Tourists visit the Confucius Temple market area in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, on Oct. 1, 2025.Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty ImagesBEIJING — The latest sign of hyper-competition, or “involution,” has emerged in China’s tourism industry, adding to concerns about growing deflationary pressure in the broader economy.Over the Oct. 1 to 8 public holiday — dubbed “Golden Week” — total domestic tourism trips reached 888 million and generated 809.01 billion yuan ($113.63 billion) in revenue, according to official data released Thursday. That’s up by 1.8% and 7.6% from last year, respectively, according to CNBC’s calculations of the figures.The gains, however, slowed from the May 1–5 holiday earlier this year, when domestic trips and tourism revenue grew 6.4% and 8% respectively. In fact, average spending per domestic tourist trip during the Golden Week was also around 3% lower than in 2019 before the pandemic, Goldman Sachs pointed out Thursday.”The Golden Week was ‘Golden Weak,'” said Mix Shi, founder of PoshPacker Hostels Chengdu Group.Although his three hostels in the city ended up being fully booked, Shi said he had to cut nightly rates by about 60% — because nearby hotels dropped prices even more.”Way too much money has been pouring into the hotel industry lately,” Shi said, noting, “the competition is insane, and some really nice places are going for dirt cheap. It’s great for travelers because they have more choices, but it’s a real blow to hostels.”Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China, ranked second to Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province in the east, in tourism spending for the holiday on the Meituan online booking platform.Among local and international visitors to hostels in mainland China, Chengdu’s popularity more than doubled from last year’s Golden Week, second only to Shanghai, according to HostelWorld. Still, average bed prices fell more than 20% in both cities — to 165.70 yuan ($23.27) in Shanghai and 80.99 yuan in Chengdu.While most local …
