When “cattle and horses want to lie on the grassland” became the strongest travel motivation in the summer, Xiaohongshu translated the emotions of 100 million monthly active users into business: travel agencies used bad reviews to make routes, cruise ships relied on notes to sell 7k+ customer orders, and the ROI soared to 20. Whoever understands the subtext shared by “living people” can turn grass planting into orders and make money in the off-season.
Recently, I was chatting with friends about where to take my baby to play this summer, and I found a magical phenomenon, that is, when everyone is hesitant and doesn’t know where to go, they will invariably scroll through Xiaohongshu to find travel inspiration.
Or go to a strange city, where it is fun and delicious, and you are used to opening Xiaohongshu to search for answers. In the messages of those enthusiastic netizens, there are always those who hit their interests and want to experience it.
Including looking for a hotel with better cost performance and comfort, looking for a reliable travel agency to order products, etc., I will also post to ask which one is the most reliable, which can greatly reduce the uncertainty and anxiety in travel. At a time when information acquisition seems to be becoming more and more convenient, the factors affecting travel decisions are actually becoming more and more complex, and the segmentation needs of different customer groups are becoming more and more changeable.
The sharing based on real experience on Xiaohongshu can not only help tourists minimize the cost of screening effective information, but also gain insight into the real needs behind user problems by analyzing these contents.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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01 What is influencing young people’s travel choices?
Taking young people as an example, there have been a lot of studies on why they travel and what kind of travel they love.
On the surface, this part of consumers grew up in the Internet era and receive a large amount of information every day, which can make them take the initiative to stop and look at the content must be more and more personalized, and consumption decisions are becoming more and more emotional.
It is a group of people with changeable interests, uncertain needs, and more difficult to grasp.
For wine and tourism merchants, based on traditional product thinking and service concepts, it seems that they can no longer do business for young people. How to make themselves “younger” has become a thing they have to change, but it is a headache.
When everyone feels that they have understood young people and understand the important impact of emotional value on their choice of destinations and products, they should have sold more products and done more business, but they have not achieved the expected results.
Because they actually ignore a key question, that is, behind the seemingly emotional factors, what is touching their hearts, making them emotional, willing to be “planted”, and even making consumption choices.
This is actually the same core question as why they chose Xiaohongshu to find travel inspiration: how to be more advanced in terms of insight needs and resonate with users at the same frequency.
This is also a conclusion reached by chatting with some “post-00s” friends who are deeply dependent on Xiaohongshu.
When they shared why they were keen on using Xiaohongshu, the reason they gave was actually not complicated at all, that is, they felt that Xiaohongshu was more “living”.
The so-called “living person” sense refers to the content seen here, which is based on the sharing of real life experience, everyone can speak human language, have a human touch, and the shared topics are also very down-to-earth and very vibrant, rather than a large piece of mechanical copywriting, which will be more interesting, more credible, and more desire to communicate and discuss.
Just like traveling to find inspiration, I am willing to refer to Xiaohongshu because a certain scene described in these “planting grass” posts, a certain scenery or a certain state of life shown, hit their current emotions. Wanting to go somewhere is not just for the beautiful scenery and food, but to find an outlet for mental release.
For example, many young people who have entered the workplace now have a lot of work pressure, what “cattle and horses yearn for the grassland”, “salted fish yearn for the seaside”, in fact, travel is regarded as a kind of spiritual “massage”, the different methods are like different requirements for techniques and strength, and everyone’s comfort points are different.
In Xiaohongshu, these different segmentation preferences and needs can be seen, and you can always find bloggers who are similar to your own interests and have experienced it to share their experiences, whether it is worth going and whether it is fun or not, as long as it meets expectations, 99% of this “grass planting” is considered successful.
And as this segment preference is seen by more and more people on the same frequency, attracting more and more people, it will become a new trend and a new trend in travel, which will affect more people’s travel choices.
The treasure towns with few people, clean and comfortable that were once asked by people every holiday have now precipitated into topics of interest such as “underrated treasure town” and “being a spiritual villager” in Xiaohongshu, and have even evolved into a new way of life that is very popular with Xiaohongshu users.
For example, before the start of this summer, many parents have posted to recommend travel products and destinations, the keywords are “July and August, no rain, cool, baby can play”, which can not only let the baby release energy, but also relax and take care of the baby.
There are also young people who use weekends to call out to their friends to stage the “urban escape plan”, and they all want to find a second home close to nature, where they can enjoy a slow life and “recover blood” for themselves.
The convergence of these contents will become a new travel trend to accelerate the spread, “planting grass” and affecting more people.
02 Behind the changeable “emotions” is the real need to be understood
It can be said that it is not Xiaohongshu that is defining a new way of traveling, but that this platform can see the real needs of users, respect their expressions, and be willing to take the initiative to understand the lifestyle they yearn for, so that everyone can see this result today.
More and more people regard Xiaohongshu as the source of travel, and some new ways to play and travel always appear in Xiaohongshu.
This is the same frequency resonance based on real expression. It is also more in line with the habit of young people to obtain information, and it is “really fragrant” that they do not want to give and are interested in taking the initiative to understand.
Because it gathers a large number of young people who love to play and travel, as well as high-net-worth guests who already have rich travel experience, have spending power, and yearn for higher-end destinations and more advanced travel experiences, Xiaohongshu has also become an important channel for many travel companies to understand their target customer groups.
A travel agency once shared with Wenlv that the “secret weapon” of adjusting their route products to make the itinerary design more in line with the needs of young people is to go to Xiaohongshu to collect users’ travel reviews of a certain destination.
Where they feel they must go, where they don’t like lightning protection, and other needs and expectations if they come to experience it next time, these contents will be appropriately referenced and combined into the research and development and adjustment of their subsequent products.
The feedback obtained after the final market is that there will be significantly more customers willing to book the route that refers to this information.
Wen Lu also learned that the tourism-related content precipitated by Xiaohongshu over the years has reached an “amazing” level. According to the data disclosed by Xiaohongshu, in 2024 alone, there will be 100 million+ monthly active users of travel interest on its platform, an average of 1,300W+ new travel notes per month, and an average of 1.6 billion travel-related searches per month. (Data from: Zero Gram Club, statistical period: January-December 2024)
And this level of active users and the continuous addition of real travel information also make Xiaohongshu’s trend insight ability more sensitive. Providing insight analysis to tourism merchants can help them plan and buy points in advance, bury hooks in product marketing and promotion, and have a higher chance of resonating with young consumers and becoming “emotional value” that can increase reach and conversion.
Still taking summer marketing as an example, many industry friends told Wenlv that it is expected that this year’s summer business will be more difficult. In the past, step-by-step marketing and promotion were difficult to attract the attention of tourists, let alone place orders.
Although the customer base is still the large customer group, those who take their babies on trips, send their babies to study, or young people who have just finished the exam and have completed their studies want to release and travel and relax with family and friends. But the ideas and needs they show may be very different from last year’s consumers.
Take research as an example, last year’s market demand exploded, as long as it is research-related products, there is no need to worry about selling, but this year, many parents have become picky, the visiting experience and accommodation requirements have improved, and they have also taken last year’s products to attract customers, and sales will inevitably be cold.
Many people are not interested in the once highly regarded “special forces” travel model, including college students and prospective college students who have just completed the college entrance examination, but want to go further and experience some more meaningful and provable projects that can better prove the value of youth. But what kind of experience is it, which requires more accurate insight analysis for the customer group.
This summer, Xiaohongshu has made an in-depth demand analysis for different customer groups and travel scenarios, from trend insights such as traffic and content, to in-depth analysis of scene demand, and then to help merchants “charge” product tools for summer marketing.
Take this part of the young people related to the campus as an example, from the content shared by users of the relevant age group of Xiaohongshu, it can be insighted that the emotional starting point of this part of the customer group travel is to release pressure and commemorate youth, and some soaring topics are also more energetic and passionate words such as “youth has no price” and “poor travel is not as good as youth travel”.
Therefore, the suggestion to relevant travel merchants is that during the summer, you can produce more commemorative destinations, landmark IPs, poor travel strategies, treasure routes and contrasting content to attract their attention, and on the product side, you can launch more topics related to graduation travel, volunteer travel, volunteer travel and volunteer travel.
Whether it can be provided and whether it can meet their needs is something that merchants have to judge and adjust by themselves.
And this kind of customer demand analysis also covers the main summer travel groups such as parent-child family customers, emotional healing workplace customers, and silver-haired sojourners, which is no less than teaching tourism merchants what to do in this summer marketing. Instead of only predicting based on the experience of previous years, in case the estimate is wrong, marketing expenses and orders will all be wasted.
03 Only platforms that can help merchants “communicate with users” will have high conversions
When the cultural tourism economy enters the era of content, experience and operation, these content generated based on real travel experience on Xiaohongshu, as well as the trend insights of niche leading the public, are the most valuable and difficult to surpass by other platforms.
This is why more and more tourism businesses regard this place as the core “position” for customer acquisition and business growth.
Judging from last year’s data, from January to December 2024, the number of commercial cooperation merchants in the Chinese travel industry on the Xiaohongshu platform increased by 24% year-on-year (data from: Shenwan Hongyuan Research, data statistics period: January-December 2024), including travel agencies, OTAs, hotels, cruise companies, parks and domestic and foreign destinations, etc., and entering Xiaohongshu’s official account has almost become standard.
The first demands of these settled merchants on Xiaohongshu may not be the same, but the ultimate goal is to hope for more customers and conversions. Especially in key marketing nodes, how to spend money on the blade is a big head.
But many merchants who want to do business for young people, after calculation, cannot give up or even bet heavily, that is, Xiaohongshu. The person in charge of a Chengdu travel agency shared with Wen Lu that the only criterion for his investment today is ROI (return on investment), and if you spend a penny, you have to earn back two points, otherwise you won’t spend it at all.
This year’s market is also a kind of money-making without spending money.
But this summer, he still took the initiative to vote for Xiaohongshu, taking advantage of the peak season holiday that he hoped for the most to rush the annual results. At present, the effect is still obvious, and the number of guests who consult and place orders has increased.
One of the key points is that they have come up with an “account cost guarantee” function, how to spend a sum of money in the past, how to achieve results, and there is no time to keep staring when you are busy.
Judging from his current background data, the actual cost has been saved by 15% compared to expected under the same customer acquisition results, and the cost of opening private messages has also been reduced by 5%. (Data source: Xiaohongshu Business Dynamics, data statistics period: June 2025)
The marketing leader of another inland luxury cruise company has bet on Xiaohongshu to acquire customers this summer. Mainly because traveling on river cruises is still a novel experience for most tourists, and more vivid presentation and promotion methods are needed to break the inherent stereotypes of cruise travel.
In fact, river cruise products are very selective from the perspective of positioning, and are more inclined to luxury high-end experience, with one-stop satisfaction for eating, living, traveling and shopping, which is very in line with the current age of 30+ new first-line high-consumption customers and the needs of families with children to travel, especially for the main group of travel planning, worry-free and attractive to make films is also very attractive.
How to let more target customers understand these characteristics, and at the same time communicate directly with customers face-to-face, and increase the proportion of direct order sales, they will think of coming to Xiaohongshu for content drainage.
The feedback effect did exceed expectations, from April last year to February this year, their monthly GMV on Xiaohongshu exceeded 150W+, and the per capita unit price also reached 7K+. From the perspective of promotion and placement effects, the transaction ROI exceeded 16, and the store-wide ROI exceeded 20. (Data source: Xiaohongshu Business Dynamics, data statistics period: April 2024-February 2025)
Behind these achievements, in fact, they are inseparable from Xiaohongshu’s analysis of user demand insights. It can also be seen that more and more businesses have actually realized that the “lying flat” business of waiting for customers to come to the door no longer exists, and if they do not spend time to “roll” and do not take the initiative to understand their target customers, then orders and money can only flow to other places.
But realizing is only the first step, and more importantly, you have to figure out how to make changes, behind closed doors or with a platform that better understands the needs of users, and the result may be very different.
Nowadays, Xiaohongshu has become an important platform for many tourism merchants to find new business additions, and the marketing “campaign” for the summer has begun. Who can better understand and master this “secret” of customer acquisition, have a deeper insight into consumer needs, not only benefit now, but also be a real winner who adapts to market changes faster in the future and changes business logic to make more money.
