Official data released during the final week of the nine-day Spring Festival holiday show that Chinese travellers made 5.7 percent more trips than in 2025, setting new single-day records for both rail and highway traffic. Railways moved 18.7 million passengers at peak, while duty-free sales on Hainan Island jumped 30.8 percent year-on-year to 2.72 billion yuan. Analysts attribute the surge to pent-up demand, targeted consumption vouchers and a rare alignment of public holidays with school schedules. High-speed rail once again proved the network of choice for families and returning migrant workers, testing station capacity in Guangzhou, Wuhan and Xi’an.
![Lunar New Year Travel Rush Breaks Records, Points to Robust Domestic Mobility Recovery]()
For overseas teams planning entry into China for post-holiday meetings or inspections, securing the correct paperwork can make or break an itinerary. VisaHQ’s dedicated China service (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines visa acquisition with online applications, real-time status tracking and nationwide courier pick-up, giving travel managers a single, time-saving point of contact for every passport in the delegation.
Hotel occupancy in China’s top ten destinations exceeded 90 percent, with family-sized rooms commanding the largest premiums. From a corporate-mobility perspective, the strongest signal is resilience: domestic business-travel volumes recovered to 94 percent of pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to booking platform Fliggy. Companies planning March kick-off meetings or plant visits should, however, beware of lingering post-holiday “inertia”: many factories operate below full capacity until mid-March as workers extend stays in their home provinces. Travel managers can exploit a narrow window of lower airfares—the week immediately after Lantern Festival (27 February)—when average domestic ticket prices fall 22 percent compared with peak-season levels. Flexible change waivers introduced during the pandemic remain in place at China Eastern, Air China and Spring Airlines, making it easier to shift itineraries if meeting schedules evolve. Longer-term, the data reinforce Beijing’s pivot toward consumption-driven growth. Expect local governments to extend voucher programmes and duty-free incentives into May’s Labour Day holiday, further stimulating internal mobility and creating knock-on demand for intercity rail and short-haul flights.
For overseas teams planning entry into China for post-holiday meetings or inspections, securing the correct paperwork can make or break an itinerary. VisaHQ’s dedicated China service (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines visa acquisition with online applications, real-time status tracking and nationwide courier pick-up, giving travel managers a single, time-saving point of contact for every passport in the delegation.
Hotel occupancy in China’s top ten destinations exceeded 90 percent, with family-sized rooms commanding the largest premiums. From a corporate-mobility perspective, the strongest signal is resilience: domestic business-travel volumes recovered to 94 percent of pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to booking platform Fliggy. Companies planning March kick-off meetings or plant visits should, however, beware of lingering post-holiday “inertia”: many factories operate below full capacity until mid-March as workers extend stays in their home provinces. Travel managers can exploit a narrow window of lower airfares—the week immediately after Lantern Festival (27 February)—when average domestic ticket prices fall 22 percent compared with peak-season levels. Flexible change waivers introduced during the pandemic remain in place at China Eastern, Air China and Spring Airlines, making it easier to shift itineraries if meeting schedules evolve. Longer-term, the data reinforce Beijing’s pivot toward consumption-driven growth. Expect local governments to extend voucher programmes and duty-free incentives into May’s Labour Day holiday, further stimulating internal mobility and creating knock-on demand for intercity rail and short-haul flights.
