Extreme weather is rewriting the "rules of the game" for China's tourism industry.

01

"The peak season of our scenic spot this year has almost been completely disrupted by extreme weather," says Mr. H, who runs a resort town-style scenic spot in Hainan, venting his frustration dejectedly these days.

Mr. Lvjing consoles him that scenic spots have always been at the mercy of the weather, and things will get better after a few tough days.

Mr. H shakes his head with a bitter smile, "Do you know how many days our scenic spot has been closed in total due to extreme weather this year?"

A full 47 days. Mr. H counts on his fingers: from the beginning of the year to now, the scenic spot has been affected by the periphery of typhoons for 4 times, continuous heavy rainfall for 6 times, prolonged extreme heat waves for 2 rounds, and short-term severe thunderstorms and gales for 12 times.

Every time extreme weather hits, the scenic spot can only respond by closing entirely or partially.

Up to now, typhoons and heavy rainfall have forced the scenic spot to close for 28 days, while high temperature, thunderstorms and gales have led to the suspension of outdoor amusement projects and restricted visitor capacity for 19 days.

"The key problem is that extreme weather is increasingly occurring during the peak tourist season," says Mr. H resentfully. The entire peak tourist season of the tourism industry, which consists of "public holidays plus summer vacation", only totals a hundred days or so in a year. Losing nearly half of them at once, how can scenic spots possibly survive?!

What makes people more melancholy is that extreme weather has become more frequent in the past two years, with its lasting days increasing significantly.

Mr. H has made careful calculations: from 2022 to 2025, the number of annual closure days of the scenic spot due to extreme weather was 21 days, 25 days, 29 days and 32 days respectively, showing a year-on-year upward trend.

In 2026, only after less than half a year, the number of closure days of the scenic spot caused by extreme weather has reached 47 days. According to the current outbreak frequency of extreme weather, it is expected that there will be no less such events in the second half of the year, and the total number of annual closure days of the scenic spot due to extreme weather this year will probably surge year on year.

In the past two years, the number of official notices on scenic spot closures caused by extreme weather has become increasingly frequent.

On July 9, Beijing issued its first orange rainstorm warning since the flood season began, and many scenic spots across the city immediately announced temporary closures. According to incomplete statistics, since 2025, Beijing has issued more than 10 city-wide notices on scenic spot closures due to extreme weather such as rainstorms, sandstorms and heavy snow.

Across the country, notices on scenic spot closures issued by various cities due to extreme weather in the past two years have emerged one after another.

Only in the first half of this year, the number of scenic spots closed due to extreme weather has seen an explosive growth.

Some practitioners in the scenic spot industry even joke that in this day and age, a scenic spot that has never experienced closure due to extreme weather cannot be called a top-tier scenic spot in China.

02

The rampant extreme weather has added insult to injury to the tourism industry that has already been struggling. For scenic spots in particular, once they are closed due to extreme weather, it means zero passenger flow and no revenue at all on that day.

In fact, extreme weather has become one of the core factors restricting the revenue growth of scenic spots.

"Both the May Day and summer vacation peak operating seasons this year have been hit by extreme weather, and the effective operating days of the scenic spot have been greatly reduced," Mr. H reveals. The revenue from tickets and secondary consumption of the scenic spot has dropped by 23.5% year on year, and the revenue from outdoor and water projects has plummeted by 35%.

On the one hand, the revenue of scenic spots continues to decline, on the other hand, the losses of scenic spots caused by extreme weather are rising sharply.

Mr. H calculates in detail that nearly 1 million yuan has been spent this year only on the repair of hardware facilities such as coastal boardwalks and landscape facilities; nearly 500,000 yuan has been spent on the maintenance of water and outdoor amusement facilities and the replacement of spare parts; and nearly 300,000 yuan has been spent on operation and maintenance costs such as post-disaster desilting, disinfection and drainage.

In addition, under extreme weather, even when the scenic spot is closed to visitors, rigid expenditures such as employee salaries, site energy consumption and property fees never stop, which alone has cost more than 600,000 yuan this year.

Adding up all these costs, the losses of the scenic spot caused by extreme weather this year have exceeded 2 million yuan. "This number has broken the record," Mr. H sighs. From 2023 to 2025, the losses of the scenic spot caused by extreme weather were 980,000 yuan, 1.12 million yuan and 1.36 million yuan respectively.

In less than half a year this year, more than 2 million yuan has been lost. It is expected that the total annual losses caused by extreme weather will more than double year on year, and these are only the direct losses that extreme weather has caused to scenic spots.

03

Scenic spots can more or less bear the direct losses caused by extreme weather, but the resulting hidden losses are the real wounds that keep bleeding the scenic spots dry.

The most serious one is the recovery speed of passenger flow. After extreme weather, scenic spots can reopen very quickly, but the recovery of passenger flow requires a buffer period.

Mr. H reveals that in the past, after extreme weather hit his scenic spot, it only took about 3 days for the passenger flow to return to the normal level.

However, since last year, as extreme weather has become more frequent, the recovery speed of the scenic spot's passenger flow has dropped sharply. After the latest reopening following the closure caused by extreme weather, it took more than 10 days for the passenger flow of the scenic spot to return to the normal level, which made the scenic spot lose a large number of potential customers.

Missing the time window for seasonal business formats also causes huge losses to scenic spots.

Some business formats in scenic spots have extremely high requirements for seasons, such as water projects, nighttime entertainment projects, festival event projects, etc. The golden operating window of these formats is very short with harsh conditions. Once missed, all the investment will go down the drain, leaving no profit at all.

The editor of TravelDaily once came across such a case before. A friend of his has been running a rafting project in a scenic spot all year round, with booming business and a good reputation. But in a certain summer peak season, this popular project unexpectedly announced its closure.

After inquiring, the editor of TravelDaily learned that the operating window for the local rafting project is only 2 months. Unfortunately, the local scenic spot was forced to close frequently due to successive extreme weather, negative public opinions and other public events.

This friend calculated carefully that even if he pushed the rafting project to the extreme within the limited window in the following days, he would not make money in the end, and might even lose money. So he simply closed the business for this year and will start over next year, as the saying goes, "Not losing money counts as making money."

Frequent closures leading to ticket refunds, complaints and negative reviews also exhaust the energy of scenic spots.

Although extreme weather can be forecasted, most of the scenic spot closures are sudden, which can easily disrupt the travel plans of tourists.

Mr. H says frankly that every time the scenic spot receives a notice of closure due to extreme weather, his first reaction is to arrange all employees to deal with the upcoming flood of customer complaints. He even says that he can now accurately predict the time period and content of the concentrated outbreak of negative reviews on various platforms of the scenic spot.

Sometimes the content of tourists' complaints or negative reviews makes the scenic spot feel very wronged, especially requirements like "the scenic spot should not only compensate for the loss of tickets, but also compensate for all losses of the entire trip". Mr. H doesn't even know what to say for a moment, caught in a dilemma and suffering from both sides. Under extreme weather, negative reviews surge and the brand is damaged, but scenic spots hardly have any means to make up for it, and can only swallow the bitter pill.

04

The impact of extreme weather on the tourism industry is not only limited to the operational level, it is rewriting the underlying logic of the entire industry: the tourist booking cycle has been greatly shortened.

In the past, when tourists made travel plans, they usually booked hotel accommodation, scenic spot tickets, transportation and other links 5 to 7 days in advance. But as the uncertainty brought by extreme weather increases, the booking cycle of tourists has been greatly shortened.

Data from multiple platforms shows that nearly half of the tourists have shortened their booking cycle to less than 3 days, and more than 20% of tourists prefer to place orders one day in advance or even on the day of travel.

This seemingly small change in tourists' habits has a subversive impact on the entire tourism industry chain.

"It is now very difficult for us to make a very accurate judgment on the number of tourists in the scenic spot the next day," Mr. H says frankly. Scenic spots dynamically adjust personnel, resources and funds according to changes in passenger flow. In previous years, experienced staff in scenic spots had full grasp of the passenger flow rules, were very clear about the peaks and troughs, and could easily coordinate the interests of all parties.

Now the scenic spot can no longer be fully confident, which leads to more energy investment in resource matching, business format adjustment and ticket price setting, and in turn makes the upstream and downstream of the entire industry chain in a flurry. For example, hotels, restaurants, leisure and entertainment merchants that rely on scenic spots also cannot predict the passenger flow, and thus cannot make arrangements calmly.

The tourism industry is not only unable to judge the future booking situation of tourists, but also has no full confidence in the confirmed booking situation, because tourists are very sensitive now, and once there is any sign of trouble, they will cancel the reservation immediately.

"As soon as the news app pops up a message saying that there may be weather changes in the local area, we will definitely receive a large number of cancellation orders," Mr. H says helplessly. Without even the occurrence of extreme weather, a single warning message can make the scenic spot and the entire upstream and downstream industry chain in total chaos.

Large reshuffling of tourism business formats. Under the rampant extreme weather, the value of tourism business formats has also changed quietly. Projects that used to generate huge profits may now depreciate significantly.

Coastal waterfront business formats have depreciated the most. Projects that were once highly sought after, such as beach villas, seaside landscapes, and seaside camping, have begun to be abandoned by a large number of tourists due to frequent typhoons, seawater backflow, excessive equipment loss and unstable experience.

Open-air sightseeing and performance projects have also fallen out of favor. Such projects have high operating costs and are difficult to sell, but have zero defense against extreme weather. Tourists are unwilling to sacrifice their own experience to participate in them, leading to their rapid depreciation.

At the same time, a new batch of tourism business formats are emerging quietly.

Indoor and semi-indoor all-weather business formats are beginning to be welcomed by tourists. For example, cultural and creative exhibition & experience spaces, immersive performance spaces, indoor parent-child entertainment spaces, semi-enclosed coastal corridors and other windproof, rainproof, constant temperature and comfortable business formats, have evolved from the original supporting facilities to the core traffic attraction points and the main force of secondary consumption in scenic spots.

"There is also a clear trend. Given the overly frequent typhoons in the past two years, coastal tourism and leisure business formats have cooled down significantly, and tourists are beginning to gather in the inland scenic spots with beautiful mountains and waters. After all, comparatively speaking, inland mountain and water resorts have higher stability and good travel experience."

Mr. H explains that this large reshuffling of tourism business formats will directly affect the tourism investment direction and trend in the next 3-5 years, leading to the fall of a number of old players and the rise of a number of new players.

05

Facing all kinds of impacts caused by extreme weather, how should the tourism industry respond effectively?

Mr. H believes that the tourism industry must acknowledge a fact: Extreme weather is no longer an occasional "accident", but an inevitable "daily occurrence". Under this new normal, what the tourism industry urgently needs at present are some practical changes at the operational level, for example: Meteorological early warning and tourism operation should shift from self-centered separate operation to collaborative cooperation.

Facing extreme weather, the meteorological department keeps issuing "color-coded warnings", but no one tells the tourism industry what the corresponding actual operational actions for these warnings are. Many scenic spots, looking at these "color-coded warnings", neither dare to insist on opening against the risks, nor are willing to close down the business, thus falling into a dilemma.

Mr. H says frankly that what he wants most now is not a more accurate weather forecast, but a decision-making system that can directly tell him "which level of warning corresponds to which level of operational action", which is exactly what the tourism industry lacks the most at present.

There is another thing that Mr. H cares very much about.

When extreme weather is coming, what the tourism industry is facing now is that various competent authorities are issuing orders. Some scenic spots need to connect with four or five departments at the same time, and the requirements put forward by each department are correct. But when the requirements of multiple departments are combined, the scenic spots sometimes do not know what to do. Often when they are still hesitating, the wave of tourist cancellations comes surging, making the scenic spots suffer unspeakably.

Now it is more necessary for all competent authorities to coordinate with each other in the face of extreme weather, and provide the tourism industry with clearer response instructions.

Mr. H is now reflecting: when extreme weather eats up 47 days of his business in the peak tourist season, does it mean that the strategy of scenic spots that "only focus on the peak tourist season" needs to be changed? How to re-plan the 365 days of the whole year, how to seize more time in the peak tourist season, and how to tap new traffic from the off-peak seasons.

In fact, these are not only the problems he needs to think about, but also the major topics that all tourism practitioners must work hard to solve.

This article is from the WeChat official account "TravelDaily", author: Chen Jie tigereat, published with authorization from 36Kr.