As China's combined National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival "Golden Week" holiday (September 25 to October 7, a 13-day stretch) approaches, both domestic and outbound travel markets in China are entering one of the busiest travel peaks of the year. A review of data released by major online travel platforms, including Trip.com Group, shows that Chinese travelers' searches and bookings for Thailand rose sharply ahead of this year's Golden Week. Flight bookings to Phuket, the popular resort destination in southern Thailand, surged 78% year-on-year, making it one of the biggest "dark horse" destinations in Southeast Asia for this year's holiday travel. Trip.com said this wave of search and booking activity was already visible in late September, before the holiday had even begun, indicating it was not a one-off burst of festival spending but a continuation of the broader recovery in Chinese travelers' willingness to visit Thailand seen throughout this year.

Trip.com Group's Golden Week outbound travel report found that Chinese travelers' habits this year show new patterns: booking further in advance, taking longer trips, and spreading visits across more destinations. Hotel bookings for stays of seven nights or longer rose 123% year-on-year, while bookings for multi-destination "one trip, multiple stops" itineraries rose 84%, reflecting how travelers are using the extended holiday to deepen their itineraries. The data also show that the average length of Chinese outbound trips this year has already exceeded nine days, and more than half of international flight bookings were for departures before the official holiday start on October 1, with September 25 and September 30 marking the busiest departure days. For Thailand specifically, beyond the 78% jump in Phuket flight bookings, Chiang Mai in northern Thailand has also become notably more popular among Chinese Gen Z travelers aged 18-24, thanks to its distinctive culture and natural scenery, making it the second-hottest emerging destination after Phuket.

This trend is not unique to Thailand but reflects a broader "growth in both volume and quality" across China's outbound travel market this year. A Golden Week travel forecast from Fliggy, another major online travel platform, found that with the boost from the 13-day extended holiday, demand for visa-free destinations such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand has kept "rising." Whale-watching bookings surged more than 200% year-on-year, skydiving bookings rose nearly 80%, glacier-hiking bookings rose more than 50%, and cruise bookings rose nearly 70%. Meanwhile, South Korea's Jeju Island and Indonesia's Bali also ranked among the fastest-growing overseas destinations this Golden Week alongside Phuket, showing that Chinese travelers' appetite for island getaways remains robust and has not been dampened by localized disaster situations in individual destinations.

However, even as booking enthusiasm climbed, the severe flooding that struck Bangkok and central Thailand in late September cast a shadow of concern over Golden Week travel plans. Images of flooded streets in Bangkok spread widely across Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat, Xiaohongshu (RedNote) and Douyin, compounded by extensive coverage from international media, leading a considerable number of Chinese travelers to mistakenly believe that "the whole of Thailand" was affected by disaster. This triggered a short-lived spike in inquiries about canceling or rescheduling trips. In response, Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool publicly stated that the impact was more a "perception crisis" than a genuine collapse in travel demand, stressing that both Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang international airports continued to operate normally, and that major destinations including Phuket, Krabi, Koh Samui, Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai were entirely unaffected by the flooding.

Ahead of Golden Week, the TAT estimated that, due to negative flood-related sentiment, the number of Chinese tourists arriving during this year's Golden Week could fall by 5% to 10% from earlier expectations — a baseline scenario regarded as "manageable." However, it warned that if heavy rain in Bangkok continued through September 29-30 and the disaster situation worsened further, a steeper decline of 15% to 20% could not be ruled out in a worst-case scenario. Separately, the Thai Hotels Association estimated that Bangkok hotel occupancy rates in September and October could fall by less than 10% due to the flooding — a relatively limited impact.

But the latest arrival figures disclosed so far suggest Chinese tourists' actual behavior has outperformed the more cautious earlier forecasts. In late September, the TAT said that although the flooding in Bangkok and the baggage backlog previously reported at Thai Airways had drawn public attention, neither had materially changed Chinese travelers' plans: on the day before Golden Week began, more than 22,000 Chinese tourists entered Thailand in a single day across land, sea and air border checkpoints combined — nearly double the normal daily average of about 10,000. Year-to-date, cumulative Chinese arrivals to Thailand have risen by about 15% compared with the same period last year. Several travel agency operators interviewed by local media likewise confirmed that group and independent (FIT) bookings for Chinese travelers during Golden Week have not seen a wave of mass cancellations, with some popular island itineraries remaining fully booked.

In terms of spending power, Chinese tourists have long been Thailand's single most important source of inbound tourism revenue. Official Thai data show Chinese visitors spend an average of about 6,400 baht per day in Thailand, the highest of any nationality, and since the start of 2026, China has reclaimed its position as Thailand's largest source market, overtaking Russia, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, with cumulative Chinese arrivals for the year up roughly 16.1% year-on-year. A broader Golden Week spending survey from Trip.com found that most Chinese outbound travelers' per-person budgets cluster between RMB10,000 and RMB20,000 (covering flights, accommodation and local spending), while about 22% of travelers budget more than RMB30,000; more than half said they aim to keep accommodation costs under RMB1,000 per night, preferring to put more of their budget toward experiential activities and local spending instead. This "spend less on lodging, spend more on experiences" pattern is seen as directly benefiting Thailand's tourism-related businesses, from duty-free shops to water sports operators and local restaurants.

The surge in Chinese enthusiasm for travel to Thailand is also closely tied to the mutual visa exemption agreement between China and Thailand, which took effect on March 1, 2024. Under the agreement, ordinary passport holders from each country can enter the other visa-free for stays of up to 30 days (with a cumulative cap of 90 days within any 180-day period), removing the need to apply for a visa in advance — a change that has significantly lowered the decision-making barrier for Chinese travelers booking spontaneous trips to Thailand, and is seen as an important structural arrangement behind the steady growth in China-Thailand travel over the past two years. Trip.com data show that overall search interest in Thailand among Chinese travelers rose about 24% year-on-year during this year's Golden Week, while overall booking volume for Thailand-related travel products rose about 16% year-on-year — a faster pace of growth than most traditional popular Southeast Asian destinations, reflecting the combined effect of the visa-free policy dividend and pent-up holiday travel demand, with the 78% jump in Phuket flight bookings standing out as the most striking single example of this broader growth wave.

Overall, while Bangkok's flooding has added some uncertainty to Thailand travel plans for this year's Chinese National Day Golden Week, search and booking data from major platforms such as Trip.com and Fliggy, together with actual arrival figures at border checkpoints, all point to genuinely strong underlying demand among Chinese travelers for Thailand. Destinations unaffected by the flooding, such as Phuket and Chiang Mai, have in fact seen booking numbers surge against the broader narrative of concern. Industry observers broadly agree that as long as Bangkok's drainage and post-flood recovery efforts proceed on schedule, the flooding's real impact on overall Chinese visitor numbers will likely prove temporary and localized, unlikely to shake Chinese tourists' status as the "ballast stone" underpinning Thailand's tourism industry. Several travel platforms say they will keep tracking post-flood arrival data and Chinese travelers' search and booking trends to inform their market outlook for the next phase.