Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report is published in exclusive association with The Moodie Davitt Report
Introduction: Yilin Consulting is an acclaimed boutique consultancy based in Paris, specialising in helping travel retail brands and retailers engage the new generation of Chinese outbound travellers. Its focus lies in converting independent, experience-driven travellers through targeted omnichannel engagement and frontline cultural training.
Today, as part of our unrivalled coverage of the Chinese travel retail market at home and abroad, The Moodie Davitt Report is proud to bring you the sixth edition of our exclusive column in partnership with Yilin Consulting Founder Yilin Wang – Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report.
Prologue: The Real CNY Battlefield
Shortly after the first day of the Year of the Fire Horse, when millions of families across China and beyond celebrated this annual reunion festival, we launch a special edition focused on pre-trip social media activation on the must-watch platform of 2026 – Xiaohongshu (Rednote or Little Red Book).
This column highlights the growing importance of connecting with Chinese FIT travellers before departure – understanding what resonates emotionally, and how those digital touchpoints translate into store visits, improved spend-per-passenger and stronger conversion from travel retail’s number-one spending nationality.
Built on ongoing consumer insight and aligned with The Moodie Davitt Report’s unrivalled China coverage, this forward-looking edition explores how today’s Chinese travellers plan their journeys weeks before they fly – and how travel retail stakeholders can secure visibility during that decisive outbound planning window.
This edition forms the second chapter of our ‘Winter Celebration Series’. Click here to read Edition 5.
Data Coverage: 5 January-9 February 2026
The one-month pre-Chinese New Year planning window – ahead of what was one of the longest holiday travel periods in recent years, marking the first nine-day consecutive break under the revised holiday calendar.
Our next edition will focus specifically on posting strategies during the Year of the Fire Horse itself, from 10 February – the first day of ‘Little New Year’ in northern China (the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month, traditionally marking the start of the final Spring Festival preparations) – through 3 March , the Lantern Festival.
Focused Accounts and Rationale
We examine one Western and two Eastern accounts, all located in destinations ranking among the most popular for 2026 Chinese New Year travel.
According to Dragon Trail International’s January 2026 survey*, Asia and northern Europe lead this holiday season, with Thailand and Singapore topping mid-haul choices, and Norway among preferred long-haul destinations.
*Travel Trend in The Year of The Horse: Chinese Outbound Travel Trade Survey, January 2026.
West: Tax Free Norway
Launched in August 2025, the account represents a fast-rising Nordic destination gaining traction among Chinese family and cruise travellers.
East: King Power Thailand & Singapore Changi Airport
Two established mid-haul leaders. King Power operates one of the most commercially active duty-free accounts on Xiaohongshu, while Changi positions the airport as an experience ecosystem rather than a transit point.
Together, they offer a revealing comparison of how leading players activated Xiaohongshu during a reunion-driven travel season.
Our Analytical Framework
We use Yilin Consulting’s analytical framework, LINXY – ‘Link, See, Engage’ – to decode how each player connected with Chinese travellers during the Year of The Horse pre-trip planning period. Through this lens, we compare and illustrate the Xiaohongshu strategies of three key accounts across every engagement stage.
Link: The Content Landscape
During the pre-Chinese New Year planning window, the three players adopted markedly different Xiaohongshu rhythms – reflecting not just variations in posting volume, but in strategic intent.
Tax Free Norway maintained a measured cadence, publishing six posts over five weeks. Launched in August 2025, the account positioned itself as a Nordic travel companion, blending destination authenticity with practical shopping information. Its strongest posts focused on winter skincare and travel haircare essentials, anchoring duty free within real seasonal needs rather than overt festive messaging.
King Power Duty Free in Thailand operated at a dramatically higher frequency, publishing 40 posts over the same five-week period and intensifying activity as Chinese New Year approached. The sustained rhythm signalled a clear positioning – the festive season is treated as a primary commercial activation window. Xiaohongshu functions not only as brand presence, but as a pre-trip shopping and planning interface.
Singapore Changi Airport adopted a high but balanced cadence, publishing 16 posts over five weeks and beginning its Chinese New Year communication early in the outbound booking cycle. The account consistently blended airport-as-destination storytelling with family travel emotion, emphasising convenience, service quality and barrier-free experiences for multi-generational trips.
Three players. Three rhythms. Three strategic approaches to winning attention during the planning window.
See: Decoding Content Strategy
Tax Free Norway: Unpolished Authenticity as Differentiation
During the pre-Chinese New Year window, Tax Free Norway’s content followed two clear tracks: practical winter solutions – skincare and haircare tailored to Nordic conditions – and seasonal beauty looks incorporating Chanel’s red-packaged products.
The first CNY-themed post appeared on 29 January, three weeks before the holiday peak. What truly set the account apart was not frequency, but execution. In a Xiaohongshu environment increasingly shaped by highly designed branded campaigns, Tax Free Norway leaned into direct in-store photography and casually filmed videos, often featuring brand ambassadors speaking Norwegian with Chinese subtitles. The result felt immediate and unscripted.
This approach aligns with Xiaohongshu’s positioning shift in 2025 toward everyday authenticity and real human presence. For Chinese travellers less familiar with Nordic retail environments, the account effectively offered a preview of the physical store before arrival – reducing uncertainty and building early familiarity.
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Tax Free Norway demonstrates that production polish is not a prerequisite for credibility.
When audience interest is present and social media visibility is applied consistently, authenticity itself can become a competitive advantage – particularly for newer accounts introducing less familiar destinations to Chinese outbound travellers.
King Power Thailand: Festive Intensity as Commercial Strategy
King Power Thailand approached Chinese New Year as a full-scale activation platform, positioning Xiaohongshu as an active planning window for all in-destination experiences.
From late January – roughly three weeks ahead of the holiday peak – the account entered a visibly intensified Chinese New Year phase. Content covered festive promotions and vouchers, local brand highlights, downtown store accessibility, cultural collaborations and membership guides.
The breadth of information created a dense and practical feed, offering travellers both commercial incentives and logistical clarity.
Festive communication was highly consistent. CNY-themed posts adopted a unified graphic design system, immediately recognisable within the Xiaohongshu feed. This visual coherence reduced browsing friction, increased save potential and strengthened conversion efficiency.
Promotions extended across airport and downtown stores, supported by in-store events, live-streamed prize draws and New Year parades – reinforcing the sense of a destination-wide celebration.
The welcome gift campaign anchored the activation with a clear incentive and simple redemption pathway, positioning the downtown store as a must-visit stop during the trip.
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Among all content, a Muay Thai x local fashion collaboration broke through the festive noise. By combining sense of place with local exclusivity, the post reframed Thai cultural heritage as contemporary lifestyle currency – appealing strongly to younger Chinese travellers seeking distinctive purchases abroad.
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By intensifying communication during the pre-Chinese New Year planning window, King Power effectively transformed Xiaohongshu into a Thailand travel-and-shopping reference hub.
In doing so, it not only drove attention but also projected an image of Thailand as organised, welcoming and commercially prepared — an important reassurance factor at a time when safety and reliability remain central concerns for Chinese FIT travellers.
Singapore Changi Airport: Family Reunion Gateway
Singapore Changi Airport’s strategy reflects its broader ambition to function as an ‘airport city’ – mega yet cozy, technologically advanced yet deeply customer-centric. During the pre–Chinese New Year period, Changi positioned the airport as a family travel enabler and Singapore as a seamless reunion destination.
The first CNY-themed post appeared as early as 9 January, nearly five weeks ahead of the holiday peak, capturing the outbound booking window at its earliest stage.
From there, the account developed a balanced content narrative spanning three core directions: family and parent-child travel inspiration, airport-as-destination storytelling and attraction highlights, and practical travel information including flight schedules and late-night arrival guidance. Retail mechanics and gamified promotions complemented this emotional foundation.
Several posts centred on the theme of taking parents abroad during Chinese New Year. One particularly resonant video, ‘Travel With Your Parents’, tapped into filial piety – a deeply rooted cultural value heightened during reunion season. Told from a Gen-Z daughter’s perspective, the playful dialogue addressed generational travel anxieties with warmth and humour.
An eight-hour early check-in itinerary reframed waiting time as curated family experience, transforming transit into shared memory.
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Click here for the video link
{The original video was published without English subtitles. Subtitles have been added by Yilin Consulting to facilitate understanding for non-Chinese-speaking readers.}
Parallel to this emotional storytelling, Changi deployed structured retail activation through its ‘Year of the Fire Horse Luck Guide’. The post combined tiered spending thresholds, limited-edition gift-with-purchase mechanics and a Save-Engage-Comment campaign to amplify reach.
The integration of clear promotional logic with festive symbolism demonstrated disciplined retail execution within a family-first narrative – a textbook example of how travel retail can align emotion and commercial mechanics without compromising either.
Changi illustrates that when the airport becomes part of the destination experience, shopping no longer feels transactional. It becomes a natural extension of family joy.
SEE: Overall Reflection
Across these three accounts, three distinct strategic paths emerge. Tax Free Norway builds visibility through straightforward, authentic storytelling. King Power Thailand drives momentum through festive intensity and structured activation. Singapore Changi Airport integrates emotional narrative with disciplined retail mechanics.
Different tones, different rhythms blah –yet a shared objective: entering the traveller’s decision window before departure and easing planning friction and travel anxiety.
Engage: Audience Engagement Insights
Content strategies reveal intent. Audience engagement reveals impact. Across the three accounts, the comments sections tell vastly different stories about what Chinese travellers sought – and found – during the CNY pre-trip planning period.
Tax Free Norway: Early Traction, Operational Gaps
Audience interaction during the pre-Chinese New Year period revealed clear purchase intent around Nordic products and winter travel preparation, but also highlighted areas where practical clarity remains limited.
Comment sections were dominated by practical inquiries: which product categories offer better value, what items are worth buying, whether there are specific in-store promotions, and how prices compare with neighbouring markets such as Sweden.
Questions around China payment compatibility – including Alipay and UnionPay – appeared frequently.
One inquiry about which products are worth buying in Norway received 21 likes and 21 replies, indicating shared planning interest. Travellers were clearly preparing shopping decisions ahead of departure.
However, response activity was uneven. When asked whether products could be purchased online, replies typically directed users to search for the official website. Several commenters noted difficulty locating it, potentially reflecting access constraints from Mainland China. Basic payment-related questions remained partially unanswered, creating uncertainty at a stage when clarity is critical to decision confidence.
Interestingly, peer-to-peer interaction filled part of the gap. Travellers who had recently visited Norway shared what they purchased – chocolates, fish oil, sauces, hand creams, spirits – and these comments attracted engagement. Discussions comparing Norwegian and Swedish alcohol pricing also gained traction. This organic exchange demonstrates strong community-level curiosity and purchase validation.
Some candid sentiment surfaced as well. One user commented that the duty-free shop “has little worth buying” , attracting over 100 likes. Another noted frustration with long customs queues after shopping. While operational realities such as store placement fall outside the account’s control, such perceptions nonetheless influence pre-trip expectations.
Tax Free Norway’s early traction during peak Nordic travel interest, combined with its visible authenticity, has secured attention within the Chinese New Year planning window.
The next stage lies in strengthening practical responsiveness. When pre-departure intent is present, timely and detailed engagement can help convert interest into confident purchase decisions.
King Power Thailand: Structured Responsiveness at Scale
Audience engagement on King Power’s Xiaohongshu account during the pre–Chinese New Year period was visibly structured and operationally supported.
Comment sections functioned as active service channels rather than passive brand spaces. Practical queries – voucher redemption, store locations, membership benefits and product availability – were answered promptly and in detail. This level of responsiveness positioned the account not merely as a content platform, but as a pre-trip support interface.
Beyond individual replies, King Power has built a structured engagement system. The account operates 12 dedicated Xiaohongshu shopping groups, each corresponding to a specific store location and capped at 500 members.
Travellers can join the group aligned with their itinerary, ask location-specific questions and receive direct guidance from store representatives. This coordinated approach extends engagement beyond the comment section, positioning Xiaohongshu as a pre-trip support channel rather than a one-way communication platform.
Engagement patterns reveal clear commercial triggers. Posts offering immediate, tangible value – voucher usage guides, flash sales and participation-based campaigns – consistently generated the highest saves and comment activity. When discounts were transparent and redemption straightforward, response accelerated.
By contrast, posts focused purely on product display without a distinctive storyline or local cultural signature tended to generate more limited engagement, suggesting that differentiation – whether through clear value mechanics or strong sense of place – plays a decisive role in driving interaction.
Strategically, this activation unfolded during the critical pre-Chinese New Year planning window. By layering promotions, membership benefits, in-store events and responsive service, the account projected Thailand as organised and commercially prepared. In a context where safety and reliability remain central considerations for Chinese FIT travellers, visible operational clarity carries reassurance value.
King Power demonstrates that high traffic alone is not sufficient. Structured community management – timely replies, clear mechanics and store-level engagement – transforms social visibility into measurable purchase readiness. During peak outbound season, Xiaohongshu operates not only as discovery media, but as a functional retail gateway.
Singapore Changi Airport: Service Precision as Family Travel Enabler
Audience engagement on Changi’s Xiaohongshu account during the pre–Chinese New Year period reflected strong trust. The airport’s service-oriented community management offers a compelling benchmark for travel retail stakeholders seeking to reduce friction and build long-term confidence among today’s and tomorrow’s FIT travellers.
The account’s early pre-heating – beginning nearly five weeks ahead of Chinese New Year – aligned communication with the outbound booking cycle, capturing intent before departure decisions were finalised.
Comment sections demonstrated detailed operational responsiveness. In one example, a traveller asked whether wheelchairs could be borrowed at Jewel before flight check-in after returning a hotel wheelchair.
The account provided comprehensive guidance – outlining free self-service wheelchairs across all four terminals, collection points at information counters and rental availability at Jewel’s concierge desk. Similar precision appeared in responses regarding voucher mechanics, mini-program navigation and flight coordination. Such timely and specific answers directly reduce travel anxiety.
Engagement around the ‘Travel With Parents’ narrative generated strong emotional resonance. Comments such as “Spent a whole day at Changi – it truly is one of Singapore’s key attractions” and “Very entertaining mother & daughter trip” illustrate how family-oriented storytelling translated into spontaneous praise. When emotion is curated with cultural sensitivity, positivity follows naturally – reinforcing perceptions of attentive service and hospitality.
Forward-looking engagement also surfaced. Users expressed anticipation for Terminal 5 and proposed future connectivity ideas, including shuttle links to Disney Cruise departures.
This suggests that audiences view Changi not only as a transit hub, but as an evolving ecosystem within the Singapore travel experience. Strategically, Changi positions the airport as the gateway to Singapore tourism planning.
By integrating operational clarity with family-focused storytelling, the account demonstrates how airport waiting time can be transformed into curated ‘wow time’ – where transit, leisure and retail converge. During the Chinese New Year planning window, this model illustrates how service precision converts reassurance into commercial confidence.
The comment sections tell different stories.
Tax Free Norway generated interest but left critical questions unanswered. King Power managed traffic volume at scale, transforming visibility into purchase readiness. Changi demonstrated that service precision reduces anxiety and emotional resonance is the key driver when captured correctly; when these two factors are jointly present, shopping intent follows.
The Yilin Takeaway
1. Pre-Trip Is the Real Decision Window
The pre-trip planning phase is not a warm-up period – it is the moment when shopping lists are formed, budgets are allocated and destination perceptions are locked in. Across Norway, Thailand and Singapore, intent signals were already visible weeks before departure.
Action: Activate Xiaohongshu at least 4–5 weeks before peak travel and align content cadence with outbound booking cycles, not departure dates.
2. Visibility Opens the Door. Responsiveness Converts.
Tax Free Norway proves that when travel intent is present, visibility attracts attention. King Power demonstrates that structured responsiveness converts it. Changi shows that service precision transforms reassurance into purchase confidence.
Traffic alone is not an advantage. Community management architecture – payment
clarity, offer explanation, store-level guidance – determines whether engagement
becomes transaction.
Action: Treat comment sections as conversion infrastructure. Build dedicated community management capability year-round – and intensify it strategically ahead of outbound travel peaks.
3. Cultural Resonance Drives Long-Term Value
In 2026, Chinese FIT travellers are value-conscious, safety-aware and emotionally anchored to culturally familiar narratives. Operational clarity and commercial mechanics form the foundation – but what elevates a destination from functionally competent to emotionally preferred is cultural resonance.
When travellers feel genuinely welcomed – not merely accommodated – perception shifts from transactional stopover to trusted travel partner. When reassurance and cultural connection converge, shopping becomes a natural extension of positive sentiment rather than a forced transaction.
Changi’s model illustrates how emotional storytelling and disciplined retail execution can coexist – strengthening both brand perception and commercial performance.
Action: Go beyond tactical promotion. Invest in culturally attuned storytelling that resonates across generations of Chinese travellers. Operational precision opens the door.
Cultural authenticity keeps them coming back.
Conclusion
The pre-trip planning window is where commercial outcomes are determined – long before travellers step into stores.
For both emerging and established destinations, simply being present on Chinese social media platforms like Xiaohongshu and posting regularly is not enough. The key is to treat this platform as an efficient, permanent 1-to-1 dialogue and service channel with today’s connected FIT traveller – to truly understand them and provide value long before they finalise their travel destination.
Build a welcoming and friendly image. Put your services in the shoes of a traveller flying over 10,000 kilometres to visit your country – unfamiliar with the local culture, searching for reliable information to reduce anxiety, hoping to spend a pleasant time and return home with positive memories.
When they recommend your airport, your store and even your sales assistant to friends and family – because someone was helpful, friendly and genuinely solved their problems – that is when long-term value is created.
What more can we expect?
[At Yilin Consulting, we help travel retail stakeholders anticipate, structure and activate their Chinese traveller strategy ahead of peak seasons – aligning cultural intelligence with commercial performance.
To discuss your 2026 Chinese traveller activation strategy, contact: yilinwang@yilinconsulting.com
Yilin Wang | Founder & CEO, Yilin Consulting]
Previously on Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report
Edition 5: Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report – Targeting the year-end Chinese traveller
Edition 2: Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report – Focus on Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific and All Nippon Airways
Edition 1: Announcing a key new editorial column – Yilin Watch: The Xiaohongshu Report
