Inbound visitors spent ¥50.56 billion in Beijing in 2025 — up 44.7%, growing faster than arrivals themselves. Nationally, inbound spending reached $131.1 billion, up 39.2%, with ¥80 billion of it flowing through mobile payment apps. Beijing's money story is a yield story: fewer visitors than 2019, spending more each.
The capital's inbound visitors spent ¥50.56 billion (~$7.2 billion) in 2025, up 44.7% — outpacing the 39% arrivals growth, which means per-trip spend rose too. Holiday snapshots confirm the pattern: overseas visitors spent ¥1.23 billion in the October 2025 Golden Week (+54.1% year on year) and ¥1.38 billion over May Day 2026 (+22.6%).
Duty-free and tax-refund policy is pushing the same direction: city duty-free sales more than doubled in the 2025 National Day holiday to over ¥22 million in eight days, and the nationwide "Buy & Tax Refund" instant-refund program has made Beijing one of its two pilot consumption hubs alongside Shanghai.
China's inbound visitors spent $131.1 billion in 2025, up 39.2% — surpassing pre-pandemic levels — against 154.5 million visits. The government's 2030 target: 190 million visits and $150 billion a year. Domestic tourism is the ocean this floats on: 6.52 billion trips and ¥6.3 trillion in spending in 2025.
Where it lands in Beijing: hotels at the top (courtyard product from ¥15,000), heritage tickets and dining through the middle, and increasingly retail — the tax-refund expansion lowered the minimum purchase threshold and spread refund points across tourist-dense districts in 2025.
For a mid-range international visitor, Beijing remains cheap for a capital of its class: quality hotels at $100–150, metro rides from ¥3, world-class dining from ¥50 a head at the casual end. The premium tier is where prices bite — palace-adjacent luxury at ¥5,000–15,000 a night, Universal Express passes, private Great Wall transfers.
The currency helps: with the yuan around 7.1–7.2 to the dollar, dollar and euro earners get 15–20% more Beijing than they did in 2019 for the same money.
Spend where Beijing is unique, save where it is generic. The hutong courtyard night, the private Forbidden City-hours tour, the chef's counter — these are Beijing-only products and worth the premium. The generic five-star business hotel is not: with national ADR flat, you should never pay rack rate in Chaoyang. And use the tax refund: on any meaningful shopping — tea, silk, electronics — the 9–11% refund at departure is real money, and the instant-refund counters at Wangfujing and SKP process it on the spot.
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