This summer, plenty of travel agency owners have been complaining that they simply can’t attract foreign tourists.
Many blame it on the broader market. Independent travelers are used to booking hotels and checking transportation themselves, while Chinese travel agencies often lose potential customers to competitors offering lower prices soon after they finally find a lead and send out a quote.
But with the number of foreign tourists in China continuing to grow, the problem clearly isn’t just on the demand side.
Many travel agencies treat TikTok as the overseas version of Douyin, assuming that once their videos gain enough views, bookings will naturally follow.
But short videos usually only solve the first step: getting foreign travelers interested in China.
A tourist may come across videos of Chengdu hot pot and the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding and decide to visit China. But after that, they still need to search for things to do locally, compare prices from different service providers, and verify whether the reviews are genuine.
Once the itinerary is largely settled, they may then ask about the guide’s language skills, pick-up and drop-off coverage, and cancellation policies. Only after all that comes payment.
In this entire journey, TikTok actually accounts for only a small part of the decision-making process.
Based on the travel habits of tourists from different countries, travelers from Europe and the US tend to rely heavily Google, YouTube, Reddit and Tripadvisor when making travel decisions. Tourists from Thailand and Japan are more likely to look for information on Facebook and Instagram, and then move to LINE for communication.
Put simply, tourists from different countries may not even use the same language when searching for Chinese cities. Everyone has their own way of finding information, and these habits are worlds apart from China’s WeChat and Alipay ecosystems.
Yet Chinese travel agencies often produce one batch of English-language content and distribute it across TikTok, YouTube and X, as if every country and region were simply one market. Even when a video occasionally goes viral, they often have no way to convert that traffic into actual customers.
Foreign tourists haven’t disappeared from the market. Many travel agencies have simply made the decision-making process too complicated for them.
Behind hundreds of thousands of views, pricing, reviews, communication and payment still need to connect. Without that entire chain in place, even the hottest traffic is unlikely to turn into a real inbound tourism booking.
