Picture perfect wanderlust: How a Chinese app is driving tourism in Southeast Asia

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

At 5 am, the air around Ijen volcano in eastern Java, Indonesia, is thick with bright yellow smoke. Undeterred, young Chinese tourists don gas masks and flock to the rim of the active volcano crater at sunrise, eager to capture the perfect photo. Steps away from a sheer drop into the turquoise volcanic lake, some whip out their phones to check Xiaohongshui, a Chinese social media app, for the best vantage point. Within hours, their snapshots may join the thousands already shared on the platform.

Aang Koen is familiar with this phenomenon. The 48-year-old Indonesian owns a travel agency in Surabaya and organises tours to Ijen. For years, his clientele was predominantly European, but since early 2023, Koen’s business has undergone a dramatic shift. Now, 60% of his clients are Chinese, most of whom found him on Xiaohongshu.

“My business is getting famous,” he told Rest of World. Ijen was little-known among Chinese travelers before the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, Koen said, but the volcano rim pictures on Xiaohongshu have made it a popular destination. Almost all of his Chinese clients asked to include Ijen in their tours.

Xiaohongshu is often referred to as “China’s Instagram”, but it offers something that Instagram and other social media apps generally do not: in-depth, user-generated travel advice and itineraries. Travel posts on the app often include comprehensive hotel and restaurant reviews, tips on transportation logistics, and curated lists of shops and attractions, all complemented by stunning snapshots. With over 300 million monthly active users, Xiaohongshu has become a beloved resource among young Chinese travelers, many of whom consider it their go-to travel guide.

Experts say the app has revolutionised the way Chinese people travel overseas, leading them to previously lesser-known, off-the-beaten-path destinations. The Xiaohongshu effect can be seen across the globe, as the app takes Chinese travelers to the “Harry Potter building” in Sydney, turns Düsseldorf into a foodie destination, and transforms a hidden-gem Hong Kong neighborhood into a tourism hot spot.

In Southeast Asia, which has long been one of the top international destinations for Chinese tourists, Xiaohongshu has had a pronounced impact on tourism. In 2019, more than 32 million Chinese tourists visited Southeast Asian countries, making China by far the largest source of foreign tourists. The Covid-19 pandemic devastated tourism in Southeast Asia, which had been highly dependent on China.

But now, Chinese tourists are returning, with Xiaohongshu as their travel bible. “Xiaohongshu has become a platform where [Chinese travelers] can learn what they can do that they didn’t know about before,” Gary Bowerman, a Kuala Lumpur-based Asia travel and tourism analyst, told Rest of World. In 2023, over 10 million Chinese people visited Southeast Asia, and he expects 2024 to see a stronger recovery of Chinese tourism in the region.

In the post-pandemic era, more small-business owners in Southeast Asia are using the app to attract young and aspirational Chinese travelers “who want to explore Southeast Asia in different ways from before the pandemic”, Bowerman said. For entrepreneurs like Koen, whose businesses were hit by Covid-19, the flow of Chinese tourists from Xiaohongshu has been a lifeline.

During the pandemic, Koen’s travel agency was on the brink of collapse. “I got no job. No income,” he recalled. He had to close down his company office and sell valuables to stay afloat. Occasionally, he received a handful of foreign tourists, including his very first Chinese client who visited Indonesia in late 2022. “I told him honestly: My business was not good because of [Covid-19].” The Chinese client then helped him register an account on Xiaohongshu to access the country’s market.

“Suddenly, a lot of people messaged me,” Koen said. Since China removed its travel restrictions in January 2023, he has received more than 2,000 visitors from the country. His business has not only bounced back from the pandemic, but almost doubled in size.

“I must say ‘Thank you very much’ to my first Chinese customer!” said Koen.

Xiaohongshu’s influence is evident even in Laos, one of the least-visited countries in Southeast Asia. Since last year, traveling to Laos has become trendy on Xiaohongshu, partially driven by the launch of the Laos-China high speed railway. There are more than 71,000 posts about Laos tourism on the app. In comparison, there are only 37,000 posts about traveling to Cambodia. Popular posts highlight the low expenses and slow-paced life in Laos. “Is this for real? Two thousand yuan [$290] for a one-week ‘lying flat’ vacation abroad!” a user wrote.

While Southeast Asia has always been a popular destination for budget-conscious travelers from China, the country’s economic downturn may lead to an even greater influx of tourists to the region. “Southeast Asia ticks off a lot of boxes right now because it’s quite close [to China],” Bowerman said. “The cost of flights [is] not too high. And a lot of countries in the region have visa-free access [for Chinese travelers].”

This July, Xiaohongshu posts inspired Zoe Luo to plan a trip to Luang Prabang, an idyllic ancient town in northern Laos. “I use Xiaohongshu like a search engine,” the 28-year-old Chinese e-commerce entrepreneur told Rest of World. She sometimes spends as many as three hours a day on the app. Xiaohongshu is one of the few mainstream Chinese social media platforms where almost all user-generated content is publicly visible, open for comments, and easy to search – like a digital library.

Luo’s travel planning revolved around Xiaohongshu. On Google Maps, she bookmarked local restaurants and shops to visit – all of which were gathered from Xiaohongshu. After browsing through Laos travel posts, she decided to stay at MyBanLao Hotel, the most-mentioned Luang Prabang hotel on the platform.

Hundreds of Xiaohongshu posts feature pictures of the hotel’s outdoor pool, surrounded by fragrant frangipani trees – Laos’ national flower. “I thought that it’d be a beautiful backdrop for pictures,” said Luo, who regularly posts about her travels on Xiaohongshu. During her stay at the hotel, she posed for pictures by the pool, holding a fallen frangipani flower. After she shared the pictures on Xiaohongshu with her recommendations, more than a hundred users saved her post as a future travel guide.

Since MyBanLao opened a Xiaohongshu account last March, the number of Chinese guests has skyrocketed, now making up 70% of its clientele, a marketing manager at the hotel told Rest of World.
Social media platforms like Xiaohongshu have contributed to the rise of daka (“punching the card”) tourism in China. The aim of daka tourism is to plan an itinerary involving visits to popular and photogenic attractions, sometimes at breakneck speed, and to show off pictures from there on social media.

Xiaohongshu, in particular, encourages users to share more. Luo said the app rewards weekly content creators with “traffic coupons” that push their posts to more users. “When I publish my next post, I can validate a coupon and get more traffic,” she said. According to a report released by Xiaohongshu in 2023, travel was the second-hottest topic on the platform, after dining.

“Xiaohongshu transforms daka almost to a ritual,” Guo Jia, a researcher at the University of Sydney, told Rest of World. Guo, who has conducted research into the app, said she has often noticed people planning travel itineraries based on other users’ recommendations on the platform, and later publishing their own daka photos and advice.

From research and planning to documenting trips on social media, Xiaohongshu allows users to complete the entire daka-tourism loop on a single platform. The algorithm then pushes the posts to other users with shared interests, who may repeat this loop. It snowballs into viral trends in tourism, such as “city walk” and “special forces tourism”.

Xiaohongshu can lead travelers off the beaten track, for better or for worse. In some cases, the daka spots on Xiaohongshu are ignored by or unknown to most local people and non-Chinese tourists. Dozens of posts mention a photogenic spot in Luang Prabang called “Lonely Tree”. Rest of World found that it was a large but otherwise unremarkable tree on an empty plot of land by the roadside. “Only Chinese people come here to take pictures,” a local driver said.

For travelers aiming for a more authentic experience, the daka posts can be misleading. Luo said she was disappointed by Xiaohongshu’s restaurant recommendations during her Laos trip. “Xiaohongshu users prioritise pictures, so they tend to recommend restaurants that look great, but not necessarily those which serve tasty food.”

“For the Chinese, the point [of travel] is the view,” said Koen, the Indonesian tour guide. “They just want to show off pictures on social media.”

At Ijen volcano, daka tourism led to a fatal accident. This April, a Chinese tourist was found dead after she lost her balance while posing for pictures on the edge of the volcano and plunged into its highly acidic crater lake. Since the accident, Xiaohongshu has added a warning for Ijen-related searches: “Safety first during travels”.

Zhaoyin Feng is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker.

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.