Transportation data released on October 8 showed that from October 1 to 7, 2026, cross-regional trips nationwide totaled 2.142 billion, averaging 306 million trips per day. Meanwhile, the average daily number of trips was up 0.6% from the 2025 Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday period.
One is a huge figure of more than 2.1 billion; the other is an increase of less than 1%. They are not contradictory: the first describes the total number of trips made over this year's seven-day period, while the second describes how much the average daily number of trips increased compared with last year.
The real question is: to what extent can these nationwide transportation figures explain what people mean when they say “crowds as far as the eye can see”? To answer that, we first need to understand what the figures count—and what they don't.
【2.142 billion person-trips does not mean 2.142 billion people traveled】
The metric announced this time is “cross-regional movement of people across society as a whole.” It is measured in person-trips, not in the number of unique people.
Person-trips record travel activities. The same person may make multiple cross-regional trips during a holiday, so the cumulative number of person-trips cannot be directly converted into the number of different people who traveled. A simple example helps explain the distinction: a person's outbound and return journeys are two travel activities. The fact that they appear twice in the records does not mean there were two people.
However, this example is only meant to help explain the difference between person-trips and the number of people. It does not justify simply dividing 2.142 billion by two to estimate the number of travelers. People make different numbers of trips, take different routes, and use different modes of transport; the data also do not provide a deduplicated count of individuals.
It is also important to distinguish travel from tourism. Cross-regional movement can include tourism, visiting family, returning to one's hometown, and other purposes. These statistics do not break down trips by purpose.
Therefore, 2.142 billion person-trips tells us the scale of cross-regional movement during the holiday, but it cannot directly answer “How many people across the country went on holiday?”—let alone “How many people visited tourist attractions?” To get from transport volumes to the number of tourists, we would need data on trip purpose and deduplicated counts.
【To see how much higher the figure was than last year, first align the seven and eight days】
This year's National Day statistics cover seven days, while the 2025 Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday used for comparison lasted eight days. Since the two holidays were different lengths, comparing their cumulative totals directly would mix the difference in duration into the change.
That is why this year's year-on-year comparison uses daily averages: this year, the average was 306 million person-trips per day, up 0.6% from the daily average during last year's comparison holiday. This measure removes the effect of holiday length from the comparison, making it better suited to answering the question, “Did the average daily volume of movement increase?”
The 0.6% figure indicates a slight increase in average daily movement nationwide, while the 2.142 billion figure shows that the cumulative volume over the seven days was very large. A small increase does not mean a small absolute volume, and a large total does not mean a substantial increase over last year.
The daily average also has a limitation: it spreads the seven days' movement across a single average and does not show how it was distributed by day or time of day. The average of 306 million person-trips per day alone cannot tell us which day saw the most concentrated travel or whether the peak at a particular station was more pronounced.
This is directly relevant to ordinary people: the crowding someone actually experiences occurs on a specific route, at a specific time, and in a specific place. The national seven-day average provides context, but cannot replace this local information.
【Road travel accounts for the bulk; rail grew faster】
Breaking the total down by transport mode reveals another layer of information.
Over this year's seven-day period, road passenger movement totaled 1.96182 billion person-trips, or about 1.962 billion. Calculated from the figures published in the report, road travel accounted for about 91.6% of total movement, making it the largest component of these nationwide figures.
Road movement here includes travel by people in non-commercial passenger cars as well as commercial road passenger transport. It is not limited to passengers who bought coach tickets, nor does it refer to the number of vehicles. So whether bus stations are crowded cannot summarize the overall state of road travel.
Average daily road movement fell 0.3% year on year. Rail showed a different trend: cumulative passenger volume over the seven days was 151.87 million person-trips, or about 152 million, with the daily average up 12.7% year on year. Waterway passenger volume totaled 10.93 million person-trips, with the daily average up 7.1% year on year; air passenger volume totaled 16.92 million person-trips, with the daily average broadly unchanged year on year.
This explains why the nationwide total can rise only slightly even as some transport modes grow substantially: the different modes vary in both scale and rate of change. Road travel, the largest component, dipped slightly, while average daily passenger volumes by rail and waterway rose. The combined change will not be the same as the change in any one mode.
What we can confirm is that average daily rail passenger volume grew considerably faster than the nationwide total, showing differences within the transport mix. But this is not enough to prove that people generally switched from driving to rail, or to establish that the change was caused by fares, weather, or a particular travel preference. Determining whether one mode replaced another would require more detailed data on passengers and journeys.
【A national average and localized crowding can both be true】
Even if average daily movement nationwide increased by just 0.6%, some places may still have experienced significant crowding. This is because the nationwide total and the degree of local concentration are two different dimensions.
If more trips are concentrated in a handful of destinations, on popular routes, or at similar times, pressure on local capacity may rise even when the overall change is small. Conversely, an increase in the nationwide total does not mean every place will become more crowded.
This is one mechanism that explains how both things can be true; it is not a finding about this year's holiday that the report has measured. The available material does not provide queue times at tourist attractions, visitor distribution across popular destinations, or peak-period data for individual routes. We therefore cannot use it to determine where crowding was concentrated this year or how much it increased compared with last year.
Likewise, “more people” does not directly imply “stronger consumer spending” or “higher profits for businesses.” Cross-regional transport volumes do not tell us how long travelers stayed or how much they spent. Even with total spending figures, assessing business profits would require considering factors such as prices and costs. Changes in nationwide consumption also cannot directly represent the performance of any one store.
The clear conclusions supported by the available data for this year's National Day holiday are that cross-regional movement over the seven days reached 2.142 billion person-trips, the nationwide daily average rose slightly year on year, road travel continued to account for the vast majority, and average daily rail passenger volume grew faster.
These transport statistics describe the scale and composition of movement during the holiday. To understand why a particular place had long queues, whether tourism spending increased, or whether businesses performed better, we need corresponding data on visitor flows, spending, and business performance to fill in the other side of the picture.
For research and educational purposes only; this does not constitute investment advice.