China has spent the last couple of years quietly pulling off one of the more significant shifts in global travel policy. After a long stretch of being one of the harder destinations to get into without serious paperwork, China has been expanding its visa-free access to an impressive and growing list of countries. The result? Foreign visitors are showing up in numbers that are turning heads, and the country’s luxury hotel sector is riding that wave hard.
If you’ve been curious about whether China is actually accessible for your passport now, the short answer is: it might be easier than you think. The longer answer involves checking the details specific to your nationality, which is exactly the kind of thing a solid visa guide like HandleVisa can help you work through without the headache of sorting through conflicting information across a dozen government websites.
What China Has Actually Done on Visas
This isn’t a minor tweak — China has made substantial moves. Over the past year and a half, the Chinese government has extended visa-free entry to citizens of dozens of countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, and the UAE, among others. The list has grown consistently, and the signals from Beijing suggest this is a deliberate, sustained strategy rather than a short-term experiment.
Beyond full visa-free agreements, China has also been leaning into its transit visa-free policies. The 144-hour transit exemption allows travelers to move through major Chinese cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu without a visa and has been expanded in scope. It is increasingly being used by savvy travelers to build multi-city China stopovers into broader Asia itineraries.
The Numbers Are MovingÂ
The impact on visitor arrivals has been real and measurable. Last year, 30.1 million foreign nationals entered China under visa-free policies, accounting for 73.1 percent of all inbound foreign visitors. That figure represents a 49.5 percent year-on-year increase, which is certainly not the kind of growth you can chalk up to a rounding error.
Most of those visa-free visitors are coming from developed countries where the cost of living is considerably higher than in China. According to Yong Chen, an associate professor at EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland, that spending power matters. Even if they were just spending what they would in their home countries, that would be a massive injection into the ground-floor Chinese economy. The math is straightforward: visitors accustomed to paying London or Sydney prices for a hotel room or a meal aren’t going to flinch at Chinese luxury pricing.
Luxury Hotels Are Feeling It Directly
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in China’s high-end hotel sector. The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, which owns and operates The Peninsula Hotels in both Beijing and Shanghai, has seen a direct and meaningful increase in overseas guests tied to the visa-free expansion.
Benjamin Vuchot, CEO of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, put it plainly: “Shanghai has shown significant growth in international visitors, and Beijing is seeing a strong trend in diplomatic, business and returning leisure travellers.”
At The Peninsula Beijing specifically, the guest mix is now evenly split between domestic and international travelers, which is a notable shift. The hotel is seeing a combination of high-level business delegations alongside returning leisure visitors from the US, the UK, Australia, and Mexico.Â
Meanwhile at The Peninsula Shanghai, a drop in guests from Gulf states due to limited flight capacity was offset by an uptick in luxury travelers from other countries coming in under the visa-free program. The demand is there, and it’s coming from multiple directions.
Singapore-based Aman Resorts’ Amanyangyun property in Shanghai tells a similar story. The hotel, which offers cultural programming including calligraphy, tea ceremonies, and incense art, has been drawing high-net-worth travelers from South Korea and Europe, many of whom are staying for more than three nights, above the standard average length of stay.
What the Data Says About Where This Is Heading
The financial picture backing all of this is strong. According to a February report from Morgan Stanley, China’s hotel sector revenue per available room ended a two-year decline and returned to growth, with positive momentum expected to continue through the coming quarters.
Looking further out, the projections are even more compelling. Inbound tourism is forecast to contribute 16 percent of China’s total tourism revenue by 2030, up from an estimated 12 percent in 2025. More broadly, tourism-associated demand is projected to account for 6.7 percent of China’s GDP by 2030, compared to 4.8 percent in 2024, effectively returning to pre-pandemic levels.
That said, Chen offers a useful reality check for anyone expecting foreign visitors to fundamentally reshape the hotel industry: “While the hotel industry is certainly the largest beneficiary of China’s relaxed tourism policies, inbound tourists account for a very small fraction of China’s hotel demand and are unlikely to fundamentally reshape the sector. China’s hotel industry largely relies on domestic demand.”
The point is well taken. China’s domestic market is enormous, and inbound tourism is a meaningful growth layer on top of that base, not a replacement for it.
Is This a Good Time to Visit China?
For travelers who have had China on their radar but kept putting it off partly because of the entry requirements, the current moment is genuinely worth paying attention to. The visa situation is more accessible than it’s been in years, hotel infrastructure is strong across the major gateway cities, and the high-speed rail network makes getting around between destinations fast and comfortable.
Megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen remain the biggest entry points and the most visited, but international visitors are increasingly moving beyond those hubs. As they do, demand is growing for accommodation options at every price point. This is good news whether you’re booking a suite at The Peninsula or a boutique guesthouse in a smaller city.
Check your passport, confirm the current conditions for your nationality, and plan accordingly. China has done a lot of the hard work on access, now it’s just a matter of taking advantage of it.
This alongside regular visits to Indian jungles in search of the Royal Bengal Tiger, fueled her zest for adventure, nature and wildlife.
Now she is a renowned travel blogger, outreach expert and has worked with over 500 travel brands in the last 15 years.
