This year’s nine-day 2026 Spring Festival holidays, the longest on record, are projected to significantly boost the popularity of outbound travel from China.
According to official forecasts, passenger air traffic during the travel rush period is expected to reach an all-time high, with both outbound and inbound routes likely to experience new peaks in demand.
In a shift from the previous year’s travel patterns, recent data from several online tourism platforms indicates that Thailand has overtaken Japan as the top outbound destination for the Spring Festival holidays.
According to data sent by Qunar.com to the Global Times, the top 10 destinations for hotel bookings from mid-January through the Spring Festival period are Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Singapore, Russia, Vietnam, China’s Macao Special Administrative Region, Australia, and Indonesia. Notably, Japan did not make the list.
According to data provided by Tongcheng Travel, as of January 12, Southeast Asian countries accounted for half of the top 10 most popular international flight booking destinations for the Spring Festival holidays, led by Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City and Bali, Indonesia.
Flight statistics from the aviation data platform Flight Master also confirm that Thailand has emerged as the top outbound destination during the 2026 Spring Festival travel rush, while flights to Japan have plunged, with a year-on-year drop of 43.7 percent.
Flights from China to countries in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Laos, have seen a significant increase, it said.
In previous past years, Japan consistently ranked as the most popular outbound destination during Spring Festival holidays. However, during the current New Year holidays, South Korea surpassed Japan as the top outbound destination.
The number of visitors from the Chinese mainland to Japan plunged 45.3 percent year-on-year in December, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday, citing data from the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).
The organization said that tourists from the Chinese mainland fell to about 330,400 people in December 2025.
JNTO data shows that the decline became pronounced after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made erroneous remarks on Taiwan in November 2025. The number of visitors from the Chinese mainland dropped to 562,600 in November from 715,700 in October.
The loss of this core customer base directly affected overall sales. The decrease in Chinese tourists also weighed on overall tax-free sales, which fell 17.1 percent to 51.9 billion yen ($328 million) in December and 12.7 percent to 566.7 billion yen in the whole of 2025 compared with a year earlier, according to the Japan Department Stores Association, reported Japan Today on Saturday.
Japan’s six major Japanese department stores anticipate an aggregate 24 percent decline in operating profit year-on-year in the December-February period due to a drop in tourists from China, with many observers predicting the drop will continue, according to Nikkei Asia on January 17.
Moreover, Chinese carriers are ramping up efforts to open more flight routes.
In the international market, China Eastern Airlines said on Friday that it has newly launched or increased the frequency of more than 50 international routes, operating a total of more than 2,800 flights during the Spring Festival travel season.
The airline has expanded capacity mainly to popular winter destinations in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. New routes include Shanghai-Phu Quoc, Xi’an-Yantai-Seoul, Hefei-Kuala Lumpur, and Taiyuan-Phuket.
Previously suspended routes such as Taiyuan-Bangkok and Chengdu-Phuket have resumed. Flight frequencies have also been increased on routes from major first- and second-tier cities in China to destinations such as Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Malé, Singapore, Phuket, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Hanoi.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said that passenger traffic in China’s civil aviation sector during the coming Spring Festival travel rush is likely to hit a record 95 million trips, with a daily average of 2.38 million passenger trips, representing a year-on-year increase of 5.3 percent.