Chinese New Year Campaigns for Tourism 2025

Chinese New Year is a peak season for marketing and social media use in China. This includes holiday greetings, campaigns, giveaways, and customized digital hongbao or red envelopes. Let’s take a look at a few Chinese New Year campaigns and activities from 2025, with design and promotion by Dragon Trail International.

Baglioni Hotels and Resorts: CNY Giveaway Campaign

Baglioni Hotels and Resorts opened their official account on WeChat at the end of August 2024. In Baglioni’s 2025 Chinese New Year giveaway campaign, WeChat users needed to follow and send a message to Baglioni’s account, for the chance to win a RMB100 gift card to JD.com. The campaign was promoted through WeChat’s giveaway mini-program to reach a wider audience. Entrants could boost their chances of winning by getting friends to share the promotion as well. The campaign achieved good follower growth and boosted user engagement for a very low cost and without advertising. Giveaway campaigns like this are a strong strategy for getting a new account off the ground.

Disneyland Resort: Lunar New Year RedNote Campaign

Disneyland Resort worked with influencers on Xiaohongshu/RedNote to publicize their Lunar New Year celebrations and promote the California attraction as the perfect place to celebrate Spring Festival together with family. Similarly to our summer influencer campaign, the promotional posts included links for users to easily buy attraction tickets from OTAs Ctrip and Fliggy. With more than 3 million impressions, the campaign not only boosted ticket sales but also led to a surge in search volumes for terms related to Disneyland on Xiaohongshu, significantly elevating the attraction’s visibility on this highly influential app.

Visit California & Los Angeles Tourism: CNY Greetings on WeChat, Weibo, and RedNote

Dragon Trail designed New Year greetings for Visit California and the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Bureau to share across their Chinese social media channels, including posters, animated videos, and interactive WeChat posts. Posted on Weibo and Xiaohongshu/RedNote, Visit California’s video simulates opening a digital red envelope, with iconic images of California inside.

In addition to an animated video of New Year greetings, Los Angeles also shared a WeChat post with eight different Chinese New Year couplets wishing good fortune for the Year of the Snake. Each couplet related to a Los Angeles attraction or destination, and readers could tap to open more information about that attraction, including the LA Memorial Coliseum, Griffith Observatory, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. Another WeChat post from Los Angeles offered a full guide to Lunar New Year and other Chinese cultural events held between January and March this year.

Geneva Tourism: Chinese New Year Video

Shared across Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu, Geneva Tourism’s Chinese New Year video gave local partners the chance to welcome Chinese visitors in a direct and personal way, with clips of local teams from hotels, museums, retailers, and tour operators around Geneva sending their best wishes for the Year of the Snake, often in Mandarin. A follow-up video posted for Lantern Festival at the end of the Chinese New Year period featured Chinese restaurants in Geneva.

By integrating Geneva’s tourism highlights with elements of Chinese culture, the campaign not only promoted Geneva as a travel destination but also resonated with Chinese tourists, fostering a stronger emotional connection. This personal and engaging approach was also taken to enhance the loyalty of existing followers and strengthen fan retention.

Red Envelopes: Small Luxury Hotels of the World and Austrian National Tourist Board

Introduced by WeChat in 2014, digital red packets are a modern update on the traditional red envelopes of cash gifted on Chinese New Year and for other special events in China, such as weddings. WeChat made digital red envelopes fully customizable for Chinese New Year 2021, resulting in more than 300 million cover designs. This now offers an annual branding opportunity for companies and organizations, and a new way to connect with Chinese followers on WeChat.

For the Year of the Snake, we created customized digital red envelope designs for Small Luxury Hotels of the World and the Austrian National Tourist Board, both integrating snakes with the clients’ brand designs. Austria’s red envelope design, created entirely by Dragon Trail, featured a violin-playing snake together with Johann Strauss, to celebrate the Austrian composer’s 200th birthday in 2025.

Looking to launch or enhance your marketing for China? Dragon Trail offers a full suite of offline and digital services, including market representation, social media, design, influencer marketing, short video production, website development, events, research and more. Contact us to discuss how we can help you reach future visitors from China.