"I'm here to collect seals today, and I can also see where I can go during the summer vacation." On June 21, the 2025 Beijing International Cultural and Tourism Consumption Expo was crowded with people. A college student showed the account book in his hand to the Securities Daily reporter, which was covered with cultural and creative seals from different provinces across the country.
During this expo, the fronts of major booths were crowded with tourists. They either tasted special food or learned about special travel routes, and activities such as seal check-in, doll parades, and theme performances brought them a full sense of experience.
In fact, the summer economy across the country has shown great "hot" power. In Xuyi, Jiangsu, the 25th Xuyi Lobster Festival opened on June 12, and tourists come to Xuyi to eat crayfish; at Guilin Sunac International Tourism Resort, tourists enjoy super popular projects such as the spiral of jungle, raft expedition, and the Eye of Guilin Ferris Wheel; in Changsha, climbing Yuelu Mountain at night and watching the night beauty of Orange Island has become a new way for summer tourists to check in; in Guangzhou's hot snow miracle, Lingnan people not only have lychees to escape the summer heat, but also step on the snow tracks and experience summer ice and snow tours.
Experts interviewed by Securities Daily reporters generally believe that we should seize the summer consumption window period, increase policy efforts, continuously innovate consumption scenarios, improve the quality of service consumption, and promote high-quality economic development.
Consumer demand expansion and upgrading
Quality, personalization, diversity and outstanding
"In recent years, consumption has become the main engine of China's economic growth and the second largest market in the world." Li Yunze, director of the State Administration for Financial Supervision, introduced at the opening ceremony of the 2025 Lujiazui Forum that with the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand and the "Invest in People" policy, residents' income has steadily increased, and people's livelihood security has been continuously strengthened, and China is accelerating to become the world's largest consumer market.
The latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that from January to May this year, service retail sales increased by 5.2% year-on-year, accelerating by 0.1 percentage point from January to April, and 0.1 percentage point higher than the growth rate of commodity retail sales in the same period.
At the same time, with the expansion and upgrading of consumer demand, the characteristics of quality, personalization and diversification are particularly prominent, and consumers have changed from "meeting basic needs" to "pursuing quality of life". In addition to basic consumption such as catering, accommodation, housekeeping, elderly care and childcare, improvement service consumption such as cultural and entertainment consumption, tourism consumption, and sports consumption are bursting with unprecedented vitality.
In terms of cultural and entertainment consumption, "emotional consumption" has become a new hot topic. Many young people are willing to go on a trip for a concert or music festival; in the live broadcast room, scarce models of blind box toys such as LABUBU are being bought by consumers; on e-commerce platforms, virtual products such as "Pinced Le" that can be decompressed and "Einstein's Brain" priced at 0.5 yuan are popular among young people.
In terms of tourism consumption, listed companies actively promote the sales of summer travel products. Retail data from Zhongxin Travel Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongxin Travel") shows that as of now, the number of summer travelers in 2025 has increased by 70% compared with the same period last year, and the summer GMV (total commodity transaction volume) has increased by about 80% compared with the same period last year. Among them, the proportion of parent-child customer base is expected to exceed 60%, becoming the main force of summer consumption.
Niche destinations are favored by tourists. Li Jinfei, vice president and hotel travel manager of Meituan, told the Securities Daily reporter that since this year, among the top tourist destinations with the growth rate of tourists from other places, niche tourist destinations in third-tier and below cities account for as much as 80%. The attention to destinations in Danzhou, Altay and other counties has surged. In the scenario of traveling in other places, users under the age of 30 account for 44%, and their demand for cultural and tourism is more diversified. Young consumers are willing to go further, among which the demand for "medium and long-term travel" with a total of more than 300 kilometers has exceeded 15%.
Improve service supply capacity
Emerging consumer formats continue to emerge
As residents' consumption demand rises, compound consumption scenarios such as "night tour +", "performing arts +" and "event +" continue to emerge, promoting the extension of the consumption chain and the improvement of value. Expanding the integrated consumption of business, tourism, culture and sports has become a key direction for local governments to develop service consumption.
On April 30, the "Implementation Plan for the Special Action to Boost Consumption in Guangdong Province" issued by the General Office of the People's Government of Guangdong Province proposed to continue to carry out Guangdong's cultural and tourism consumption season subsidy activities, and hold cultural and tourism consumption promotion activities such as "Travel with events", "Travel with film and television", and "Travel with food".
The popularity of the "Suzhou Super League" has also made "events + cultural tourism" a tool for many places to develop new consumption scenarios. In June, the Liaoning Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and other departments issued the "Several Measures to Boost Consumption in Liaoning Province's Integration of Culture, Sports and Tourism" proposed that for the holding of professional sports events, a subsidy of 300,000 to 3 million yuan will be given based on the project category, commercial value, etc., of which an additional subsidy of 1 million yuan will be given for the "first competition".
During the summer vacation, many places combine local resource endowments to create distinctive cultural and tourism integration scenarios and launch differentiated tourism experiences. "At present, young people's attention to health and wellness has increased significantly. We have launched experience activities such as crushing Chinese medicine, making sachets, and customized herbal tea formulas, which have attracted many college students to study and travel and experience the traditional Chinese medicine culture." Zhang Shuai, head of the investment promotion of Bozhou Health Conference's living room, told reporters that they combine local medicinal materials resources and traditional Chinese medicine culture, while developing new Chinese tea drinks to attract young consumers, they also actively develop "medicine food + cultural tourism" and "industry + study and study".
"Under the new consumption situation, the policy and enterprise levels must not only seize the opportunity of summer vacation, fully tap the huge potential of traditional summer consumption models such as summer tourism and night economy, but also seize the explosive growth window of new economic formats such as study tours, cruise tours, and emotional economy, integrate them with traditional consumption models, vigorously develop compound consumption scenarios, promote service consumption to continuously innovate, and enhance consumers' experience." Bai Yanfeng, professor of the School of Finance and Taxation of Central University of Finance and Economics, believes.
Multi-party joint efforts to optimize the environment
Promote the growth of service consumption
Compared with the more mature commodity consumption market, there are still some weak links in the service consumption market. What measures should be taken to further promote the growth of the service consumption market?
In the view of Luo Zhiheng, chief economist and director of the research institute of Guangdong Securities, first of all, the supply-side structural reform of service consumption is imminent. Luo Zhiheng believes that the characteristics of service consumption are mainly reflected in four aspects: high income elasticity, synchronous supply and demand, obvious economies of scale and aggregation effects, difficulty in standardized replication and long-distance transportation. Therefore, we need to start from four aspects: more stable income growth support, more leisure time, a more concentrated population, a more family-based consumption scenario, and a stronger supply capacity.
Secondly, the policy environment for service consumption also needs to be further optimized. "The standardized service system of tourism and accommodation industries needs to be improved, and the personalized and refined service capabilities are insufficient. The supply of high-quality vacation products, cultural experience products, health tourism products and other segmented markets is relatively weak, and homogeneous competition is fierce, making it difficult to match the needs of consumption upgrading." Luo Zhiheng suggested that the policy environment for the development of service consumption and the development of the service industry should be optimized, and market access for the service industry such as cultural tourism, medical care, elderly care, and education should be relaxed and supervision should be strengthened, to promote the survival of the fittest, and to provide consumers with better services.
In addition, more financial support should be provided for service consumption. This became the consensus among the experts interviewed.
On May 9 this year, the People's Bank of China issued the "Notice on the Establishment of Service Consumption and Elderly Re-loans" mentioned that a 500 billion yuan service consumption and elderly re-loan was established to encourage and guide financial institutions to increase financial support for key areas of service consumption such as accommodation, catering, culture, sports and entertainment, and education and the elderly care industry.
"Unlike the manufacturing industry, production and consumption in related industries of service consumption occur simultaneously. Financial institutions need to embed financial services into service consumption scenarios, provide innovative payment settlement, consumer credit and other financial services around different scenarios of service consumption, and continuously improve customer acquisition capabilities and customer stickiness." Liang Jing, a researcher at the China Banking Institute, said.
"For the field of service consumption, strengthen credit support." Lian Ping, chief economist of Guangkai Chief Industry Research Institute, suggested that every 1 percentage point increase in consumer loan balance will drive more than 200 billion yuan of new credit. With the continuous increase in the proportion of residents' service consumption expenditure, commercial banks can innovate products in the service consumption field based on their own situation and in the context of meeting regulatory requirements, moderately expand the scale of residents' consumer loans, reduce consumer loan interest rates, and lengthen the repayment cycle.
In the capital market, consumer theme funds and consumer REITs have become important sources of funds to support the growth of service consumption. Wind data shows that as of June 22 this year, a total of 9 consumer REITs were listed, with a total initial fundraising of 22.9061 billion yuan. Looking further, the underlying assets of the nine consumer REITs performed stably overall, most projects achieved positive operating income and available amounts, and some projects also benefited from the peak consumption season effects brought by holidays and promotional activities, and rental income and operational efficiency have been improved.
Looking ahead, service consumption is expected to further drive consumption growth. A research report released by Goldman Sachs research team in early June believes that recent policy measures have shifted to boost service consumption. Service consumption accounts for only 46% of China's household consumption, which is indeed a low proportion compared to about 60% of developed countries. The high-potential growth point in the consumer field in the future may lie in service consumption.
