'Could almost speak Mandarin to everyone': Chinese visitors flock to Australia

When Fei Chang and her husband landed in the Whitsundays for their holiday, they were shocked to find it filled with Chinese tourists. 

"At some tourist spots, it felt like I could almost speak Mandarin to everyone," she said.

Ms Chang and her husband were among the Chinese tourists who visited Australia over the past week, during China's week-long national day holiday that ends today. 

This year, the timing of the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival public holiday together with Golden Week from October 1 to 7 gave people 13 days off. 

Australia was one of the most sought-after destinations for Chinese travellers, according to one of China's popular travel booking platforms Trip.com.

The company said people were also taking "longer and further trips beyond the region" this year.

International Air Transport Association (IATA) data showed that flight bookings from China to Australia for October 2026 were up 19 per cent compared to October 2025.

There were also more than 2.2 million inbound and outbound passengers during the Mid-August Festival, according to China's official immigration data, a 16.8 per cent increase compared to the same holiday last year.

Zhang Cheng, a Melbourne travel agent and owner of Great Wall Travel Services, told the ABC that she had received a surge in bookings over the past week.

Her agency takes bookings primarily from Chinese-speaking tourists.  

However, Ms Zhang was not sure how many of those tourists were from overseas and how many were from the Chinese-speaking community in Australia.

"We are fully booked with two-day tours to the Great Ocean Road," she said.

This week, Ms Zhang is taking a group of Chinese-speaking tourists to Canberra for one of the biggest horticultural shows in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tourists prefer 'quality trips'

China was Australia's second-largest inbound tourist market in 2025, according to Tourism Research Australia.

In 2025, Australia saw 1.04 million visitors from China, a 17 per cent increase year-on-year.

However, this was still below the 1.4 million visitors from China pre-COVID, in 2019.

Ms Zhang said before the pandemic, people tended to travel in big groups.

But they now prefer "quality trips" in small groups or going on road trip by themselves, she said.

Chinese guided-tour groups sometimes operate under the Approved Destination Status (ADS) scheme, which is a bilateral agreement that facilitates group tours from China to Australia, organised by approved agencies. 

The program was paused during COVID and resumed in 2023. 

More than 300,000 tourists reportedly joined an ADS group tour in 2019 financial year, according to Austrade data.

In the 2026 financial year, the number of visitors on ADS group trips dropped to 70,205.