Last weekend, my nephew, planning a National Day trip to a small city in Gansu, was feeling pretty smug. He’d found a mid-range hotel near the botanical garden in Wuwei, thinking the usual price of around 300 yuan including breakfast was a great deal, even cheaper than a budget hotel in a popular northwestern city. But when he reopened the Ctrip app last week, the price had changed.
In mid-September, the executive king room at this hotel was just 321 yuan, but by October 1st, the same room type had jumped to 799 yuan. A price hike of several hundred yuan was enough to make him exit the page, re-enter the dates, and confirm he wasn't seeing things. He looked at me with a mix of amusement and frustration and asked, "Isn't everyone saying the economy is bad? Why is Wuwei suddenly selling hotels at 800 yuan a night?"
Not willing to give up, my nephew checked Longnan, an even more obscure city in Gansu, nearly a thousand kilometers away with completely different tourist attractions. The only thing these two cities have in common is that they rarely appear on young people's holiday hotlists. In Longnan, he found a Hilton-brand hotel near the high-speed rail station. Its standard king room at 325 yuan on a normal day was listed at 652 yuan for October 1st—the price had doubled. From the Hexi Corridor to the Qinba Mountains, without even considering the famous Dunhuang or Zhangye, he failed to find the price bargain he had hoped for.
My nephew's experience is not unique. As the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day approach, social media is full of young people who, having booked late, are shocked by the high hotel prices in smaller cities. Some netizens report that county hotels, which usually cost around 100 yuan, have surged to 500-600 yuan for the holiday. Others who searched for homestays a month in advance found that well-located properties were already sold out, leaving only distant options with no significant savings.
A travel blogger named Leng Sansui, using data from Qunar, created a map of National Day hotel prices. It shows that many cities which usually stay off the national hot rankings have seen a surge in holiday rates. For example, the average hotel price in Chaoyang, Liaoning, is now over 700 yuan; Jincheng, Shanxi, has reached over 600 yuan; and cities like Shangluo in Shaanxi, Wuzhou in Guangxi, and Pingliang in Gansu have all entered the 500-yuan range.
Even more extreme prices appeared in Shantou. In late August, a newly opened hotel there, with rooms normally priced at 280 yuan, was listed at a staggering 5,850 yuan on the platform for the National Day period. The hotel blamed the platform, saying the final holiday prices were not yet set. But media investigations found other cases in Shantou: a homestay jumping from 97 yuan to 645 yuan and another hotel from 186 yuan to 947 yuan. Hotels doubling or quintupling their prices are common.
In the comments, people lament that reverse tourism has been discovered by too many, and even small counties are no longer off the beaten path. Meanwhile, many local regulators have taken preemptive action this year. Cities rarely seen as traditional tourist hubs—like Xinzhou and Yuncheng in Shanxi, Huaibei in Anhui, and Daqing in Heilongjiang—have issued price reminders for the double holiday, focusing on accommodation and scenic spot consumption.
Over the years, the trend of hotel price hikes in county towns during Golden Week has followed young people's travel routes deeper into the map. Why are smaller cities seeing some of the steepest increases this National Day? The simple answer is that times have changed, and the dynamics of reverse tourism have changed with them.
A few years ago, logic dictated that young people could avoid crowded destinations by giving their weekends and holidays to county towns. Back then, my nephew's WeChat Moments were always full of unfamiliar place names like Gaoping in Shanxi or Yanshan in Jiangxi, and I would often have to check the location to see where he'd gone. When I asked, he would proudly send me his hotel booking—a room in the county center with a double breakfast for just over a hundred yuan a night. Staying three nights there cost less than one night at a similar hotel in a popular destination.
At that time, according to some hotel owners in our industry community, most county town hotels relied on local business travelers and family visitors, with outside tourists being rare and holiday occupancy not always guaranteed to be full. After all, you could find a clean room for about 100 yuan if you avoided the areas right by the scenic spots. This so-called reverse travel was really about exploiting a price gap that the public hadn't caught onto yet.
But by 2026, algorithms have pushed these hidden destinations onto countless more phone screens. My nephew, a bit deflated, said he scrolled through Gaode Map, nearly wearing out his mouse wheel trying to find an obscure place, only to check Xiaohongshu and Douyin and find the screen flooded with travel guides for the same spots. What's more disheartening is that new AI tools have made it easier for young people to find these niche destinations. Simply ask Doubao or DeepSeek where there are fewer tourists in Gansu, and you get a list of cities that were previously unknown.
Data from Tongcheng Travel shows that as of August 24, bookings for county-level destinations for the 2026 Mid-Autumn and National Day holiday had increased over 60% compared to July, and advance bookings for local hotels and homestays were up 55%. With the help of AI, popular notes and videos are being replicated endlessly, thinning out the dispersed customer flow that once kept prices low in these smaller cities. As a result, my nephew's belief that he had found a secret was shattered when he opened the booking page and saw his answers matched by countless other strangers.
It's worth noting that smaller cities have limited hotel supply, so there isn't much of a selection. Travelers exclude places with poor hygiene or bad locations, and families with children must consider bed sizes and breakfast. Sometimes, the list of viable hotels shrinks to just a few dozen. This is partly because many small cities have a short tourist season; investors can't justify expanding rooms for a single National Day peak when they'd face a long vacancy period afterward.
In other words, the game of reverse tourism is still on, but the conditions for finding a bargain have changed. When too many people rush towards the fringes of the map at once, the limited number of rooms becomes a scarce commodity during Golden Week.
The mentality of young people these days can be summed up as: willing to pay a premium, but not willing to overpay. The National Day holiday hotel room prices have become a psychological tug-of-war between consumers and hoteliers. According to Lao Zhou, a hotelier in Gansu, self-driving tourists and visitors from surrounding areas are booking later and later, and the current prices may be somewhat experimental. His experience suggests that just days before the holiday, if reservations are still poor, many operators will gradually reduce prices until occupancy targets are met.
The industry jargon for this is "price discovery"—hotels dynamically adjust rates based on booking progress, but the consumer sees a fixed high price. Even if prices drop later, many have already paid. Whether these seemingly high prices become the final transaction price remains to be seen until the holiday actually arrives. For young reverse travelers hoping for a deal, there's a risk. While lower-priced rooms might appear closer to departure, they also face dwindling choices. Even if they're willing to gamble on a price drop, they might find all the well-located hotels are sold out, saving money on the room but adding time to their commute to the attractions each day.
More importantly, this price discovery by hotels affects how tourists perceive an entire city. The preemptive price reminders from local regulators are partly a response to this pressure. However, a warning can curb price gouging or last-minute surcharges, but it cannot increase the number of available rooms in a few weeks. Figuring out how to steer tourists away from the most crowded dates has become a much harder problem for local governments.
Lao Zhou has his own grievances. He points out that airfares on popular routes during National Day can also be several times higher than usual, which airlines justify through revenue management. Yet hotels are often criticized for price gouging when they adjust rates. He argues that hotel rooms and plane seats operate on the same principle: if not sold today, they can't be sold tomorrow. He wonders why there's such a focus on hotels during the holidays when everyone is just adjusting prices based on supply and demand.
This complaint has some validity. Hotel rates are market-driven; as long as prices are clearly displayed in advance and there's no fraud or contract breach, raising prices during the holiday is not inherently illegal. However, local regulators have their reasons. Airfares are determined by cross-regional markets, leaving little room for local intervention. But hotels directly shape a visitor's first impression of a destination, and that's where so much holiday controversy is born. For them, it's better to be safe than sorry.
After comparing his options, my nephew didn't give up on Gansu. He just booked a room that offers free cancellation, planning to check the price again as October 1st nears. He's starting to realize that trying to use reverse tourism to dodge price hikes is a losing game in today's world—no matter how obscure the destination, you can't hide from the algorithms.