From first stop to top choice: how city is reinventing inbound travel
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SHANGHAI received a record 9.36 million inbound visitors in 2025, nearly 40 percent more than the previous year, setting a historic record, as China continued to expand visa-free entry for travelers.
As foreign arrivals rise, Shanghai policymakers must figure out how to turn visitors into better experiences.
At this year’s Shanghai People’s Congress, lawmakers, tourism executives and industry experts agreed that attracting foreign tourists is no longer the hard part.
The real challenge is making Shanghai easier to experience, more engaging to explore and worth staying in for longer than a single night.
With unilateral visa-free access now covering 48 countries and mutual visa exemptions in place with 29 countries, the city has firmly established itself as China’s main gateway for international tourists.
“Tourists today don’t just want to see a landmark and take photos,” Zhou Weihong, vice president of Spring Tour and a legislator, said. “They want to eat local food, watch how things are made, and ideally try it themselves.”
“Even intangible cultural heritage is no longer about watching a performance — they want to participate,” Zhou told Shanghai Daily.
Shanghai already has an exceptional mix of Jiangnan (the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River), haipai (Shanghai-style) culture and modern urban life, elements rarely found together in one city.
The challenge lies in making these resources easy to access, understand, and book for foreign visitors.
“The resources are there,” Zhou said. “What’s missing is smooth connection.”
One of Zhou’s key proposals this year focuses on Traditional Chinese Medicine wellness experiences.
“I don’t think coming to China specifically for medical treatment is realistic,” she noted. “But wellness, especially TCM-based wellness, is very suitable for inbound tourism.”
Shanghai already hosts top TCM universities, hospitals and practitioners, along with decades of experience serving international visitors.
In the 1990s, many tourists came to the city to practice tai chi, gain herbal knowledge, make scented sachets, or experience massage and acupuncture — experiences still rare in much of the world, Zhou said.
The same logic applies to intangible cultural heritage. Many heritage inheritors are eager to teach and interact with foreign guests, but language barriers and fragmented information often prevent meaningful engagement. “It’s not that these experiences don’t exist. It’s that foreign tourists don’t know where to find them or how to participate,” Zhou observed.
Her solution is to turn heritage and lifestyle experiences into standardized, multilingual tourism products, integrated into itineraries rather than hidden behind language and logistics barriers.
That idea resonates strongly with proposals from other legislators.
Wang Suyi, another lawmaker, pointed to a viral moment earlier this year: a video of Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang strolling through a Shanghai wet market, casually tasting fruit. The clip struck a chord.
“It showed that everyday Shanghai markets, neighborhoods and community life can be deeply attractive to global audiences,” Wang said.
She proposed developing “Shanghai Life Experience Tours,” blending tourism with local routines: visiting markets, browsing community fairs, experiencing TCM wellness and even joining residents for morning exercises.
Zhou also turned attention to one of Shanghai’s most recognizable assets: the Huangpu River. “Huangpu River cruises are already a city name card, but compared with the Thames, the Seine or the Chao Phraya River, there is still room to grow.”
She suggested improving capacity allocation, introducing off-peak discounts, and significantly upgrading multilingual services.
More importantly, the legislator called for richer storytelling.
“We shouldn’t just explain individual buildings,” Zhou said. “We should tell the story of how Shanghai connected its riverbanks, and how Pudong transformed over the past 36 years.”
Beyond tourism itself, delegates also focused on emerging service consumption sectors closely linked to inbound travel.
Wu Bin, deputy secretary of the Shanghai Communist Youth League, highlighted the growing importance of youth consumption.
From January to November 2025, youth consumption accounted for 40.3 percent of total spending in Shanghai.
“Young consumers are careful where they save, but generous where they care,” Wu said. “They are willing to pay premiums for interests, social experiences and self-improvement.”
He called for cultivating globally recognizable youth culture brands and creating Shanghai-branded international youth festivals, exhibitions and competitions.
Other delegates turned to pet economy and ice-and-snow economy as complementary service sectors.
With Shanghai’s pet population exceeding 2 million and market size reaching 230 billion yuan, gaps such as pet insurance coverage — currently below 1 percent — were flagged as opportunities for innovation.
With Shanghai hosting the world’s largest indoor skiing resort, legislators have called for year-round ice-and-snow consumption through simulations, night events and cultural integration, blending winter sports with haipai and Jiangnan cultural elements.
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