China’s F1 Visitors Spent More, Stayed Longer
Photo Credit: The Shanghai skyline at night Pexels / Wolfram K
Skift Take
China has long been a powerhouse in outbound tourism. Now it’s trying to flip the script and do the same on the inbound side. But can it turn event-driven travel into something bigger than marquee sporting weekends?
Hotel bookings within 10-15 kilometers (6-9 miles) of the Shanghai circuit, where the F1 Chinese Grand Prix took place this weekend, jumped tenfold compared with the previous weekend, according to data from Trip.com Group.
The race wasn't only a success for victor Kimi Antonelli but also for Shanghai as a tourism destination, as flight bookings during the race period also saw double-digit year-on-year growth.
Edison Chen, vice president of Trip.com Group, told Skift that in the 90 days preceding the race, "the share of flight searches converting into confirmed bookings for China was in the double digits." During the 2026 F1 period, however, "the conversion rate rose significantly to nearly 70%, highlighting the strong pull of major events on travel decisions,” Chen said.
That spike offers a glimpse into China’s wider push to use major events, a phenomenon that has led Skift to coin the term “live tourism”, no
