China Consumer: Tourism: Still-Resilient Leisure Travel Demand During Dragon Boat Festival

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China Consumer: Tourism: Still-Resilient Leisure Travel Demand During Dragon Boat Festival

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22 Jun 2026 11:25:38 ET │ 13 pages

China Consumer

Tourism: Still-Resilient Leisure Travel Demand During Dragon Boat

Festival

Lydia Ling AC

CITI'S TAKE +852-2501-2475

Despite rainy weather, China domestic tourism demonstrated a resilient lydia.w.ling@citi.com

trend during the 3-day Dragon Boat Festival (19-21 Jun), with domestic Xiaopo Wei, CFAtourist number/tourism revenue growing by 4.4%/4.0% yoy, respectively,

according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This came above our +852-2501-2472

expectations given a slight decline in nationwide passenger throughput per xiaopo.wei@citi.com

Ministry of Transportation. Chinese outbound travel reverted to positive Brian Cho

growth during the holiday while inbound travel continued to trend well. +852-2501-2712While macro and weather uncertainty may linger, we expect that resilient

leisure travel demand, solid inbound travel momentum, and normalized brian.cho@citi.com

industry supply should continue to underpin hotel RevPAR trends in China,

especially on ADR strength. Atour remains our top Buy, with its

underappreciated earnings resilience against RevPAR volatility and

sustained retail strength.

Domestic tourism — According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the domestic

tourist number amounted to 124m person times during the 3-day Dragon Boat

Festival, up 4.4% yoy. Domestic tourism revenue grew by 4.0% yoy to

Rmb44.456bn, with per-capita spend marginally down 0.4% yoy (Figure 1). The

discrepancy vs. the traffic momentum illustrated by the Ministry of Transportation,

in Citi’s view, could be due to less travel demand for non-tourism purposes given the

rainy weather while leisure travel demand stayed resilient.