While most Chinese consumers still worry about their future, the top 10 percent wealthy had a surprisingly good 2025 and will be around spending during the Chinese New Year, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC.
Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more experts on consumption at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Ask Chinese travellers what their leading platform is for purchases, both domestically and internationally, and they will point at the Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, as it is called in English. It offers a lead against competitors like Douyin and is a leading source for travellers, although only available in Chinese. “Xiaohongshu wants you deep in niche rabbit holes with people who care about the same weird stuff you do. “This isn’t just a slogan change,” says branding expert Ashley Dudarenok in Campaign Asia, “it’s Xiaohongshu cementing its moat against rivals like Douyin.”
Campaign Asia:
Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, has rolled out a brand refresh, launching a new slogan, ‘Your Lifestyle Interest Community’. The update, along with a revised opening screen, went live on July 8. The new tagline is a literal translation of the Chinese “你的生活兴趣社区, and replaces the 2022 version, ‘Your Lifestyle Guide’. The new positioning nudges users to focus more on shared interests and community, rather than simply using the platform as a recommendation tool…
Industry watchers tell Campaign Asia-Pacific that the move is more than a superficial tweak. Ashley Dudarenok, founder of ChoZan and Alarice, called it “an important step in platform evolution”. “It crystallises its transformation from a product-review hub into China’s definitive ‘interest-based social ecosystem’,” she said. “A move validated by its 2025 Q1 financials showing 70% year-on-year daily active user growth in niche communities like outdoor sports and vintage fashion.”…
Dudarenok noted the repositioning helps Xiaohongshu stand out in an increasingly competitive space. “This isn’t just a slogan change – it’s Xiaohongshu cementing its moat against rivals like Douyin,” she said. “Where others focus on short-form entertainment and quantity, Xiaohongshu dominates ‘lifestyle scaffolding’—guiding Chinese netizens from inspiration to action within trusted micro-communities.”…
“First, hyper-personalised discovery. Algorithms now prioritise community-driven interests over generic trends, making recommendations more relevant. Think ‘Hanfu Restoration’ or ‘Balcony Gardening’ circles,” she said. She also pointed out that focusing on real user content helps restore trust. “By doubling down on authentic UGC within vertical communities, Xiaohongshu counters influencer saturation—a pain point for 68% of its Gen-Z users, as per a recent survey.” And from a brand perspective? “Self-segmented, high-intent audiences turn casual browsing into potential conversion,” she added.
Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Traditional luxury markets have contracted, with the exception of travel, which is one of the conclusions of the 2025 Hurun Chinese Luxury Consumer Survey. “The average household consumption of China’s HNWIs was down 12% in the past year,” says Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of Hurun, the research organization responsible for the Hurun Rich List in the Jing Daily.
The Jing Daily:
While travel flourishes, traditional luxury markets face headwinds. Hurun estimates that China’s luxury market contracted by 3% YoY, falling to $230 billion in 2024. High-end watches declined by 22%, luxury jewelry fell by 10%, and premium handbags dropped by 9%.
Meanwhile, luxury experiences thrive. The market for high-end services including hotels and travel grew 17% year-on-year.
“The average household consumption of China’s HNWIs was down 12% in the past year,” says Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of Hurun, the research organization responsible for the Hurun Rich List. “This has forced high-end brands to deliver higher quality for a lower price.”…
Beyond destination preferences, Chinese HNWIs increasingly seek specific travel themes. Historical sites (13%), sunshine beaches (12%), and luxury resorts (11%) comprise the top travel themes. Cultural tourism has seen strong growth, while “short-distance luxury travel” and “ocean cruises” have emerged as new categories of interest.
Today’s typical Chinese luxury consumer is 35 years old, with family assets of 47.5 million RMB ($6.55 million), and resides in a 270-square-meter home. They spend seven days monthly on business travel and expect financial freedom by age 46.
“The lifestyle, investment, and brand preferences of the luxury consumers in China has changed dramatically in the past 20 years,” Hoogewerf says. “Preferred travel destinations have shifted from Australia, France and the U.S. to the Maldives, Singapore and Dubai; preferred sports have shifted from golf to running.”
These evolving preferences not only reshape China’s luxury industry and market but carry significant implications for global luxury markets and travel destinations seeking to capture this influential consumer segment in 2025 and beyond.
Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Get in touch or fill out our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more luxury consumption experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Leading VC William Bao Bean explains how travel startups managed through the COVID-19 crisis at PhocusWire Pulse. In China, they survived by focusing on booming domestic travel, but the lack of international travel hit some severely. Some of the travel startups he guided to the market had to give up their efforts to enter the Asian market, while others adjusted to the difficult market conditions.
William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
China’s National Day is the start of its October Golden Week. Business analyst Ashley Dudarenok dives in her vlog into the history and the economic motives behind that weeklong season of travel and celebrations, and its disruptive effects on retail, logistics, and other industries.
Ashley Dudarenok is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Typically, China’s economy comes to a standstill during the annual Chinese New Year, but not in 2021, explains business analyst Shaun Rein to CNBCTV. GovermentalCovid-19 restrictions make it tough for migrant workers to return home, and double salaries at the factories might encourage them to continue working during the festival. Other industries like travel and leisure might suffer, though.
CNBCTV:
Shaun Rein, Managing Director at China Market Research Group on Wednesday said he expects the factory sector to outperform the expectations.
“The factories are offering incentives for workers to stay, they are giving double payment on their salaries. Meantime a lot of these workers have decided to stay where they work and so factories are going full steam ahead in January and February, so we expect that the factory sector is going to outperform a lot of expectations,” he told CNBC-TV18.
“You are also going to see outperforming in manufacturing and on eCommerce,” he added.
Rein’s observations come at a time when the Chinese migrant workers return home during the Chinese Lunar New Year period. Coming in the backdrop of almost a year of the coronavirus pandemic with reports showing re-emergence of the cases in January, the Chinese government got nervous and a lot of provincial governments made the COVID test mandatory.
China’s central government said that between January 28 and March 8—the six week period—there are going to be high restrictions on internal travel.
These new instructions on travel will hit the travel and leisure industry negatively, Rein said.
Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
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| William Bao Bean |
William Bao Bean, partner, General Partner, SOSV Capital said travel needed to solve a very big problem – high customer acquisition costs – and he said it needed a new model in which everyone wins, and not like now “where everyone loses but the platform”...
Bao Bean spoke of one of his investments, Travelflan, a new superapp-like model which worked on revenue share to offer distribution reach to travel suppliers to sell services. “It doesn’t make money on advertising, it works on revenue share. We have industry players who are under such pressure from Google, Facebook, Taobao, all the big giants that they are willing to trust each other and work together.”
Their secret sauce is zero customer acquisition cost, he said. “We should take advantage of this difficult time and come around a trust-based model, stay profitable and serve customers.”More in WebInTravel.
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| Arthur Kroeber |
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| William Bao Bean |
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| William Bao Bean |
Ctrip says that orders on the Customized Travel unit increased 180% in 2018.
According to the research, travelers most likely to book the high-end travel tend to be women or couples aged 31 to 40 years old. Ctrip's data shows an average spend per person on a high-end customized travel package of $3,410 compared to $790 for a standard package.
Ctrip is targeting China’s high-net-worth individuals who totalled 1.67 million in 2018, according to the report.
Others are also seeing the potential in this segment with William Bao Bean, general partner at SOSV and managing director of Chinaaccelerator, investing in startups targeting these travelers.
Speaking at the Phocuswright Europe conference in Amsterdam last week, he said most people are “chasing a fraction of a fraction of a fraction” and that while the travel market is huge there is “virtually no money in it.”
He was talking about how difficult it is for early-stage investors to break in to the market and highlighted a company called Portier that Chinaaccelerator has invested in.
Portier provides high-end phones to guests in top tier hotels enabling the properties to offer them additional services.
Bao says that on average the company is increasing revenue room night by 20% and that it’s “high-margin revenue.”
He also touched on another investment in a company called Lux’Sens, which connects luxury good retailers to consumers, saying that 40% of global luxury spend is from China and that more than half of that spend is outside of China.
“50/60% of that [spend] happens outside China so why not try and capture that revenue.”
The Ctrip Customized Travel unit estimates high-end customized travel will grow by 200% in the next three years.Phocuswire.com.
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| William Bao Bean |
William Bao Bean has been active in startups and investing in Asia since 2004, and he says in the last few years there has been dramatic consolidation - similar to what has happened in other technology sectors - that has left three dominant players: Alibaba, Tencent and Ctrip.
“This makes it challenging to be a startup,” he says.
“It’s almost like the mice trying to run around while three elephants are walking around. And every once in a while they’ll accidentally - or maybe on purpose - step on the mice and there’s nothing the mice can do about it.”
To survive in what he says is one of the most competitive markets in the world, startups must provide something that is truly unique and useful.
“Going back five or 10 years, all you needed to do was show up and run faster than the next guy and you could build a pretty decent business,” Bean says.
“Whereas now you need to actually provide an order of magnitude better service in order to make a play.”
But even with a superior product, survival is not guaranteed. Companies trying to reach a meaningful segment of China’s more than 1.4 billion residents need deep marketing budgets to pay for exposure on WeChat, Baidu and other mobile platforms.
“Everywhere in the world customer acquisition cost is high, but in China it’s really, really high,” Bean says.
“In the U.S. you might be able to spend $2 or $5 to get a user. In China, to get a user to download an app and open it once, it’s between $5 and $100.”
So where are there opportunities for travel startups in China? Bean sees potential in areas such as experiences, particularly those offering unique, specialized products, and for startups that can create benefits for existing travel suppliers.
One example that SOSV has invested in: U.S.-based Portier Technologies, which puts mobile phones in luxury hotel rooms, giving guests access to free data and minutes and giving the hotels a cut of revenue from services booked through the phone.
But for non-Chinese companies such as Portier to succeed in that market, Bean says they need local market knowledge.
“So if you are a big global player, you basically have to have a China play. But the issue is the infrastructure, the market, how you advertise, how you retain. Everything in China is a bit different,” he says.
Bean cites Airbnb, a company his firm has worked with to understand the Chinese market, as an example of the learning curve. “Chinese culturally generally do not like being hosts. They really, really do not want some random person in their frickin’ house,” he says.
"But the funny thing is, Chinese are perfectly willing to go live in somebody else’s house - especially if it’s in a nice neighborhood, in Los Angeles, in the hills. They love that. So Airbnb has not done particularly well signing up hosts, but they’ve been very successful at signing up Chinese who are traveling abroad.”
Bean says the very large outbound market of travelers wanting new, unique and local experiences provides many opportunities for innovation.
“As an investor, will I do another online travel agency? No. But there is still a lot of opportunity around travel, and there is still a lot of money to be made.”More in Phocuswire.
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| Rupert Hoogewerf |
The study reached out to individuals who spend more than 350,000 yuan (a whopping US$50,250) annually on travel.
When it comes to accommodation, traditional hotels are no longer the go-to choice, with nearly a quarter now turning to Airbnb-style holiday homes.
“The performance of the high-end short-stay holiday home market has been weak. However, as travelling as a family grows in popularity, the market is likely to see significant development in the future,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, the Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher.
Nearly half of the high-end travellers polled already have their own holiday homes, in Thailand (11 per cent) and Australia (10pc), followed by Switzerland and Japan (both 5pc).
Domestically the southern resort of Sanya, dubbed the Hawaii of Asia, remains their first choice, accounting for 12 per cent, with sea views maybe unsurprisingly topping the requirement list of holiday homes.
More in the South China Morning Post.Polar exploration, the most popular travel theme last year, fell by 8.5 per cent and ranked second while parent-child travel enters the top three with 19 per cent. The interest in visiting islands and beaches, on the other hand, has reached it peak, with the selection rate dipping to 13 per cent this year.
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| William Bao Bean |
One critical question on everyone’s mind was who would emerge victorious in the online travel market: Local or global players?
Bean offered a slightly pessimistic view, remarking, “the big is getting bigger and the small are getting crushed,” and citing the example of how Facebook and Google currently control the majority of global advertising; or how payments and e-commerce are now owned or invested in by Tencent and Alibaba.
He did also add that “travel is insulated,” but nevertheless, its turf will be harder to defend from global players over time. “If they don’t have a short, they’ll use money as a weapon and acquire” businesses that will let them get ahead...
So, the big are getting bigger, but “they can be quite myopic”. It grants smaller companies and startups with a slim but existent window of opportunity to sneak ahead. But they must also be aware of common pitfalls, to avoid common mistakes that befall many entrepreneurs.
Bean argued, “the dumbest thing entrepreneurs do” is trust their gut when trying to expand their brand globally from the get go. “You cannot go with your gut, because it will take you in the wrong direction.”
Instead Bean recommended “focusing on data and trying things,” encouraging “companies to use data to back up their decisions.” He continued, “you will fail, but it will help you to fail faster” and recover sooner.More in WebinTravel.
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| Ben Cavender |
Tailor-made travel services are fast becoming customary among wealthy travelers looking to escape cookie-cutter vacation packages. According to Ctrip, factors that more Chinese tourists are seeking out from their holidays include "avoiding big crowds," "no shopping" and private travel guides.
When travelers visit places others haven't, they can derive "social cachet," and that's become a trend among the middle class, according to Ben Cavender, a principal at consultancy China Market Research Group.
"Increasingly, we are seeing well-heeled Chinese travel to hard-to-reach destinations for the bragging rights and WeChat pictures [to] show they've been somewhere exotic," he said...
Convenience, however, has also been a driver for the increase in domestic travel. As the growth in international flight options has not kept up with growth in demand, purchasing tickets without advanced planning can prove difficult and lead to more interest in alternatives that are less of a hassle, Cavender said.
Safety concerns also likely played a part in influencing travel decisions among mainland tourists, Cavender added, alluding to incidents that have taken place in Europe and the U.S. in recent quarters.More in CNBC.
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| William Bao Bean |
“Travel is a closed insular industry, there’s a lot of history and baggage. The incumbents really don’t want it to happen – it’s not in their interests to open up too much. It’s also hard to compete against the likes of Priceline that spends US$6 billion on marketing or Ctrip, which is so dominant in China.”
He however sees opportunities for “innovating around travel for companies that solve specific problems”.
Bao Bean said that SOSV, which groups seven accelerators, does about 150 investments a year, out of which there may be two to four in travel. In total, SOSV’s portfolio includes 700 investments, with the number one sector being biotech and fossil fuels. Bao Bean also founded MOX, SOSV’s Mobile-Only Accelerator, in partnership with GMobi, the largest mobile platform for South-east Asia and India.
In addition, he is also an active angel investor, doing about 40 investments a year personally.
His interests in travel range from luxury travel – one of his investments include Go Portier, the hotel concierge service used at The Siam in Bangkok – to the corporate segment through an app that offers services in 20 cities across Asia Pacific. He’s also involved in Rikai Labs, a Shanghai and San Francisco-based startup that builds chatbots that are distributed via messaging platforms like WeChat, Messenger and Slack.
Bao Bean is not afraid of testing – he tried social commerce for hotels “but it failed”. “You need decent engagement – event tickets, packages, weekend getaways, last minute trips – but it’s tough given Ctrip’s domination in the market.”More in WebinTravel.
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| Rupert Hoogewerf |
Purchases made while abroad are seen as part of the travel experience for many Chinese consumers looking for goods unavailable at home or unique to a specific location.
Hurun found that many affluent Chinese are reserving more days for traveling.
“Chinese luxury consumers continue to be extremely busy, away on business trips for eight days a month on average, up one day year-over-year,” said Mr. Hoogewerf. “Despite this, they take 10 days for holiday, three more days than last year, whilst the super-rich take five more days than last year to 15 and go abroad 3.4 times a year on average, twice for traveling,” he said.More in the Luxury Daily.
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| Kaiser Kuo |
Despite fears about the health of the Chinese economy, the travel market is still growing. Ctrip’s second-quarter revenue rose 47 percent, to $408 million, from a year ago. Qunar’srevenue increased 120 percent, to $142.1 million in the second quarter.
Kaiser Kuo, the international communications director for Baidu, said the agreement with Ctrip would give Qunar more opportunities to cooperate on mobile search and map-based products.
He also said the two companies would be able to benefit from each others’ strengths in different markets.
“Ctrip is big on high end business travel, Qunar has been more leisure, personally booked travel,” he said. “We’re covering more bases, a broader demographic.”The travel industry is not the only sector that is seeing companies team up amid steep competition.
More in the New York Times.Meituan, a group buying service, and Dianping, a consumer review site, agreed to join forces this month with the goal of creating an e-commerce juggernaut.
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| Rupert Hoogewerf |
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| Shaun Rein |
