China News Service, Beijing, October 2 (Reporter Ying Ni) During the National Day holiday in 2026, driven by the craze for holiday shopping, China's cultural tourism market is showing great vitality.
According to the Ministry of Transport of China, the number of trips nationwide during the seven-day National Day holiday will reach 2.13 billion, with an average of about 300 million trips per day. There are only three working days between the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday. "Please take 3 days off and 13 days off" has given rise to the longest travel window of the year. The lengthening of holidays has directly rewritten the travel radius, and long-term travel and multi-city series have become the mainstream.
Ctrip data shows that 1 in 10 tourists choose to combine the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day into consecutive holidays, and nearly half of the consecutive tourists travel for more than 8 days.
Ultra-long vacations have also made "multi-city connections" a new trend. Meituan data shows that the number of users booking air tickets to two or more destinations increased by 70% year-on-year, and the number of users who connected multiple cities at once through a combination of airplanes and high-speed rail increased by 14% year-on-year.
On October 1, the first day of the National Day holiday, the ancient city of Shangqiu in Henan Province was very popular. Tourists strolled through the ancient streets and immersed themselves in the charm of history and culture. The picture shows tourists watching an opera performance in Shangqiu Ancient City. Photo by Li Heng
Among them, the "Travel Shandong with Online Literature" project launched by Shandong Province connects seven cities in Jining, Jinan, Tai'an, Zibo, Weifang, Qingdao, and Yantai. It relies on seven popular online IPs such as "The Holy Sage of Confucianism and Taoism" and "Shading the Sky" to combine the fictional world of the novel with the Qilu landscape and historical sites, attracting book fans to check in offline across dimensions, and is very popular. This model uses online literature as a medium to activate traditional cultural and tourism resources with narrative methods familiar to "Generation Z" and realize the transformation of IP traffic into cultural and tourism consumption. Liu Wei, a "post-2000" Internet literature enthusiast, told reporters that the line runs from west to east, and book fans can take the high-speed train to change "chapters" a day, which is very convenient.
At the same time, “native tourism” has become a new trend in National Day travel. Tourists prefer landscapes, villages and small towns that retain natural features, local fireworks and native culture. Fliggy platform data shows that the number of users booking natural scenery and village tourism products has increased by nearly 50% year-on-year, and bookings in small towns with outstanding native features such as Wuwei in Gansu, Xuancheng in Anhui, and Pu'er in Yunnan have doubled.
Tongcheng Travel data shows that bookings for county travel products have increased by 42% year-on-year, and the average number of days tourists have spent in the county has increased by 3.2 days. Pingtan, Chun'an, Baoting, Pingyao, Anji, etc. are among the top ten popular destinations for "in-depth travel to counties" - these place names that were passed by by the highway in the past have now become destinations worth buying a ticket to stay for a few days.
Ms. Shen, who planned to travel from Shanghai to Jianshui, Yunnan during the National Day, told reporters that what attracted her attention to Jianshui was the meter-gauge train, purple pottery making and the atmosphere of the ancient city. When a family of three travels with their children, "I don't want to over-schedule the schedule, just enjoy it slowly."
It is worth mentioning that nighttime cultural tourism consumption is also moving from "one-time light shows" to normalized business operations. "Tianfu Qi Temple Night" in Jianli, Hubei Province, as the country's first Huagu Opera-themed immersive night tour district, officially opened on October 1. The marching performance "Huagu Liyuan Love" is performed regularly, creating an immersive experience in which "the play is performed on the street and people play in the play".
From the past "people follow the herd" style of checking in to now in-depth experience of local culture, the transformation of China's cultural tourism consumption is clearly perceptible.
