China's holiday spending reveals emerging consumption trends: Smarter consumption and more flexible travel schedule

Editor's note: Liu Ming is an assistant researcher with the Department of Economic Forecasting at China's State Information Center. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Although the Spring Festival holiday is well behind us, it still offers a clear window for observing China's holiday economy amid policies to expand domestic demand, faster diffusion of digital technologies, and a broad recovery in service consumption. During the holiday, the national average daily sales of consumer-related industries rose 13.7% year on year versus the previous Spring Festival, delivering a strong opening for holiday consumption.

Smart consumption is becoming new growth engine

Smart consumption is expanding rapidly in a more mass-market, scenario-driven way, turning into a prominent driver of holiday demand. The adoption of large-model applications has kept rising as domestic AI foundation models achieved broad breakthroughs and deployment costs fell sharply, lowering barriers for everyday users.

Digital consumption demand has also surged. VAT invoice data from the State Taxation Administration indicates that during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, online entertainment spending, such as music and video, pushed sales revenue for digital cultural services up 38.8% year on year. Meanwhile, sales revenue for household appliances, including robot vacuum cleaners and TVs with screen-casting, rose 19%.

AI agents are increasingly embedded along the consumption chain. In high-frequency scenarios, like red-packet social interactions, travel planning, dining reservations, and ticketing, AI agents provided personalized decision support and improved conversion efficiency. In film consumption, for example, platform data shows that ticket orders completed through AI channels increased 372-fold compared with the previous period. This rapid growth reflects both targeted policy support, such as consumer subsidies and trade-in of old consumer goods, and a continuing shift in preferences toward smarter, higher-quality spending.

Hybrid ways of spending are becoming new norm for holidays

Travel schedules have become more flexible. More and more people are combining returning home with traveling during holidays, or traveling first and then returning home, so that family reunions, leisure, and travel activities can be more smoothly planned and organized.

This hybrid pattern of enjoying holidays has transformed it from a single peak into a more flexible, multi-wave rhythm. The timing of consumption has also become more diversified. Holiday shopping, service bookings, and entertainment activities are increasingly taking place in smaller and more frequent forms. Instant retail and reservation-based services meet dispersed needs, while platform recommendations and off peak promotions help distribute expenses more evenly during holidays.

Passenger flows became more evenly distributed. Travel platform data indicates that the mid-holiday period, especially the second and third days of the Spring Festival holiday, emerged as the peak. Civil aviation travel intensity rose 38% year on year, helping relieve the usual congestion pressures concentrated at the start and end of the holiday.

Shopping by foreign visitors also surged

The Spring Festival is evolving from a traditional holiday into a travel-and-consumption node with growing global appeal. International arrivals and spending showed a strong rebound. Travel platform data indicates that around the Spring Festival period, international flight bookings to China by foreign travelers rose by more than 400% year on year, while domestic flight bookings rising by about 20%. Data from the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, shows that during the nine-day holiday, the average daily number and value of payment transactions made in China by overseas visitors processed via UnionPay and NetsUnion increased by 78.10% and 44.33%, respectively.

Foreign visitor consumption is also upgrading. Spending patterns are shifting from sightseeing-led purchases toward retail shopping, with a rising share of higher value-added goods. Tech products, such as drones, premium smartphones, smart wearables, and smart home devices, were especially popular, reflecting growing recognition of made-in-China innovation. Some commercial districts report a notable year-on-year increase in foreign visitors' willingness to buy products like smart glasses, wearables, and translation devices.

This momentum is driven by both China's cultural appeal and improvements in smart-consumption experiences, alongside sustained upgrades in inbound travel facilitation. China has expanded unilateral visa-free access to 50 countries, and mutual visa-free arrangements to 29 countries, significantly reducing the institutional cost of international travel to China.

Overall, the 2026 Spring Festival consumption market highlighted not only the strength of the holiday economy, but also a broader shift toward higher-quality consumption, industrial innovation, and higher-standard opening-up, providing useful insights for more targeted policymaking and for sustaining domestic economic momentum.