Golden Age of Chinese Social Media Influencers (KOL)

There are more than 800 million Douyin users (TikTok) worldwide, and Chinese travelers are among the most active. They are glued to their phones, tablets, and desktops at all times. Yet many brands entering the Chinese market still struggle to get noticed.

The answer, in 2025 as it was in 2017, is KOLs. Key Opinion Leaders. Influencers. Call them what you want, they are the people who actually move product in China.

Top 8 Travel KOLs in China (2025)

China’s tourism industry keeps growing, driven by travel influencers who inspire millions with real content. These KOLs specialize in showing destinations, sharing tips, and creating content their followers actually trust. Here are eight top travel KOLs to know in 2025:

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1. Li Ziqi (李子柒)

Li Ziqi is known globally for her calm, visually beautiful content on rural Chinese life. She focuses on traditional culture, food and landscapes. For brands targeting cultural tourism, she is the reference. Her content feels nothing like advertising, which is exactly why it works.

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2. Luo Zhenyu (罗振宇)

Luo Zhenyu focuses on luxury travel and high-end experiences. His content highlights premium hotels, fine dining, and cultural activities. He is popular with wealthy travelers, and his audience trusts his picks. If you are selling a 5-star property, he is the type of person you want posting about it.

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3. Xiaoyuan (小远)

Xiaoyuan does adventure travel. Mountain climbing, diving, hiking. Her content pushes people to go off the beaten track. She is popular with the 25-35 crowd looking for something more than a resort photo.

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4. Putuoshan Xiaoshuai (普陀山小帅), travel KOL

Family-friendly travel content with practical advice for trips with kids. He is trusted by parents because his content is real, not polished. Tips on safety, logistics, and destinations that work for multi-generational groups.

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5. Guo Yu (郭宇)

Guo Yu focuses on historical and cultural sites. Museums, heritage spots, old towns. His audience wants education alongside the trip. A good match for destinations with strong cultural assets.

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6. Mia Zhang (张喵喵)

Mia Zhang is a luxury travel photographer. Five-star resorts, private island escapes, high-end lifestyle. Her visual content is sharp and her follower base is affluent. She drives direct aspirational demand.

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7. Fan Yichen (范依辰)

Fan Yichen mixes food and travel. She documents local cuisines and restaurants at every destination. Her audience is big on food tourism, which is a growing segment among younger Chinese travelers.

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8. Qian Qian (钱倩)

Qian Qian covers cities: nightlife, local shopping, street culture. Her style is young and energetic. She connects well with urban Gen Z travelers who want city experiences, not generic tours.

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4 Market Facts You Need to Know (2024-2025)

• China had over 155 million outbound trips in 2019. By 2024, recovery reached approximately 80% of that figure, with full recovery expected in 2025. (Source: China Tourism Academy)
• Douyin has over 700 million daily active users in China. Travel content consistently ranks among the top categories by views.
• Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) had over 300 million monthly active users in 2024, with travel and lifestyle as dominant content categories.
• A mid-tier travel KOL collaboration on Douyin (500k-2M followers) costs between RMB 20,000 and RMB 80,000 per post. Top-tier KOLs can charge ten times that.

These KOLs show the range of China’s travel market: luxury, adventure, family, culture, food, cities. Working with them gives brands a way to reach specific audiences. And given the scale, even a small percentage of their following is a real number.

How do you reach the Chinese market more efficiently? New strategies from brands and companies all point the same direction: online influencers, or ‘Wanghong’. Let’s look at how these digital personalities can make or break a new brand entering the Chinese travel market.

Influencers and KOL

We are in the golden age of influencers in China. KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) are established online figures who have built large, loyal audiences. For a foreign brand or destination, tapping into these communities is not optional, it is the fastest way in.

Influencers and Social Media

Brands need to be on Chinese platforms like Weibo and WeChat because the user base is simply enormous.

• WeChat has over 1.3 billion registered users
• Xiaohongshu is the main app for lifestyle content and travel planning abroad

Spend a week in China and you will see it: everyone is on social media. Constantly. It is not an exaggeration, it is just reality.

A celebrity’s online activity has major impact in China, mostly because Chinese consumers are always connected and very active on social networks. They spend an average of 1.5 hours per day on social media, which means more contact, more influence, more decisions made on the basis of what they see there. For many Chinese, an influencer is simply more credible than mainstream media.

KOLs can effectively shape trends and buying habits. Burberry, for example, has worked with top KOLs for their fashion events in China.

A Very Influential Solution

Influencers exist in every category in China: cosmetics, fashion, travel, food. Major KOLs have built communities of tens of millions of followers. Chinese consumers generally distrust official sources and turn to individual creators for guidance. This kind of peer-based information shapes their worldview and purchase decisions. For brands looking to enter the market, being endorsed by a trusted KOL is worth more than any press release.

Influencer posts typically feature the product or service in use, link to official pages, or give a direct endorsement. Visual content, photos and video, gets the most engagement. Posts from major KOLs go viral regularly.

Read more: Chinese Travel Influencers

Building Partnerships and Trust

Brands have quickly understood they need to work with influencers. The challenge is finding the right ones for your niche and making contact. Language is a real barrier, so having a local intermediary helps a lot. A signed agreement matters.

Chinese consumers are cautious with new brands and services. They prefer what they know, or what a trusted figure recommends. An endorsement from a credible KOL can change that overnight. One week of promotion from the right person can generate serious sales. Take Jessica, an influencer focused on imported brands: after one week pushing a new product line, she moved USD 25,000 in sales.

Partnerships Are Getting Expensive

KOLs know their value, and agencies have sprouted up to represent them. Papi Jiang, a satirical video creator with over 100 million followers, sold her first video ad for 3 million dollars. Weibo’s Han Huo Huo, one of China’s top fashion bloggers, has over 3 million followers on his page alone.

This is the scale we are talking about. The investment is real, but so is the return if you pick the right person.

Micro Influencers

Micro influencers have smaller but highly engaged communities built around specific interests. They are far cheaper than top-tier KOLs and often more effective for niche products. If you have a limited budget or a very specific offer, micro influencers are worth exploring seriously. In a market of 1.4 billion people, even a small slice is a large number.

Summary

In 2025, alternative platforms like Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) and Douyin continue to grow. Micro-influencers are gaining ground as a more targeted alternative to large-scale KOL campaigns. The shift is real: brands are diversifying across platforms and influencer tiers to reach specific travel audiences more precisely.

For a destination or travel brand, the question is not whether to work with KOLs. It is which ones, on which platforms, and with what kind of content.

Work With Us: Douyin, Little Red Book, and WeChat

Douyin (TikTok China): GMA manages Douyin campaigns for travel brands and destinations. We identify the right KOLs for your segment, handle the brief, coordinate the content, and report on performance. Short video is the highest-reach format in China right now, and Douyin is where it lives. See our Douyin services.

Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu / RED): RED is where Chinese travelers go before they book. It is the discovery platform for travel, hospitality, and lifestyle. GMA builds brand accounts, creates content strategies, and runs influencer campaigns on RED to put your destination in front of the right audience. See our RED services.

WeChat: WeChat is where decisions get made and where bookings happen. We set up official accounts, build mini-programs, and manage CRM campaigns to turn interest into actual travelers at your door. See our WeChat services.

Want a full strategy? See all our services.

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Oliver Verot is the founder of GMA (Gentlemen Marketing Agency), based in Shanghai since 2012. He has spent 15 years helping Western brands find Chinese customers, mostly by trial and error. Mostly his clients’ trial and his error, if he is honest. He writes about Chinese digital marketing, tourism, and what actually works on the ground.