Huatai Securities: "Spring Break + Qingming" holiday boosts travel demand, inbound tourism continues to grow rapidly

Ask AI · Inbound travel has overtaken outbound travel in popularity during holiday periods—value for money is the key attraction?

A research report from Huatai Securities states that the spring holiday, combined with the Qingming Festival, concentratedly released residents’ travel demand, significantly expanding residents’ travel radius year over year and making self-drive travel dominant. From 1 day before the Qingming Festival through day 2 of the holiday—social cross-regional passenger movements increased by 9.7% / 3.2% compared with the same period in 2024/2025. Data from the Ministry of Transport shows that cumulative passenger movements by railway/waterway/road/aviation increased by 10.4%/17.5%/2.6%/4.1% year over year, respectively. The number of non-operational private small passenger car trips on expressways and ordinary national and provincial roads increased by 2.8% year over year, accounting for more than 80% of total passenger movements. As car rental and self-drive travel are also an important travel choice for spring outings, they continue to rise structurally: according to Shenzhou Car Rental data, during this year’s Qingming Festival holiday, the number of car rental reservations increased by nearly 1x year over year, and the number of cross-city car rental reservations increased by nearly 2.5x year over year. Data from Hangzhou Flight Butler shows that during the Qingming Festival holiday, the average price of domestic air tickets increased by 11.7% year over year.

During the mini-holiday period, inbound and outbound travel performed remarkably well, possibly driven by Chinese tourists’ pursuit of the utmost value for money in travel, along with factors such as the Qingming Festival this year coinciding with overseas Easter holiday periods (April 3–6). The National Immigration Administration expects that during this year’s Spring Festival holiday, the average daily number of inbound and outbound passengers at ports nationwide will increase by 11.1% year over year, exceeding 2.3 million passenger trips per day. Platform data shows that inbound travel interest is higher than outbound travel. Data from Trip.com? (Hanglu Yuxing) shows that from April 1 to 6, the number of domestic route air ticket bookings for trips taken exceeded 7.64 million, up about 9% year over year; of this, bookings for inbound and outbound routes exceeded 1.42 million, up about 16% year over year. Data from Qunar shows that from April 1 to 6, the year-over-year growth in passengers whose travel radius was 800 kilometers and above exceeded 30%. Data from Ctrip shows that during the Qingming Festival holiday, the number of inbound travel orders increased by nearly 90% year over year; Europe’s inbound consumption spending capacity grew significantly—such as inbound spending in Russia and Spain, with year-over-year increases of more than 1.5x.