5 Travel Influencer Marketing Trends for China

Chinese KOLs on a FAM trip of Georgia, July 2025 (Photo: Georgian National Tourism Administration)

When Chinese travelers decide where to travel and look for information on destinations overseas, influencers are one of their top sources. Dragon Trail’s consumer research also shows that influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways that international tourism brands can market and sell themselves to a Chinese audience.

But how does a travel brand choose what kinds of Chinese influencers to work with, which social platforms to focus on, and what goals to set for their influencer marketing campaigns? Based on our August 2025 webinar on Influencer Marketing for Chinese Outbound Tourism, here are five major trends travel brands should understand before launching or updating their own influencer marketing strategies for China.

1) KOLs are the media now

KOLs, or key opinion leaders, are professional influencers who usually focus on one or a few key topics like travel, beauty, lifestyle, or photography. In terms of follower numbers, this can vary a lot and also depends on the social media platform – what defines KOLs is that social media promotion is their job, and you can expect a very high quality of output, with professional level photos, writing, and/or video, as well as a strong follower base of consumers who are also interested in the topics they cover.

Destinations and travel brands – especially those that are just getting started with their China marketing and aren’t yet well known among Chinese consumers – must include KOLs in their PR and media strategy. For example, if you’re organizing a media event or FAM trip, you’ll want to invite KOLs as well as more traditional media like magazine editors, because their role is similar and their reach might even be bigger in today’s media landscape.

Read our case study for Oman’s first-ever Chinese media FAM trip

2) The rise of KOCs

KOCs, or Key Opinion Consumers, are amateur influencers with smaller follower numbers than KOLs. They often have quite targeted interests and audiences, such as family travel. These days, many brands will choose for work with KOCs on their marketing campaigns for China, in addition to or even instead of KOLs.

One of the key reasons KOC marketing is so popular now is the algorithms for social media platforms RedNote/Xiaohongshu and Douyin. On both platforms, any piece of content is first served to a small group of people – guaranteed basic traffic – and then depending on its performance with that small group, it’ll be served to larger and larger audiences. The result is that the post content is more important than who posts it, and a post by a small account could go viral with the right content and engagements from users. This then impacts marketers, who will choose to work with a larger pool of KOCs who make great content with smaller fan bases, rather than with more expensive KOLs or celebrities with larger fan bases, since the distribution is about the content rather than about the account’s followers.

3) New platforms, wide coverage

The rise of RedNote/Xiaohongshu and Douyin and their impact on travelers is undeniable, and influencer campaigns these days will definitely include those platforms as a requirement, or even a focus. But most large-scale influencer campaigns with the goal of raising overall brand awareness now will also include more “traditional” social media platforms like Weibo, and professional KOLs are usually active across a wide variety of platforms – and using both photo/text and video content. Nowadays, it’s standard for a KOL campaign to result in content posted across Weibo, WeChat Channels, WeChat Moments, RedNote/Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Ctrip, as other platforms such as Kuaishou and Bilibili. This broad coverage ensures a large and diverse audience, and is something you can expect from working with a professional KOL.

4) Sales as the new frontier for influencer marketing

Sales-focused influencer accounts have been around for a long time – for example, WeChat official accounts that promote travel deals and discounts. But starting around five years ago, influencers are increasingly making direct sales or helping consumers navigate to sales channels, in addition to just promoting brand awareness and image.

For example, Xiao Dan, a KOL who specializes in hotel marketing, says that followers started to ask for her help booking hotels in 2020. These days, including a sales link under one video can sell up to RMB1 million in hotel bookings, and she once booked 200 room nights for a hotel in the French ski resort of Courchevel, as well as 50 room nights in Andorra. Chen Rui, a zoologist and Douyin influencer, sold 40 places on polar cruises in a summer 2025 campaign.

Making sales through influencer marketing is something you can do by working with influencers with strong sales abilities and experience – also known as Key Opinion Sales (KOS), and by organizing sales-focused live streaming sessions. But it can also be as simple as getting influencers to include a call-to-action in their posts with a booking link.

Read our case study on boosting sales for Disneyland Resort California through a RedNote campaign

5) Using influencers to reach niche market segments

Destinations and brands will have different objectives for their influencer marketing, from targeting niche demographics to growing overall brand awareness, so the approaches to influencer marketing are diverse as well.

The Chinese outbound tourism market is very diverse, and brands will want to optimize their marketing by targeting the right segments and demographics to match their products or destination. This also means choosing influencers that will be most effective in reaching those markets, such as silver travelers or family travelers.

Another major trend in Chinese outbound travel now is the exploration of niche interests through travel, with a move away from generic group tours and towards very personalized, customized itineraries. By working with niche influencers who focus on very specific topics – such as astronomy or classical music, you can tap into this trend and also access followers who are more engaged and stickier.

Dragon Trail has extensive resources and experience when it comes to influencer marketing, and our services range from organizing every detail of a FAM trip and accompanying the KOLs on it, to just providing you with a shortlist and contacts for the kind of KOLs you’re looking for. Our database of more than 400 KOLs includes everyone from award-winning, famous travel photographers, to micro-influencers focused on piano music. Please contact us to learn more and discuss how we can help you achieve your objectives for Chinese influencer marketing.