Tourists staying for more than the view in China's counties

NANNING, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Five-star hotels had long been Li Na's default choice when traveling with her family. But on a recent road trip through Daxin County in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, she took a chance on Nali, a semi-secluded retreat surrounded by rice paddies and jagged karst peaks.

After just one night, her children were playing beside the irrigation ditches while Li was already planning a return trip with friends this winter.

When asked whether she had discovered a hidden gem, she laughed. "It's already quite well known."

Nali lies within Mingshi scenic area near the Vietnamese border. Mingshi is hardly a secret, and neither are the celebrated rice terraces of Longsheng County in the city of Guilin. Both are part of a broader tourism pattern in Guangxi, where county-level destinations have drawn travelers for decades.

Where visitors once snapped a photo and left, what has changed is what they do once the obligatory social-media photo has been posted. They can linger over a meal, try local crafts or make their accommodation part of the experience. For rural tourism operators, the challenge is to turn that stay into steady local income, rather than depend on peak holiday business.

Many urban visitors are simply drawn to the slower pace of rural life. Zhong Wei, for example, drove with his family from Shenzhen to Daxin County a couple of days before the National Day holiday began. Instead of a packed itinerary, he wanted "a place for a cup of coffee and a view of the rice fields."

Local tourism official Wei Wen said multi-day visits were becoming increasingly common, with some travelers staying as long as a week. High-end boutique resorts have helped raise service standards while supporting the growth of smaller, family-run guesthouses, Wei said.

The economic benefits are also increasingly remaining within local communities. In 2018, Chen Junming joined a pioneering group of entrepreneurs who began converting old village homes and vacant plots into rural inns.

Many businesses now weave agriculture into their offerings. During planting and harvest seasons, guests can wade into the paddies and try their hand at farm work, while restaurants and bars serve rice-inspired dishes and novelty drinks, including rice-flavored Americanos.

Nali alone now employs more than 100 people, with local residents accounting for about 70 to 80 percent of its workforce. Other villagers earn income from land rentals or dividends.

Across Mingshi, the holiday program featured concerts in the rice fields and evening bonfire parties. Where visitors once arrived and departed on the same day, "the new offerings are giving them a reason to stay after dark," said a local resort operator.

For this year's National Day holiday, five-star hotel bookings across Guangxi rose 59 percent year-on-year on Meituan, a major online lifestyle platform in China, while Fliggy, Alibaba Group's online travel platform, reported a nearly 50 percent jump in bookings for private-car tours in the region.

The trend is not limited to Daxin. At the Longji Rice Terraces in Longsheng County, guesthouse operators are also developing activities around a landscape that visitors have long come to photograph. Families can catch fish in flooded paddies, cook traditional bamboo-tube rice or join local residents in farm work.

Official figures show that in 2024, 282 households in Dazhai Village, at the heart of the Longji Rice Terraces, shared about seven million yuan (1.04 million U.S. dollars) in tourism revenue.

This August, a national policy directive encouraged counties to re-purpose vacant village properties rather than build new ones.

Despite the holiday boom, sustaining demand outside peak season remains a challenge. That concern resonates with local innkeepers such as Li Hongxi. "A room may be fully booked during the long holiday periods, but it still has to generate income for the rest of the year," Li said.

For Cao Shiwu, a tourism scholar at Nanning Normal University, the real test is not how many visitors come during a holiday, but how many come back.

For now, Li Na's return to Daxin remains only an intention. If she does book that winter stay, it will say more about the county's lasting appeal than another crowded day in October.