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China's National Day Travel Surge Continues: 305 Million Cross-Regional Trips Recorded on October 2
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
According to China News Service and other outlets, data released by China's Ministry of Transport showed that on October 2, 2026 — the second day of the National Day Golden Week holiday — nationwide cross-regional passenger movements reached 305,504,000 trips, or roughly 305.5 million trips, a figure that reflects the strong momentum of domestic travel during the holiday. The figure was confirmed as an official Ministry of Transport release covering four modes of transport — rail, road, waterway and civil aviation — and is widely used as a barometer of holiday-economy activity.
Broken down by mode, rail passenger volume on October 2 was 20.765 million trips, down 17.6% from the previous day but up 7.7% year-on-year; road travel totaled 280.52 million trips, down 6.6% day-on-day but up 0.8% year-on-year, making it by far the dominant mode. Of that, commercial road passenger transport accounted for 38.82 million trips (down 13.2% day-on-day, up 5.1% year-on-year), while private car trips on expressways and national/provincial roads reached 241.70 million (down 5.5% day-on-day, essentially flat year-on-year at +0.1%). Waterway passenger volume was 1.817 million trips, up 28.3% day-on-day and 9.4% year-on-year, while civil aviation carried 2.402 million passengers, down 4.5% day-on-day and 2.8% year-on-year. Road travel alone accounted for more than 90% of the day's cross-regional movement, continuing to serve as the "main artery" of holiday travel.
Placed in the context of the full holiday, the October 2 figure shows a clear pattern. Official and media reports indicate that cross-regional movement on October 1, the first day of the holiday, exceeded 329 million trips — the holiday's peak so far; it eased to 305.5 million on October 2 and adjusted further to about 308.29 million on October 3. The Ministry of Transport had forecast before the holiday that travel this year would be dominated by long-distance tourism and visits to family, projecting total cross-regional movement for the full holiday at 2.13 billion trips, an average of roughly 300 million per day — a record for the period.
One notable trend this year is the growing role of new-energy vehicles (NEVs). Official data show NEVs accounted for an average of about 16.8 million trips per day on expressways during the holiday, representing roughly 27% of total expressway traffic — a share that has risen steadily in recent years, reflecting both the rapid growth of China's NEV fleet and a broader shift toward long-distance self-driving holiday trips.
This year's National Day holiday coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival, combining into an eight-day break; many people also extended it further by taking additional leave, stretching some trips to 12 or even 13 days. Travel agencies reported that holidaymakers took an average of about 10.3 days of travel this year, with trips of eight days or longer accounting for 82% of itineraries — evidence of a continuing shift toward longer-distance, more immersive travel.
Behind the travel surge lies a dense package of official consumption-boosting measures. Public information shows this year's "National Day Culture and Tourism Consumption Month" campaign ran from late September through the end of October, with local governments planning more than 20,000 cultural and tourism events and issuing more than 310 million yuan in consumer vouchers. At the same time, a fourth batch of 62.5 billion yuan in ultra-long-term special treasury bonds supporting trade-in subsidies for consumer goods was disbursed just ahead of the holiday, alongside local consumer-loan interest subsidies. According to the central government's official website, sales at major retail and catering enterprises nationwide rose 2.7% year-on-year over the combined National Day and Mid-Autumn holiday, pointing to a continued recovery in holiday consumption.
Several financial media outlets noted, however, that this year's holiday tourism market showed a structural pattern in which visitor numbers grew faster than revenue. Total trips kept setting records, but overall tourism revenue growth did not keep pace, with spending showing a degree of "K-shaped" divergence: some travelers opted for long-distance, deep-experience trips with higher per-person spending, while a significant share shifted toward lower-cost short getaways closer to home, diluting average per-capita spending. Analysts view this as a natural phase in China's holiday economy as it shifts from scale expansion toward quality upgrading.
Analysts describe the National Day holiday as a key window for gauging the strength of China's domestic demand. Ahead of the holiday, the State Council General Office had issued its 2026 public-holiday schedule, with the National Day holiday itself running October 1-7 and combining with the Mid-Autumn Festival into an eight-day break. Against a backdrop of complex external conditions and a greater policy emphasis on boosting domestic demand, data on cross-regional travel and holiday consumption are likely to continue drawing close market attention.
More precise figures released later showed that cross-regional movement on the holiday's first day, October 1, was finally confirmed at 334.10 million trips — essentially flat year-on-year, down just 0.5% — an upward revision from the earlier preliminary figure of "more than 329 million," reflecting the Ministry of Transport's ongoing revision of data during the holiday. Meanwhile, new-energy vehicles emerged as another closely watched variable in this year's travel picture: on the first day of the holiday, nationwide expressway charging volume reached 28.0469 million kilowatt-hours, up 60.4% year-on-year and a record for the period; NEV traffic on expressways during the holiday ran at 1.8 times normal weekday levels, causing charging queues at some popular service stations and prompting several regions to speed up expansion of charging infrastructure. In Jiangsu province, for example, the province's largest expressway-service-area charging station — at the Gaoyou service area on the Beijing-Shanghai expressway — was upgraded to 82 DC fast chargers with 142 charging guns, lifting the province's overall charging capacity by more than 30% compared with last year's National Day holiday.
Looking at the holiday as a whole, the Ministry of Transport had forecast before the break that combined cross-regional movement for the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays would reach 2.78 billion trips, split between about 650 million over the three-day Mid-Autumn period and about 2.13 billion over the seven-day National Day period. This year's National Day holiday also continued the policy of waiving expressway tolls for passenger vehicles with seven seats or fewer, with the toll-free window running from midnight on October 1 to midnight on October 7, based on a vehicle's exit time. Separately, data from ride-sharing platforms showed Guangdong province emerging as one of the most popular cross-provincial destinations during this year's National Day holiday. Together, this patchwork of regional and sector-level data paints a vivid picture of a holiday season in which China was very much on the move.
Echoing this "K-shaped" divergence, data from several online travel platforms also showed that holidaymakers' spending patterns are rapidly shifting toward more immersive, in-depth travel this year: travelers aged 25 to 34 made up nearly 40% of the total, tickets for live performances sold more than 1.6 times as many as a year earlier, and orders for intangible-heritage experience products doubled. Bookings for county-level travel products rose 42% year-on-year, with average time spent in these counties up 3.2 days, while the number of users booking nature and rural-village travel products climbed nearly 50%. At the same time, the number of users booking flights to two or more destinations in a single trip rose 70%, and those combining flights and high-speed rail to link multiple cities in one journey rose 14% — evidence that multi-city itineraries are becoming a new trend in this year's holiday travel.
In terms of destination popularity, a "2026 National Day Top Travel Cities" ranking published by platforms including Tongcheng Travel put Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, Xi'an, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Wuhan among the ten most popular destinations. Suzhou jumped into the top six on the back of a roughly 62% year-on-year rise in search interest, while Chongqing — long a fixture in the top four — slipped to eighth place amid reports of a diminished visitor experience at its most crowded attractions, with local hotel bookings down about 15% year-on-year. Separately, some media commentary noted that this year's Golden Week showed simultaneous growth across long-distance travel, cultural tourism and inbound tourism from abroad, with the inbound market continuing to recover — offering another lens on the degree of openness in China's tourism sector.
