Interest in Kenya up more than 70% on Qunar over Mid-Autumn and National Day holiday

Interest in Kenya on the Chinese travel platform Qunar rose by more than 70% over the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday, according to Qunar data cited by China Business magazine (Zhongguo Shangjie) on 12 October. The figure measures interest on the platform, not arrivals in Kenya.

Qunar data also showed hotel orders for two-country and multi-country trips, including Singapore plus Malaysia, France plus Italy and Kenya plus Tanzania, up 1.2 times year on year, The Paper (Pengpai News) reported on 4 October. Blue Whale News carried the same figure on 8 October in an article by the travel-industry site Maidian.

China Business said tailor-made trips to Tanzania and Kenya usually last 9 to 15 days. Quotes that leave out international flights and visas start above RMB 20,000, it said, and entry-level trips cost about RMB 30,000 a person. A wild-luxury trip costs about RMB 20,000 a day. The magazine said the JW Marriott Mount Kenya Rhino Reserve Safari Camp recently charged more than RMB 20,000 a day, ten times the price of a comfort-level hotel in the same area.

Tailor-made seats for popular holidays need to be reserved at least two months ahead, China Business said. For a long holiday such as National Day, at least three months is typical, and some travellers book half a year before. Some people have already started booking Spring Festival trips, it added.

The magazine linked the length of this year's holiday to a leave strategy called "take 3, get 13", in which three days of leave produce a 13-day break, and said safari trips in Tanzania and Kenya were among the popular choices. Maidian wrote that at the East African migration, more than half of the cameras poking out of safari-vehicle roofs belonged to Mandarin speakers.

The Paper reported on 14 January, citing unnamed official statistics, that more than 90,000 Chinese visitors went to Kenya in 2024 and that China was Kenya's second-fastest-growing source market worldwide.