Chinese parents are letting influencers choose their next holiday — New Zealand is in their feed

Sunday, 21 June 2026

Chinese families are increasingly planning overseas holidays not through travel agents or advertising, but through social media influencers. A Tourism New Zealand campaign is tapping into that shift. Wei Shao reports.

It looks like a typical family holiday: three Chinese families, children in tow, spending about 10 days travelling through New Zealand.

But this is not just a holiday.

From scenic drives to wildlife encounters and museum visits, every part of the trip has been documented for an audience of more than a million people back in China.

The families — influencer Fiona Bai, mother-and-son travel vlogger “Eric Around the Globe”, and Shanghai-based global traveller Xiaoxue — are part of Tourism New Zealand's latest campaign targeting Chinese family travellers.

Launched this month on Little Red Book (also known as RED), China’s leading lifestyle and e-commerce platform, the campaign aims to boost winter visitation from the Chinese market.

The influencers were carefully selected to reach different segments of China’s family travel market. Fiona Bai, a parenting and lifestyle creator whose family appeared on the Chinese reality show Dad Takes Charge, shares daily life with her children, who have grown up in front of the camera and have built a following of more than 73,000 on RED.

Guangzhou-based travel vlogger “Eric Around the Globe” focuses on family travel, early childhood activities and holiday planning. The account has 241,000 followers on RED, and also runs more than 10 family travel chat groups, each with around 500 members actively discussing travel options.

Shanghai creator Xiaoxue, who travels with her twin daughters, combines family travel content with lifestyle and fashion recommendations, attracting more than 500,000 followers on RED alone.

The three families travelled through Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Akaroa, Oamaru and Dunedin, producing content for RED as they went. The content is amplified on the platform and linked directly to fully bookable itineraries via Fliggy, Alibaba’s online travel platform, streamlining the path from inspiration to booking.

With booking windows in China typically short — averaging just 48 to 56 days — the campaign is running through to July to capture demand for the upcoming summer school holiday there.

At the centre of their content is a single idea: “edutainment.”

“There’s a focus on creating ease of planning and getting around, and that’s where this edutainment angle came in,” says Angela Blair, general manager international at Tourism New Zealand.

“We want them to come and have an adventure with their kids, but also to engage with the destination in a learning way.”

Blair says this is not about formal education, but about exploring culture and landscapes through experiences such as Christchurch’s International Antarctic Centre and wildlife encounters at the Royal Albatross Centre in Dunedin.

Families with children drive demand

The focus on families is deliberate. Blair says family groups with pre-school and school-aged children now account for around half of all potential Chinese visitors to New Zealand.

These travellers are typically “active considerers” who prioritise nature, animals and cultural experiences, and represent both strong intent and higher spending potential.

“This segment also shows the strongest preference for New Zealand and the highest average intended spend,” Blair says.

Early results suggest the influencer-led approach is gaining traction.

With a total spend of about $600,000 covering content production, travel and platform fees, the campaign generated 105 million impressions on RED in its first two weeks.

“It’s far surpassed the targets we set. It’s resonating really well,” Blair says.

The campaign has also recorded about 810,000 engagements, including more than 8700 user-generated posts as audiences create their own travel content inspired by the campaign.

Blair adds RED’s reach extends beyond mainland China, including Chinese-speaking audiences across Southeast Asia.

Travel as learning, even just a little bit

It’s Fiona Bai’s first time in New Zealand — a 10-day trip with her husband, James Morris-Cotterill, and their two children, Evie and Milo.

She describes the trip as “self-healing as a mum of two”. “Our parents always believed everything had to be educational. Even play needed a purpose. We had to learn something meaningful all the time.”

She says her own generation — those born in the 1980s and 1990s — is now rethinking that mindset.

“We grew up with a lot of pressure (of studying). Now we try to give our kids more freedom — to play, to wander, to just be kids. In a way, we’re re-parenting ourselves while raising them.”

But the shift is not straightforward. “I’m still a Chinese parent living in China. Even if I want to change, that mindset is still there.”

That tension shapes how families approach travel. Pure leisure is rarely enough — most parents still expect some educational value.

“That’s why travel alone isn’t enough,” Bai says.

“But if you combine travel with education, even just a little bit — like camps or structured activities — then it works. Kids learn while playing, maybe even practising English. Parents are more than willing to pay for it.”

Her husband sees it differently. Raised in London, James Morris-Cotterill says “learning through experience” is familiar from his own childhood.

“It’s actually how I was brought up,” Morris-Cotterill says.

“We went to museums, farms, different activities. I’ve got strong memories of those experiences, but I can’t really remember much of what I was forced to learn at school.”

For him, learning starts with curiosity. “When kids experience something first, they get interested. Then they ask questions — and that’s when real learning happens. If it’s forced, it just disappears.”

He describes it as learning through “osmosis” — absorbing knowledge naturally through experience rather than instruction.

“You don’t realise you’re learning, but you are,” he says. “And those memories last. That’s the most valuable part — they become lifelong memories for the kids.”

Real moments, not staged travel

That sense of authenticity helps explain why New Zealand features so strongly in these feeds.

Bai says audiences increasingly trust “real travel stories” over traditional advertising. On RED, she says viewers are not just following destinations, but watching families make decisions in real time.

“We don’t fix anything or stage scenes. We just share what actually happens,” she says. “As [key opinion leaders], we’re not selling a destination — we’re showing a different way of travelling with your family.”

At Christchurch’s International Antarctic Centre, her daughter Evie loved the off-road “Antarctic vehicle” ride, while Milo was disappointed and crying loudly at being too small to join — until a staff member comforted him with a husky toy.

“Kiwis are so friendly,” Bai says. “And my kids really enjoyed the hands-on exhibits where they could explore freely.”

James says the appeal lies in the contrast with more structured experiences elsewhere. Seeing wild dolphins in Akaroa, he says, was far more memorable than aquarium visits elsewhere.

“It’s like a nicer version of childhood…Simple things like playgrounds, museums, even food — the kids are learning without pressure.”

The recovery challenge

China remains New Zealand’s third-largest international visitor market, but arrivals have not yet returned to pre-Covid levels.

Barriers are now less about access and more about timing and decision-making.

Leave availability, travel timing and cost remain key considerations, says Blair, while visa concerns have eased compared with previous years.

But the bigger challenge is attention — competing for visibility in a fast-moving, algorithm-driven environment where travel inspiration is constant but fleeting.

Blair says recent campaigns, including influencer-led work, have helped rebuild momentum.

“We’re just wanting to see continued ongoing demand and arrivals of Chinese travellers,” she says.

Recent recovery has been increasingly led by South Island destinations such as Christchurch and Queenstown.