Discussion keeps the world turning.
Remember when a vacation was just about snapping a photo at a landmark and then moving on?
Well, that era is fading fast.
Travelers are now trading postcard views for local festivals, background villages and hands-on cultural deep dives.
We'll break down the forces pushing tourism away from checklist sightseeing and towards something far more personal.
We're live from our studios here in Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yuxin and Yuxia.
First up.
For many travelers, a summer trip used to mean visiting famous attractions, taking photos, and checking destinations off a list.
But this summer, the way people travel is actually changing, from small towns and traditional villages to music festivals.
Sporting events, and immersive cultural experiences, tourism is becoming less about simply seeing a place and more about experiencing it.
As cities and rural areas create new tourism offerings, travelers are...
Looking for deeper connections, richer memories and more personalized experiences.
So what's behind this change this summer where we're going from sightseeing to sight experiencing?
And what does the future of summer travel look like for us?
Maybe even starting this summer, Yushun and Yushan, before we talk about 2026 and what people are doing.
Can you remember, you know, maybe back to your younger days, how you used to spend your summers?
Would you do a lot of family related things?
Would you do a lot of friend related things?
Would you go around a lot?
What did you used to do?
I didn't have a lot of activities during summertime.
No way.
To my memory, because it's probably stopped, you know, when I graduated from college.
Because before that, it's basically just, okay, it's finally a time that I can stay at home, play with my computer games.
For the whole day and not getting out of my room.
Close your door in June and open it in September.
I feel like the younger we were, the more activities there seemed to be during summertime, like going out, like traveling all the way to somewhere different from where you live day by day, like seaside or in the mountains.
That happened quite a bit in my childhood.
But yeah, as we age, summertime or winter holiday, the winter counterparts seems to be full of homework and homestaying and well, maybe a nearby day trip, something like that.
I've heard a lot that when people would travel in the past, the goal would be to visit as many places as possible so that they could kind of check it off.
And Europe would be a popular and common place for people to do that.
It's like a combination of several different countries in two weeks or one week.
You got to earn back the money you paid to the travel agency in order to just grab as many as possible.
As many stamps on the passport.
Oh, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, but now apparently that is changing a little bit.
Not Europe, but just the style that people are looking for when they're talking about their summer vacation.
So what's going on with that?
It's kind of people are traveling are no longer for the sake of traveling anymore it is kind of a multi-purpose traveling right now and you know few years ago the formula was like
Visiting the must-see landmark, take a few photos, get a location pin in your social media, and then buy souvenirs, check it off the list.
But now, today, many travelers are asking a different question, is that, what kind of experience will I have there?
Or what kind of activities I can have there?
Or,
I am going to that place specifically for one thing, for example, music festival or sports event.
And then maybe after that, for a couple of days, I can stay around for other fun activities.
So a trip is no longer than just about seeing a famous place.
It could mean spending a weekend in a smaller village to experience, I don't know, local life or whatever, or maybe join a cultural group.
Event or exhibition in that place or whatever that that area has to offer
I guess the traditional vacation had to be at least a week long
Hopefully two weeks long but at least a week long
You know five working days plus the weekend and you go somewhere because it has famous stuff to see but not so much anymore
What would be the idea behind this change then?
The idea is on the fact that we're seeing a broader transformation in tourism nowadays, not only with the travelers themselves, but also with the market and how the products are being designed these days.
Because people are moving away from simply checking destinations off a list.
Yeah, and we see that reflected in the numbers, too.
Yeah.
That's during a 2026 May Day holiday, just two months, three months ago.
China recorded 325 million domestic tourist trips.
That's up 3.6% year on year, while domestic tourism spending was up 2.9%.
And at the same time, cultural events continue to attract visitors with public cultural institutions organizing around over 49,000 activities that received about 88 million visitors.
Now, that's a lot of number in one go, but what we're trying to tell you is...
Ever since the weather starts to get warmer since earlier this year, this trend has been happening, which drives people to get more deep down and more immersive into their travel destinations.
So I'm thinking then that people are looking more, I don't know if this is the right way to say it, but more of an emotional reward.
When they're taking their vacation, more memory creating, like that kind of thing.
Yeah, as I said, it's not only for traveling right now because they can have so many other activities and experiences and more immersive experiences like some cultural performances.
Or sports, tourism, and themed trips.
And as we mentioned before, the May Day holiday, spending on performances increased also 17.6% year on year.
And I am one of them.
I went to a music festival during that May Day holiday.
Oh, cool.
A lot of people went there.
There was a huge crowd.
Place and filled with crowd and then I can totally tell that people are just having more options and also these events are creating more options for people
To travel to that specific place, enjoy music, enjoy other activities.
And as you said, the value, the emotional value part is, I think...
Yeah, it is combining different areas.
I'm going to take a guess here.
The reason maybe one of the reasons you loved that music festival so much is because you were already in one location and you could be in that one location and experience multiple things at the same time.
So what I mean is you didn't have to worry about getting a taxi to another spot.
You didn't have to worry about lining up at another spot to get into some venue.
You didn't have to worry about tickets for another place.
You were already there.
And while you were there, you could experience food, maybe local food.
You could experience something musical, obviously.
You're at a music festival.
You had the crowd interaction.
You had human interaction and conversations and stuff.
So am I right when I say that?
Because I'm starting to think that that's what people are enjoying about these types of summertime activities.
Yeah, it's like a package.
You go to that place for one thing, and then after that, you can go to other places around it.
But still, of course, as you said, it's not like...
There are no barriers of lining up because think about the population of go to one music festival and the entrance will be crowded.
And that's, of course, the pain that I will have.
What kind of music festival was it?
It was quite famous.
And it's at the I think at the suburban area of Beijing.
All right.
It's exactly the one that I was invited to before May Day holiday.
But I didn't have it because I want to just be a cave goblin and don't move around.
But yeah, I heard the friends who invited me prepared a whole bunch of things that filled up their car's back trunk.
Just so that they have an inflatable tent that they can put up on the grass so that they can just sit there or lie down there and spend the night even.
And yeah, a whole bunch of other things they can just play around with.
So that's driving the whole interest of going for a particular event.
And yeah, maybe afterwards they can tour around.
And just to enjoy what else is there too.
And what I heard is I think social media has a lot to contribute in the growing of this kind of design of tours.
Because before we know something is happening, we go there and we go back.
That's kind of like the...
The formula of traveling or we heard well this scenic spot is so beautiful everybody's going
You must go we go and then return but nowadays as we go on social media everybody is traveling and everybody is posting
Where you can find the least expected things at this very
Small alley kind of tour.
The hidden gems.
Right.
And that includes, for me, what I always look for there is the local foods.
Maybe the off the beaten path restaurants.
I'm off for the foodie trips too.
Right.
Yeah, those are always great to see.
And yes, social media is wonderful for providing that kind of information.
But it's not just about young people to senior travelers are on the move as well.
Lots of different services covering wellness and health care and tourist attractions and homestays and other travel scenarios.
Yeah, so this isn't just necessarily a young person trend or a university student trend at all.
Yeah, thanks to a lot of, I think, provincial or local policies introduced by local governments because they are specifically designing these kind of travel tourism packages for both elderly and also young groups.
Of course, adults aged 60 and above will enjoy a lot of these things that you just mentioned, Steve, and also young people under the age of 18 with a particular focus on educational and study tours.
So a lot of places design these kind of cultural tourism consumption vouchers so that you can just go to one, let's say, a booking platform, and then they will have that specific designated area so that you can buy that product.
Plan with a very huge discount.
So the plan will cover multiple things, multiple perhaps ticket entries, maybe a museum here, a park there, something like that, all within the same relative area.
Or sometimes when it comes to one particular region or provincial policy,
Sometimes they give out incentives like coupons that you can get to deduct on the price you're planning to pay for a certain trip or a certain trip package, like how they're doing it in Sichuan province in southwest China this year.
Earlier this year, actually, it started since June, mid-June.
And what Sichuan did was they launched a 30 million yuan worth of tourism vouchers for seniors and children.
So this is part of their campaign.
Just to boost families and multi-generational trips in their region.
So that's available to both visitors and local residents through multiple platforms, such as Union Play, Figly, and Tongcheng, and several other platforms too.
A lot of people this summer, and this is kind of one of the biggest trends that we wanted to talk about today.
A lot of people are heading to small towns and rural areas and villages, places where people would never really consider traveling for their summertime vacation.
Because when it's summertime and you have time off, you've got to go somewhere famous and you've got to do something that...
Everybody else does on social media, but that's not the case this summer.
And I think this is a really cool trend.
Yeah, I think that's called reverse tourism.
People trying to find that smaller unknown places so that they can enjoy a much chill travel without too many people in the same place.
So going to some county places is also becoming one of the very popular destinations now.
I think 奔善游 is what you're talking about, the heading to counties kind of tourism designs.
That first pops up.
I think, well, at least the first time I saw it reported was back in 2024.
But this year, the booking for county level and rural destinations grew by over 60%.
And by July the 20th, travel products related to Bensanyo heading to counties saw booking interest rise 63% year on year, meaning that this is totally on the trend.
That's when these local governments, they also want to grasp this wave of tourists.
And then they actually also designed a lot of these, I think it is quite interesting, one day getaway routes.
So that, you know, they just offer you and recommended you that specific route and you can have, you can choose according to your own preference.
Kind of a preference if you're into like nature
That's example from ani county in southeast china um
So if you like nature kind of stuff and then they will offer you that kind of hike through national forest park and then you can enjoy a local farm lunch during in the afternoon
And then spend the afternoon exploring the whole countryside with activities like go karting and scenic walks.
I love it.
I love this concept of this different style of vacation.
And people are taking advantage of it too.
There was another stat that proved it.
County level car rentals, because that's what you do sometimes when you go on vacation, you need a car to get around.
Those grew by more than 75% compared to last year.
And when people so I guess it shows when people get out into those rural areas, that's how they want to get around by renting a car.
And it's much more stress free than, you know, going to Shanghai, for example, and renting a car and trying to drive around downtown Shanghai if you're not familiar with it.
Yeah.
Don't ever try.
You're right.
Yeah.
A lot of people, they wouldn't even consider it.
But when you're out in the rural areas, it's kind of one of the first things that people think about doing.
Well, one cute little story that I just saw from CCTV report is that a lot of people this summer, they're going to this county called Luoping.
Now, you might not know where that is, but in Luoping County, there is a Jiulong waterfall and it's located in southwest China's Yunnan province.
And there they have this spectacular waterfall that along just four kilometers of the Jiulong River, 10 cascading waterfalls tumble through the valley, creating a breathtaking stepped waterfall landscape.
And then that's not the end of it.
Just four hours drive away,
Travelers can also experience wild mushroom foraging in another county named Yimen County, and that's known as the hometown of wild mushrooms.
Now, on Roundtable, we talked about how picking mushrooms by yourself can be so dangerous.
Yes, if you don't know what you're picking.
And not very protective of the local environment, too.
But there, in Yimeng County, the local farmers manage designated forest areas where visitors can safely pick mushrooms under the guidance of experienced guides while protecting the natural environment.
So this is the whole vibe nowadays.
People don't just create routes.
They combine routes into a tourism route.
Product between different nearby counties.
And also in the meantime, they pay attention to the protection of the local environment.
Yeah, I'm just thinking, though, I'm guessing, you know, if this is becoming more and more and more and more popular and more and more people are doing this, then inevitably we're going to run into some problems here.
One might be over tourism, but I don't really think that's an issue.
What I'm thinking is that if these villages suddenly see an opportunity to...
Take advantage of a sudden interest in their town or their county, then they might try to overly commercialize what they have there, which would kind of defeat the purpose of why people were going there in the first place.
Does that make sense?
I think that's kind of an inevitable path that a lot of places that will go.
One thing is that, okay, of course, this is very attractive, like old ancient town.
That's one thing that will attract a lot of consumers and tourists.
Like a legit old ancient town.
Exactly.
Not some sort of fabricated version of one.
Yeah.
But the thing is that these kind of places, they also need to upgrade their infrastructure in the way that you will build up a lot of public, maybe toilets, bathrooms and other like tourist centers, that kind of thing.
And then you may need to build new buildings.
And then people will say, okay, it is not actually old ancient town.
It's just a new modeled, like fake, quote unquote, fake ancient town.
Yeah, but you're right.
When you said the word inevitable, I think you're right.
It's just it's going to happen whether you like it or not, because when when a place gets popular, then that's just what happens.
And yeah, and not only build new infrastructure, but you'd have to upkeep the buildings that you already have there because with more traffic than more stuff.
Can go wrong with that too, I suppose.
Yeah, that's why I think protection has to come first before the flourishing of tourism, before the flourishing of the designated hotspot locally are designed in the first place.
So
Well, here's the data.
China now has 8,155 villages listed in the National Traditional Village Protection Dictionary, with more than 5,000 additional villages included in provincial protection lists.
So what does that mean when you say 8,155 villages listed in the National Traditional Village Protection Directory?
What is that?
Well, that means that on a national level, we are now working to improve standards for the protection, for the restoration, for the renovation and adaptive use of traditional village and buildings.
Meaning that those facilities have been there for a very long time and someone needs to realize the cultural meaning of it.
Before it is being just put on a brand and start to attract people.
Remember previously we talked about among university students, that's a program for them to volunteer in rural areas or in the counties.
We mainly talked about how high tech and how helping local farmers to, for example, go on live streams to sell their local products.
But beyond that, there are also something that's really non-profitable for the local farmers.
Folks and also for these volunteers, that is a bunch of volunteers were sent there to calculate how many ancient architecture there are in local counties and villages to help, for example, one certain village in Eastern China's Anhui Province, I remember,
To just interview old people from that village and keep a record of the history of that village for the purpose of maybe in a few years time, that village can be designated into a travel or tourism center based on certain historical facts.
So I would say that the majority of the counties and villages out there are on this stage for now.
They're not flourished enough to start to, you know, more tourists are coming.
We can't take it anymore.
That's for the minor villages.
Very high-performing sides of the counties.
But for the majority, they're just growing, and they want to gather as many historical facts as possible.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is as long as there are people doing this, college students, volunteers or not, it's a good thing for them.
Yeah, and that's why they made the list, right?
And that's why they have so many villages on that list.
An example would be Guizhou, right?
Where they've repaired more than, this is impressive, 12,000 endangered traditional buildings.
They've protected 556,000 traditional buildings under the principle of repairing old buildings in their original style.
This is a very important idea.
Okay, just before you make your point, I just have a question.
Because that sentence, repairing old buildings in their original style, isn't that part of the criticism that when they try to recreate, I used the word fabricated before.
I apologize.
I don't think that was the right word.
I think what I was, the point I was making was that
If they try to make it look like the original for the sake of tourism, isn't that part of the criticism that people might have about these types of restorations?
I think probably lies in the mistranslation part of things.
As I said, that kind of what you said, making the old thing in the original form is actually how we can...
Ah, okay.
And that's how they fabricated the old town.
Now I understand.
It's not about over-restoration.
It's about creating something fake from the beginning that wasn't there in the first place.
Or was there many, many years ago, but just no more.
And by replicating it, it gives people back the memory, even through more modern lenses.
I remember in nearby in Beijing, there is a very popular, we call it Watertown.
I'm not going to just name which one it is.
But it's one of the most popular tourism spots near Beijing and Hebei region when it first came out.
That place, you just walk in, you know it looks like a movie scene.
You know it's not ancient.
Still float in i wouldn't know i mean for the international tourists i don't know i don't know if they would know the difference the buildings look too new to be old yeah too new to be old yeah
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah, I can see why people in the know might criticize it, but I also understand why towns would be motivated to take that step too.
Other things, you mentioned it before, Yishun, things like music festivals, things like sporting events, Shanghai, of course, we talked about that, although that wasn't in the summertime, I suppose, the F1 race that took part, the Grand Prix, but still that kind of counts, I think, about...
When we're talking about like creating events for as a destination, if you will, the city isn't necessarily the destination, the event is.
We also covered a lot of stories of sports events that happened locally, like.
The village super league for football and also there are village basketball association that kind of thing that attracts people not only from the local village but also from probably people from the same province but different cities to go to that place and cities will also introduce a lot of vouchers
And then when you're having, let's say, a football match ticket, and then you can use this ticket to go to another tourist attractions, get a lot of discounts.
That's the kind of bundle thing Yushan was talking about.
Yeah.
And also for music festivals, they're no longer just about watching performances.
They are becoming platforms that connect culture, also tourism and local economies because visitors may come for a concert, but they also stay in local hotels and they go to other places.
Eat local food, exploring nearby attractions and purchase regional products.
And in this way, I think one event can create economic opportunities for a whole entire city or even province.
And they want this happen.
And they want this happen mutually.
That's why different cities...
What I'm saying is that, like, because one city may play the football match in another city, right?
So they're actually cooperating with each other.
So if you are playing in my city, then...
Citizens from this city can have also another discount in another city oh that's kind of cool
Yeah that's kind of collaborating is something I think both fun and also economically beneficial for a lot of
Yeah, it's convenient.
It's made convenient.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
I mean, that part about kind of the snowball effect, economically speaking, in Halifax, where I went to university, Halifax, Nova Scotia, we have something called the Busker Festival.
Have you been to a Busker Festival before?
Busker?
Buskers are street performers.
So we have the Halifax International Busker Festival, and it's down on the waterfront in the Halifax Harbor, right in front of the Atlantic Ocean.
And so all the buskers, and they come from all over the world.
For this week long event or something like that.
It's happening right around this time of year.
And you have things like magicians and jugglers and singers and just whatever.
They're street performers.
And what the tourists do is along the waterfront, you just walk along.
It's a free event.
You just walk along, and when you see a performer you like, you just stop and watch, and then you just tip them.
Then you just go along and find another performer you like.
It's exactly what you said, Yushin, because people come.
It's like four or five hundred thousand people, I think, come and visit that and, you know, stay in local hotels.
Do you pay for.
Ticket to get in
No it's all it's all for free
You just walk down to the waterfront and they're all
There's a schedule but it's just such a cool thing that halifax does in the summertime and back to that point people come for the busker festival and it just happens to be in halifax
Halifax benefits from it
So it's a really kind of it's kind of a cool thing that brings a lot of people to Nova Scotia in the summertime.
Well, this is a time for graduates to they'll be taking.
We'll put a bow on this topic soon.
But I'd wanted to mention this.
The graduation trips are happening now for a lot of people.
Yeah, it's summertime, it's summer vacation, so graduation trip is hot among the graduates and young kids.
Data from travel platform ly.com shows that the searches for graduation travel increased by 62% year-on-year over the first week of July, with bookings among high school graduates aged 17 to 19 rising significantly.
So many destinations have launched special offers for graduates, including free admission and discounted travel packages linked to exam certificates.
For example, if you are a gaokao or zhongkao,
That's the college or high school entrance examinations.
If you participated in either one of these exams and holds that certificate with your student pass, I believe, you can basically show that and enter a lot of places either for free or with a huge discount.
That is a really, I have to say, of course, a good policy for graduates, right?
Of course, they will travel to these places for free.
That's one thing.
And you may think okay they're attracting people traveling there for free but think about they need to be accompanied right that their parents need to go with them their friends need to go with them
So
That is just, I think, a win-win situation for both sides.
They attracted a lot of people to travel there and a lot of people are willing to go there.
And they also got benefits from a lot of these vouchers and incentives.
That is just, wow.
They will.
They well deserve it.
They should have the freedom of enjoying the summer as much as they do.
They deserve a treat and a trip.
That is for sure.
All right.
Yeah.
No matter how you are spending your summer vacation, we hope you have a really great time.
It is the time.
We're in peak season now.
Are we not for people getting out there, enjoying their trips?
So whatever you're doing, enjoy it because you got to wait another 12 months before it comes back again.
