it.
The trap in all of this is the footfall number. Most foreign arrivals are not in China to shop at all, and the numbers say so: 29.1 percent of the global average per visit, with payment transactions getting smaller. A store that measures the holiday by how many foreign faces walked in will conclude it worked when it did not. The metric is conversion per visitor, not arrivals. A crowd and a revenue line are different things, which is the same distinction we drew when Pop Mart's overseas sales fell for the first time after a year of queues.
When the holiday data lands after 7 October, the domestic headline will be large, and it will be argued about for a week. The number we will be watching is narrower: refund transactions per inbound visitor, and average refund value. If those rise faster than arrivals do, China inbound tourism has started to convert, and the cheapest export channel a Chinese brand has ever had stays open well past this holiday. If arrivals rise and refunds do not, the visitors are still only visiting.
Double V is a cross-border operating partner and intelligence house for emerging consumer brands, based in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We help brands connect China and the world through three businesses: Brand Operation (marketing and distribution for brands on retainer), Brand Incubation (sister company Glam Infinite and our own-built brands), and Industry Intelligence (cross-border research and reports). Talk to our team.
Comments