BEIJING, July 8 (Xinhua) -- China's summer travel rush is in full swing. The national railway operator expects to handle 1.01 billion passenger trips over 62 days, and aviation bookings have hit new highs. Beyond the sheer numbers, the boom is reshaping the country's cultural tourism landscape.
In the first three days since the rush began on July 1, national railways carried more than 38 million passengers, according to China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (China Railway).
Aviation data platform Umetrip showed over 27 million domestic flight bookings for July as of July 6, up 89 percent from a week earlier. International bookings exceeded 5.9 million, up 19 percent. On July 5, travel platform Qunar recorded searches for summer flights doubling from the previous day, setting a new daily record for the season.
The real story is not how many people are traveling, but where they are heading. Incremental traffic is flowing more to smaller cities rather than traditional tourism hubs. Flight bookings to Qinhuangdao surged 2.2 times, while Yili emerged as the top self-drive destination with popularity up 6.5 times, according to Qunar.
Airlines have responded by adding routes to match the shift. China Eastern Airlines has increased Shanghai-Urumqi round-trip flights by 51 percent and seating capacity by 30 percent. After its Shanghai-Yining route was relocated to Hongqiao hub, flight frequency surged 130 percent year-on-year and now operates daily.
"Unlike the rapid recovery period of the past two years, this summer rush marks civil aviation's transition from full recovery to high-quality development. The market logic is shifting from competing on capacity to competing on efficiency," said an expert with flight data platform Flight Manager.
What draws travelers to these lesser-known places is increasingly cultural rather than scenic. Searches for intangible cultural heritage destinations rose 71 percent from the previous month as of June 12, according to travel platform Tongcheng, which noted that travelers are flocking to Jingdezhen, Quanzhou and Dali, drawn by the idea of "traveling to a city for a craft."
Research tours have evolved from sightseeing to immersion, with industrial tourism searches surging 2.3 times, according to Qunar. Regional carriers are tapping the trend: China Express Airlines has launched themed products including Silk Road research tours in Dunhuang and Jiayuguan and red tourism routes in Yan'an, while Juneyao Airlines has resumed flights to cultural destinations like Dunhuang, Jiayuguan and Xining.
"Travelers increasingly value the experience itself, and airlines are responding with differentiated products that weave local culture into the journey," said Li Xiaojin, director of the Aviation Economics and Improvement Research Institute at Civil Aviation University of China.
Active policy support underpins this cultural turn. In June, eight government departments, including the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, issued joint measures to promote rail-tourism integration and expand service consumption.
Themed tourist trains are now running regularly. These include a panda-themed train through Sichuan, a "Yangtze Delta Star" route, and a "Yichun" forest wellness train, among others, China Railway announced.
The fusion extends to aviation as well. "Many airlines have shifted from focusing solely on trunk routes to coordinating trunk and branch services, and from pure price competition to differentiated products and services," Li said.
The reshaping extends beyond China's borders. The outbound market is surging, with the FIFA World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico giving an extra boost. China Southern Airlines now operates seven North American routes with 38 weekly flights to meet tournament-driven demand.
Data from travel platform Fliggy showed that outbound tour bookings more than doubled year on year. Long-haul destinations like Brazil, Iceland and Spain grew notably faster than others.
Inbound tourism is riding the same wave and going deeper into China's cultural heartlands. Inbound bookings surged more than sixfold year on year, according to Fliggy. Meanwhile, foreign visitors' footprints now cover 123 Chinese cities, well beyond the usual first-tier stops, according to homestay platform Tujia.
Homestay bookings for regions like Yili, Altay and Qiandongnan by foreign guests have more than doubled, Tujia data showed.
Illustrating this, 29 journalists from 20 countries recently visited a sand therapy center in Kumtag Desert near Turpan, Xinjiang. They experienced the national-level intangible heritage of sand therapy, a traditional wellness practice rooted in Chinese medicine that involves burying the body in scorching desert sand. Several were so impressed that they vowed to bring this "Chinese wellness wisdom in hot sand" to audiences back home.
China's summer travel rush is more than a test of the country's transport system. It offers a cross-section of a consumption landscape reshaped by cultural depth, destination diversity and the fusion of travel with immersive experience. ■
