Thailand's Tourism Authority (TAT) says that during the 13-day holiday window from September 25 to October 7 — which spans both China's Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day "Golden Week" — around 250,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit the country, up 24 percent from the same period last year, generating an estimated 11.5 billion baht in tourism revenue, a 37 percent year-on-year jump. TAT Governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool said signs point to a clearer recovery in the Chinese travel market, and the forecast is being read as a significant indicator of Thai tourism steadying after years of volatility.

On the "Golden Week" outbound destination rankings published by Tongcheng Travel, one of China's major online travel platforms, Bangkok overtook Kuala Lumpur and Seoul to become the top overseas destination for Chinese travellers during the National Day holiday. Several outlets attributed the shift partly to a marked drop in Chinese travel to Japan amid recent political tensions between Beijing and Tokyo, with Southeast Asian destinations benefiting as a result; Kuala Lumpur and Seoul ranked second and third. Meanwhile, airlines had already increased flight capacity from China to Southeast Asia by about 20 percent ahead of the holiday to meet continued outbound travel demand. Grab Thailand said Chinese tourists' ride bookings on October 1 alone rose more than 75 percent year-on-year, while Thailand-related travel search terms drew over 13 million searches before the holiday, underscoring the market's momentum.

To capture this wave of visitors, TAT has rolled out its "Nihao Month" marketing campaign for a third consecutive year, built around the theme "China and Thailand are one family," enlisting short-video creators to tour different Thai cities and offering travel perks to encourage Chinese visitors to stay longer and spend more. TAT has also introduced a new certification scheme called the "Trusted Thailand Stamp," marking tourism businesses and sites that have passed safety and service-quality checks — a concrete measure aimed at rebuilding Chinese tourists' confidence in Thailand's travel environment, with plans to carry the momentum through to the 2027 Chinese New Year holiday.

This recovery comes after two years of volatile confidence among Chinese tourists toward Thailand. Thailand began a trial visa-exemption scheme for Chinese visitors in September 2023, before the two countries made the mutual visa waiver permanent in 2024 and extended the stay period to 60 days — a change that once drove a sharp rise in Chinese arrivals, with China becoming Thailand's top source market in the first three quarters of 2024, with arrivals more than doubling year-on-year. Since then, however, a string of safety incidents involving Chinese nationals drew wide attention, including the early-2025 case of Chinese actor Wang Xing, who was lured and kidnapped into a scam compound along the Thailand-Myanmar border and forced to work for a telecom fraud operation — along with other negative headlines such as "zero-dollar" shopping tours, scams targeting Chinese tourists, and boat accidents. A narrative that "Thailand is unsafe" spread for a time on Chinese social media, contributing to a marked drop in Chinese arrivals in 2025; the Thai Hotels Association reported more than 12,428 cumulative room cancellations since the start of that year, nearly 4,600 of them from Chinese travellers. Under that pressure, Thai authorities at one point considered cutting the visa-free stay for Chinese visitors from 60 days to just 10-15 days to tighten border control and curb cross-border scam networks operating along Thailand's frontier.

Shortly before this year's Golden Week, Bangkok faced a fresh test. In late September, the city recorded 300 to 330 millimetres of rainfall in under 72 hours, prompting all 50 of its districts to declare disaster areas; more than 52,000 households were affected and nearly 4,900 people were moved into temporary shelters, while some airport operations and baggage handling were disrupted. TAT had warned that if the flooding in Bangkok persisted, Chinese arrivals during Golden Week could fall by as much as 20 percent below forecast in a worst-case scenario, while the Thai Hotels Association estimated Bangkok hotel occupancy could drop by less than 10 percentage points because of the floods.

Actual pre- and mid-holiday data, however, suggest the impact of both the floods and the earlier safety scare was milder than feared. TAT later said the Bangkok floods and Thai Airways' baggage backlog had not genuinely deterred Chinese tourists, with Chinese arrivals actually up about 15 percent year-on-year ahead of Golden Week. Many Chinese travellers who had originally planned to visit Bangkok instead redirected their trips to Krabi, Koh Samui and Hua Hin — in effect keeping their spending inside Thailand, just shifted away from the capital to other cities. Analysts say this reflects both the continued pull of Thailand's tourism offerings for Chinese travellers and a degree of experience the Thai tourism sector has built up in responding to sudden risks and quickly adjusting marketing and reception strategies.

Notably, this Golden Week outbound surge was not Thailand's alone. Monitoring by several travel platforms and industry bodies found that Chinese travellers' footprints this National Day holiday spread across multiple regions worldwide: alongside Bangkok and other favoured Southeast Asian cities, other destinations in the region, such as the Philippines, also drew a significant share of Chinese visitors, while several European countries and New Zealand — longer-haul markets — likewise reported increases in Chinese tourist numbers. At the same time, just before the Golden Week peak, Thailand's overall foreign arrivals had briefly fallen by about 3.65 percent year-on-year, raising industry concern over whether Golden Week could still deliver a significant rebound; final figures, however, showed the Chinese market alone bucking that trend, underscoring the relatively strong loyalty and spending willingness Chinese travellers continue to show toward Thailand as a destination.

Tourism has long accounted for roughly 12 to 20 percent of Thailand's GDP and is one of its main sources of foreign-exchange earnings, with Chinese tourists remaining the largest and highest-spending single source market. If this Golden Week's forecast is borne out, it would not only provide an important boost to Thailand's tourism performance for the year but also send a signal that, having weathered both a safety-confidence crisis and a natural disaster in close succession, the tourism ties between China and Thailand retain considerable resilience. TAT says it will keep pushing this round of marketing and certification measures through the 2027 Chinese New Year holiday, aiming to turn the short-term rebound in visitor numbers into steadier, more sustainable long-term growth.