China's post-holiday travel market thrives as off-peak tourism gains popularity

China's tourism market is continuing to thrive after the country's hectic Spring Festival holiday period, with many travelers now taking advantage of lower airline fares and hotel prices to explore popular destinations during off-peak times.

The Spring Festival is China's biggest traditional holiday and celebrates the Chinese New Year, which landed on Jan. 29 this year, and is a time where millions of people across the country journey back to their hometowns or travel to other destinations.

The Spring Festival also encompasses a 40-day-long travel rush which is known as the world's largest annual human migration and lasts through to Feb. 22 this year, with a total of nine billion passenger trips expected to be made during this period.

While the holiday saw a spike in the travel and tourism sector, data reveals that "staggered travel" is now emerging as a new trend in China, as more people look to beat the crowds and head on trips at quieter times.

Data from online travel platforms shows that booking volumes for flights and hotels remain high until before the country's next official holiday, the Qingming Festival, or Tomb-Sweeping Day, which will fall on April 4 this year.

Destinations across China remain popular choices, with some embracing the cold weather by heading north, with the just-concluded Asian Winter Games in northeast China's "ice city" of Harbin extending the winter tourism season, and destinations like the Changbai Mountain scenic area and cities like Shenyang attracting numerous visitors eager to enjoy the snow and ice before it starts to thaw.

The bustling Harbin Ice-Snow World, the world's largest ice-and-snow theme park, welcomed over 600,000 visits in the week following the Spring Festival holiday, a figure nearly matching its holiday attendance.

Meanwhile, for those seeking warmer temperatures in the south, the Yalong Bay in Sanya of south China's tropical island province of Hainan continues to buzz with activity, with water sports proving particularly popular. Land-based diving centers, offering simulated ocean environments, also provide unique experiences for those seeking underwater adventures. Homestays in Sanya's Tianya Town are enjoying a 90 percent occupancy rate, highlighting the continuing demand.

Senior travelers are emerging as a significant force in fueling this off-peak travel surge. Data reveals a 34 percent increase in flight bookings for travelers aged 60 and above compared to the Spring Festival holiday period.

Warm climates, natural scenery, and cultural experiences are deemed to be key drivers for this demographic.

"Off-peak travel is quite cost-effective. We're planning a trip to Yangzhou in March and then to Yunnan Province to see the snow-capped mountains and beautiful scenery," said a senior tourist named Li Shuqing.

To sustain this momentum, various regions are implementing innovative strategies to keep visitors coming.

The Laomendong scenic area in Nanjing, the capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province, for instance, has enhanced its services to create an all-weather tourism experience, resulting in a 50 percent year-on-year increase in daily visitor numbers, with an average of around 60,000 passing each day.

Meanwhile, northwest China's picturesque Qinghai Province is embracing the "off-peak economy" to reshape its tourism cycle, catering to travelers seeking a more relaxed pace.

"I specifically saved my vacation time for after the Spring Festival holiday. The scenery in Qinghai is perfect for slow-paced travel. The self-driving experience here is fantastic," said tourist Ma Qiang.

National data confirms the trend, with the latest figures showing a 24 percent increase in bookings for tickets, accommodation, and transportation at key scenic spots since February 5 compared to the same period last month in the run up to the Chinese New Year.

China's post-holiday travel market thrives as off-peak tourism gains popularity

Honor's humanoid robot, Lightning, which swept the 2026 Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half-Marathon on Sunday, is a natural extension of years of accumulation in consumer electronics technology, said its developers.

A leading smart device provider in China, Honor independently developed the model, which dominated the podium at the event as it was used by all three teams whose autonomous navigating robots ran the fastest times.

At the Honor factory in Pingshan District in Shenzhen City, south China's Guangdong Province, where robotics engineers developed Lightning. They said the robot's body design incorporates a simulation system that, through artificial intelligence algorithms, can iterate nearly 30,000 design schemes of varying sizes over three months. Complete and mature systems are also in place for battery, communication, and reliability verification.

"We built a simulation lab from scratch. For the robots, we digitize the entire design and put it into a computer. We have our own material library, which can meet the force, thermal, and chemical property demands for each component, under different environments and speeds. We've accumulated about 1000 kinds of materials. For example, if there's a risk with the robot's neck, we just need to change the material code from 001 to 002. Now, through our simulations, we only need one day to perform parallel calculations on 10 different designs, before creating a mold and verifying it in the lab," said Li Zheng, a senior engineer at Honor.

An autonomous robot capable of completing a half-marathon involves a complete industry chain, with core components including high-precision sensors, LiDAR, motors, operating systems, and control algorithms. The development of robotic marathoners have driven an increasing number of component enterprises to get involved.

Manifold, a tech firm established by newly-graduated PhDs, has developed a 3D spatial memory module, which can model an environment in real time and transform it into images that robots can understand. They said several robots running the half-marathon this year adopted their solution.

"Our device can operate within a one-kilometer tunnel with an error margin of only tens of centimeters. For robots, especially in the absence of GPS, this allows them to accurately determine their location. The underlying technology is a multi-sensor fusion technology that we developed in-house," said Qin Youming, CEO and founder of Manifold.

The Beijing Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center set up a training camp for the marathon event. Many university students came a month ahead of the event to develop and debug their technologies and algorithms based on open-source robot bodies, databases, and training platforms.

"These high-quality databases and highly open-source control algorithms are actually very helpful to us. We no longer need to build the house from the ground up, but can skip the most basic part," said Sun Jingyu, a student from Shandong University.

"Through this racing event, I believe we can make our robots more reliable and stable, while also supporting high-dynamic, high-load movements. This is crucial for robots' future application in both industrial, commercial and domestic scenarios," said Guo Yijie, head of the innovative humanoid department and the Marathon project of Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center.

Engineers share development story behind Beijing humanoid half-marathon champion model