10 advices on how to make your e-tourism website stand out in China

Three years after China reopened its borders, the travel market is back and growing both ways. Inbound, China now runs visa-free entry for 46 countries (extended to 31 December 2026), and Ctrip expects 38 million foreign visitors in 2026. Outbound, Chinese travelers are again booking trips abroad in large numbers. But the way they plan has changed for good. They no longer start on an old travel portal. They start on Xiaohongshu and Douyin, then double-check on Baidu, where an AI now answers their travel questions directly. If you run a tourism site and want Chinese travelers, you have to show up in all three places. Here is how to make your website stand out in 2026.

The global expenses made in the tourism market in China are on the Top according to all experts tourisms.

This percentage represented 2850 milliards de dollars and is supposed to reach +300% compared to last year in 202023 according to iResearch.

Chinese outbound tourists are like all kind of tourism, they maximize the potential of Internet,

• 80% of them used the Internet before traveling abroad to look for information
• They play and compare their trip.
• They check influencers recommdantion
• They willr ead travel notes on Mafengwo , qyer
• They will use baidu to search information about their destination cities, activities.

This is why tourism actors willing to attract Chinese tourists to their destinations should seriously consider launching their website on the Chinese Internet.

Where Chinese travelers research trips in 2026

The decision happens before they ever reach your website. Today Chinese travelers, inbound and outbound, plan their trips on Xiaohongshu and Douyin. They search a city or a hotel, scroll through real photos and short videos posted by other travelers, save the spots they like, then book. A destination gets picked because a real person made it look worth visiting, not because of a banner ad. If your hotel, tour or attraction has no presence on these apps in Chinese, you are invisible at the exact moment people choose.

Baidu still matters, and it changed too. Since 2 July 2025 Baidu answers travel questions with an AI box called Baikan (百看) at the top of the page. So a traveler asking “best 5-day route in Yunnan” may read Baidus answer before any link. The new goal is to be the source that answer pulls from, which means clear, answer-first Chinese content and a consistent presence across Baidu Baike and your own site.

For most tourism brands the smart first step is Xiaohongshu, where trip planning actually starts and where smaller players can grow without a giant budget. Our Xiaohongshu marketing guide for 2026 shows how to get discovered there.

Here is how they can make their website stand out on the Chinese Internet:

To succeed, the actors of e-tourism in China have an interest in being on Baidu and in vogue Chinese social networks. Working on your Baidu SEO and getting closer to opinion leaders so that they promote their products on social networks is vital.

1. E-reputation

Chinese online tourists want to be able to trust the website they will be buying their trip or hotel and flight reservations from. In order to be trusted the website should let the tourist know what their past customers thought of the company. Customer reviews are essential to help tourists decide whether or not they will be buying from one website or another.

In 2023, Chinese tourist always check review before choose an hotel, a detsination or an activity. (logical)

2. Baidu, THE Chinese search engine

The Chinese e-tourism market has a lot of tourism websites and booking platforms that are ultra-present on the Chinese internet and long-established. In order to stand out, a tourism website should have an efficient SEO strategy tailored to Baidu.

It is still the leading Chinese search engine, holding roughly 47% of search share today (Statcounter estimate).

3. Have a Nice Chinese website

Baidu will give priority to websites written in Chinese since a very little part of the population would actually understand a website written in English. The website should therefore be in mandarin in order to reach a greater amount of tourists.

Chinese prefer to read in Chinese more confortable. and 90% are not confortable with English.

Have beautiful Photos that will engage your future clients

4. Hosted in China

Have a fast loading website is a must.

Nobody want to wait 3minutes before opening a website in 2023.

The Chinese leading search engine will also take into account the place where the website is registered. If it is hosted abroad, Baidu will give it a strong penalty, and pages will be slowly uploading or not uploading at all.

However, when the website is hosted in China it will be better positioned in the page rank of the search results.

5. “On-site” content

Chinese tourists are booking their trips online to save time and money. So that it is important to provide them with a website with clear content. Essential information such as the price should be put forward.

Quality pictures and videos will also help the Chinese tourists to imagine their trip and help them in their buying process. Baidu cannot read Flash and Java items so your Chinese website should only use HTML content to display the illustrations.

traffic is “Human” ; Writte and advise for human people, not for Robot.

Photo, video are better than “words”

6. An appealing and fast loading website in Chinese Mandarin

To appeal to Chinese tourists a tourism website in China should be a reliable source of information that offers reviews of previous customers. The website should offer multiple services such as reservation services, online booking assistance services, travel blogs.  The website should finally be easy to use and have both good web and mobile platforms.

traditional Chinese is used in Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore and Taiwan.

Simplifed Mandarin is used in Mainland China.

7. Optimize your Website for Baidu – China

Submitting your website to Baidu, means you have to avoid publishing content that is considered illegal in China.  Respecting the censure is another step to be trusted by the leading search engine in China.

No P0rn, no Gambling, no illegal activity (of course).

8. Choose Qualified keywords

The longer are keywords, the better they will work. Chinese online tourists indeed tend to form phrases and not actual words while looking for information. This is a fact a tourism player should take into account before determining a list of the best keywords for their tourism website. Repeating those keywords in the titles and descriptions will help Baidu to spot the keywords and bring the website a higher page rank.

9. Work on your Backlinks

Baidu promotes the websites owned by the company itself. Qunar, a leading e-tourism platform that is owned by Baidu at 55% arrives at the top of the search results at each request about tourism for example. To complete your website should only use Chinese backlinks coming from trusted websites.

Backlinks = popularity of your website.

The more links to your site, the more relevant is the content.

10. Baidu Paid Advertising

Baidu Advertising is a service of Baidu that provides Pay Per Click to companies who want to get in the highest ranks of the search results. However, there are a lot of Chinese websites paying to appear at the top results.

The first and sometimes even the second page will therefore be monopolized by companies who paid for their websites to be that high in the page rank. So that it is essential to analyze on which request there are fewer websites advertised by Baidu.

To go further:

• iResearch
• How SEO can improve your website performance in China
• chinesetouristagency.com/

Do you need a top Performant Digital agency in China?

Do you really need? then contact us.

We outperform and we are not cost effective.

The 2026 market reality: what the data shows

Chinese outbound travel is back at full force. In 2025, Chinese travelers made 167.9 million outbound trips and spent an estimated $254 billion abroad, according to Travel and Tour World. Forecasts for 2026 point to 175 million trips and $280 billion in total overseas spend. The digital channel drives most of this volume: 92% of Chinese travelers plan their trips using mobile apps, and online booking already accounts for 64% of outbound tourism revenue. If your e-tourism website is not built for this audience, you are invisible to one of the highest-spending travel markets on the planet.

How Chinese travelers actually discover and book travel

The booking funnel for Chinese travelers does not look like the one you know from Western markets. It runs through a specific sequence of platforms, and each platform plays a distinct role.

Discovery starts on Douyin. Chinese travelers scroll short videos to find destinations, experiences, and visual proof that a place is worth visiting. 38% of Chinese outbound travelers use Douyin for travel inspiration. A destination with no Douyin presence simply does not exist in the consideration set for millions of younger travelers.

After Douyin, the research phase moves to Xiaohongshu (RedNote). Travelers read peer posts, look at real photos, and save content for later. Xiaohongshu functions as a peer review engine with a social layer. 85% of Chinese outbound travelers use social platforms like Xiaohongshu for destination research. Your destination needs content on this platform before a potential visitor ever lands on your website.

Booking happens either through an Online Travel Agency (OTA) or directly via a WeChat Mini Program. OTAs like Trip.com (Ctrip) and Fliggy (Alibaba’s travel platform) together hold over 60% of the Chinese online travel market. Ctrip alone serves over 300 million monthly active users. For a foreign e-tourism operator, this means two things. First, being listed on these OTAs is not optional if you want volume. Second, your own website must give Chinese visitors a reason to book directly, with better pricing, exclusive content, or a clear value over the OTA listing.

Speed matters more than design. Baidu’s 2025 algorithm penalizes slow pages, and servers hosted outside mainland China can add significant latency. A website loading in 4 seconds will lose the visitor. Target under 1.5 seconds for mobile. Host on servers in Hong Kong or Singapore at a minimum, or explore CDN solutions designed to improve China load times without requiring a mainland ICP license.

Payment is the final friction point. Chinese travelers expect to pay with WeChat Pay or Alipay. A website that only offers Visa or Mastercard checkout will see cart abandonment rates that make the site commercially useless. Both WeChat Pay and Alipay now support international merchants through their global programs.

What independent Chinese travelers want from a tourism website

The group tour era is over for most outbound segments. 80% of Chinese outbound summer bookings in 2024 were for self-guided, independent trips, according to Fliggy’s own data. This shift changes what a foreign e-tourism website needs to offer.

Independent travelers need granular, practical information. They want to know how to get from the airport to the hotel using local transport, which neighborhoods are best for specific interests, what a realistic daily budget looks like, and what the entry requirements are. Vague destination marketing copy does not convert this audience. Specific, honest content does.

Booking lead times are short. 65% of Fliggy users book outbound trips within 3 months of departure, and nearly 30% book within 7 days. Your website needs real-time availability and pricing. Outdated content or “contact us for rates” approaches will lose the spontaneous booker entirely.

A good public case study here is the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Thailand is one of the top destinations for Chinese outbound travelers. The TAT adapted its Chinese digital strategy between 2023 and 2025 to include a dedicated Mandarin-language WeChat Official Account, a Xiaohongshu content program with localized UGC campaigns, and WeChat Pay acceptance at major tourist sites. Chinese arrivals to Thailand recovered faster than other nationalities in 2024 and 2025. The lesson: localization is not just translation. It is rebuilding the customer journey in Chinese digital infrastructure.

Your Mandarin content must be written for Chinese users, not translated from English. Machine-translated pages read poorly and signal low investment. Hire a native Mandarin copywriter with tourism sector knowledge. The content should use vocabulary that matches actual Baidu search queries, not a literal translation of your English keyword strategy. Chinese travelers search differently: they use phrases like 自由行攻略 (independent travel guide), 亲子游 (family travel), and 网红打卡地 (viral photo spots) rather than “things to do in [city]”.

Trust signals are non-negotiable. Chinese online consumers expect to see real reviews from other Chinese travelers before booking. Embed a review module or display verified reviews pulled from major OTAs. Social proof in Chinese, from Chinese users, converts. English testimonials from Western visitors do almost nothing for this audience.

What changed between 2024 and 2026

Several shifts between 2024 and 2026 directly affect how a foreign e-tourism website should be built and marketed.

Xiaohongshu crossed into mainstream travel planning. In 2024, RedNote was already used heavily for lifestyle content. By 2026, it is the default research tool for Chinese outbound travelers, ahead of traditional travel blogs and review sites. Any foreign destination or hotel that built a Xiaohongshu presence in 2024 has a compounding advantage in 2026. Those that ignored it are starting from zero.

Baidu’s algorithm now weights E-E-A-T signals more aggressively, similar to Google’s direction. Pages that demonstrate expertise and local knowledge, with structured data, author credentials, and multimedia content, rank better than keyword-stuffed landing pages. Thin destination pages built purely for search traffic are losing ground.

Visa-free access changed competitive dynamics. Between 2023 and 2025, dozens of countries introduced visa-free or visa-on-arrival access for Chinese passport holders, including France, Germany, Spain, Malaysia, and Thailand. Fliggy’s 2025 data shows that visa-free status is now a top filter criterion when Chinese travelers compare destinations. Your website should make visa status clear on the homepage, not buried in an FAQ. If your destination is visa-free for Chinese nationals, that information should be prominent.

ICP licensing requirements were updated in 2025 to include data-handling declarations and PIPL-aligned privacy policies for sites renewing or filing new registrations. For foreign operators without mainland China hosting, the practical implication is to ensure your privacy policy is compliant with China’s Personal Information Protection Law before targeting Chinese visitors.

Live commerce for travel grew sharply. Live-streaming travel sales reached $2 billion on platforms like Douyin. Fliggy now embeds travel bookings directly into Taobao live sessions. This is not a niche channel. Flash sale travel packages broadcast via live stream convert rapidly because they create urgency and allow real-time Q&A with the host.

Frequently asked questions

Does a foreign e-tourism website need a Chinese version to rank on Baidu?

Yes. Baidu heavily favors Simplified Chinese content. An English-only website will not rank for competitive travel keywords in China. You need a dedicated Chinese-language version of your website with content written in Mandarin, not machine-translated. Ideally, this version should be hosted on servers with low latency to mainland China, such as servers in Hong Kong or Singapore. A full mainland China hosting setup requires an ICP license, which is difficult for foreign companies to obtain directly, but CDN solutions designed for China access can improve load speeds without requiring local hosting. Baidu also requires a Baidu Webmaster Tools verification to fully index your site, separate from Google Search Console.

Which platforms should a foreign tourism operator prioritize to reach Chinese travelers?

Start with the three platforms that map directly to the booking funnel. Use Douyin for discovery: short-form video content showing your destination, experiences, and real visitor moments drives awareness at scale. Use Xiaohongshu for trust-building: detailed posts with honest photos, practical tips, and Chinese-language copy build the credibility that leads to booking decisions. Use WeChat for conversion: a WeChat Official Account lets you communicate directly with followers, and a WeChat Mini Program can handle bookings and payments within the app. OTA presence on Trip.com and Fliggy is also important for volume, especially when your own Chinese digital presence is still being built.

How important is mobile optimization for Chinese tourism websites?

It is the single most important technical factor. 92% of Chinese travelers plan trips on mobile, and Baidu’s algorithm is mobile-first. A website that does not load cleanly on a smartphone screen, or that loads in more than 2 seconds on a Chinese mobile connection, will rank poorly and convert poorly. Test your website using tools that simulate Chinese network conditions. Check that your layout works on common Android devices used in China: Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi are the dominant brands, not iPhone. Also verify that your payment flows work with WeChat Pay and Alipay on mobile, as these are the standard payment methods for Chinese digital consumers both at home and abroad.

What content formats perform best for attracting Chinese tourists online?

Short video is the top-performing format for awareness and discovery. A 60-90 second Douyin video showing a real travel experience outperforms a polished brand advertisement. On Xiaohongshu, image-heavy posts with practical itinerary information perform well, particularly formats like “3 days in [city]: what we spent, where we stayed, what we ate.” For your own website, structured destination guides that answer specific Chinese traveler questions (transport from the airport, cost breakdown, best seasons, family-friendly options) drive Baidu organic traffic. Live streaming on Douyin or via Fliggy is increasingly effective for flash sale promotions and generating fast bookings with an urgency mechanism.

How to move forward

The gap between a foreign e-tourism website that works for Chinese travelers and one that does not comes down to a few concrete decisions. Build or rebuild your Mandarin-language site with China-optimized hosting. Verify Baidu indexing through Baidu Webmaster Tools and run a Baidu advertising campaign to test which keywords actually drive traffic from Chinese visitors. Add WeChat Pay and Alipay at checkout. Create a Xiaohongshu brand account and post real, practical content rather than marketing copy. Set up a Douyin presence with short video content showing the actual experience. Consider working with a KOL agency in China to seed authentic content from Chinese travelers who visit your destination.

These are not optional upgrades for a brand with serious China ambitions. They are the baseline. The Chinese outbound travel market is worth $280 billion in 2026. The operators who built their Chinese digital presence in 2024 and 2025 are already capturing that spend. If your website is not set up for this audience today, the right time to start is now. Contact the team at seoagencychina.com to discuss an audit of your current China digital presence and a plan to fix what is holding you back.

Marcus Zhan is a China marketing specialist based in Shanghai. He covers digital marketing, consumer trends, and brand strategy for the Chinese market. Connect with him on LinkedIn for China tourism marketing insights.

Sources: Travel and Tour World, China Outbound Tourism 2026 Trends | WiFi Talents, China Outbound Tourism Statistics 2025-2026 | Dragon Trail International, Fliggy Summer Travel Trends 2025 | Chinafy, ICP License Guide 2025 | PhocusWire, Chinese Traveler Trends and Platform Behavior