As China’s inbound tourism market continues its robust recovery, global interest in exploring the country is rising steadily since the end of the pandemic.

In order to scientifically assess the overseas marketing communication effectiveness of Chinese cities in the digital age, I conducted the 2025 Chinese Cities Overseas Tourism Influence Rankings, which was released at the World Travel Market (WTM) 2025 in London. 

This year’s ranking compares and analyses 57 Chinese cities’ media influence across social platforms, official tourism websites, and Google search data—providing insights into how cities build their international visibility and reputation in a highly competitive market.

Importantly, I don’t see this research as a ranking where cities compete, but rather as a framework to explore one key question:

“How can Chinese cities become more recognisable and appealing in a competitive global tourism market?”

We hope these findings inspire cities to evolve their marketing strategies and strengthen their global image.

China's 14th Five-Year Plan for Culture and Tourism emphasised the importance of improving international communication capabilities and enhancing the promotion of Chinese culture overseas. It indicates a surging demand of international communication practice to support this important national strategy.

However, I noticed that there’s a difference in media channels use, content preference and users patterns between Chinese & western audiences. While some Chinese cities have been using a different strategy for their international marketing, the others still used similar strategy of the domestic market.

Obviously, the mismatch of strategy and their target audience would affect the performance of Chinese cities' international communication works.

Therefore, a scientific and data-based approach is needed to support Chinese cities’ destination marketing strategy targeting overseas tourists. The rating we created, from a developing perspective, acts as a strategic guidance and a global platform, compares and showcases successful stories of Chinese cities’ destination marketing practice.

For Chinese cities, this rating could serve as a knowledge & insights database where data-based research, industry insights and case studies are available. The comparison & competition between cities may activate an in-depth learning opportunity and create a shared improvement for Chinese cities, and contribute to the optimisation of their international communication strategy.

For overseas tourism business & industry players, this rating may act as a guidebook navigating them towards better business collaborations with Chinese cities. From an affiliate marketing programme on destination website, to a co-created social media post on TikTok, we hope this rating ease industry players’ efforts seeking prospectus opportunities in China.

At this first version of Chinese Cities’ Overseas Media Influence Ratings, we focused on the capability of a city’s overseas media communication. Based on a deep understanding of international tourists’ ways of obtaining destination knowledge & tourism information, we listed 3 main dimensions to assess the media influence:

• Official tourism website is the main gateway and a key guidebook for tourists travelling to a destination. An official tourism website serves tourists the introduction of destinations & attractions, trip routes, practical information such as visas, traffic, hotel & food, and real-time events, updates & news. The information posted on the website should be reliable, timely, and practical so it acts as a guidance for travellers to plan their trips.

• Social media is undoubtedly the most important channel for international and cross-cultural communication. The existence of English-language social media accounts and their activity levels shape a city's overseas brand image and engage prospective overseas tourists. We measure the number of followers, the number of posts & video views, and social media engagement levels (likes, shares, comments, saves etc.) of a city’s official Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube & TikTok channels in the past 12 months.

• Search result shows the popularity of a destination among prospect tourists. In this first version, we analysed the search volume of each destination/city on Google across all countries of the world.

1. Beijing

2. Shanghai

3. Chongqing

4. Xi'an

5. Nanjing

6. Chengdu

7. Guangzhou

8. Sanya

9. Guilin

10. Dunhuang