Chinese travellers will take fewer overseas trips in the second half of 2026 than forecasters expected. A weak economy at home has made them far choosier about which trips are worth taking.
China Trading Desk, a travel data firm, now expects about 179 million outbound trips this year. It puts spending at destinations at around 258 billion US dollars. Both figures are almost 3% below its June estimate.
Those numbers would still be a record and both sit above pre-pandemic levels. The recovery has not stopped. It has slowed.
Subramania Bhatt, who heads China Trading Desk, said the appetite to travel has not disappeared. Travellers are simply more selective about when they go and whether a trip is worth it.
The detail that matters for destinations is where the weakness sits. Those who do travel are keeping their trip budgets roughly intact. The shortfall is in the number of trips and not the spend on each one.
China’s drawn out property crisis remains the main drag. Conflict in the Middle East has also disrupted long haul routes, pushing some travellers towards destinations closer to home.
Geopolitics and safety worries are redrawing the map as well.
Japan, long a favourite, has been hit by a diplomatic row over Taiwan. Chinese airlines have cut flights and arrivals from China are expected to more than halve this year to 4.1 million.
Thailand is losing its pull for a different reason. Heavy coverage of scam networks and safety incidents has damaged confidence among Chinese travellers.
That pressure was already visible before this forecast. In June the Association of Thai Travel Agents cut its own 2026 target for Chinese arrivals from 9 million to 7 million.
ATTA blamed safety concerns above all, including reported ransom cases, disappearances and scam linked crime. It also pointed to higher travel costs and damaging coverage on Chinese social media.
South Korea is the clear winner from the reshuffle. It picks up shoppers who spend heavily along with travellers who have switched away from Japan.
Korea expects about 7 million Chinese visitors this year, worth close to 13 billion dollars or roughly 1,815 dollars a head.
Uncertainty is also pushing people closer to home, and Hong Kong and Macau now account for nearly 40% of the entire Chinese outbound market.
Big visitor numbers do not always mean big money. Hong Kong expects around 41 million trips from the mainland this year but average spending is only about 310 dollars a head.
France shows the opposite pattern, expecting just 2.2 million Chinese trips while pulling in 7,622 dollars per visitor.
That gap is the useful lesson for Thailand. Arrival counts and tourism revenue are not the same target and a destination can win one while losing the other.
Across the whole market outbound trips are still on track to rise 7% on 2025, with average spending at 1,437 dollars a trip.
Sources: Bloomberg, China Trading Desk,
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