China’s Study Tour Market Heads for RMB 242.2 Billion, but Operators Say Profits Are Thin
China's study tour and experiential learning market is forecast to reach RMB 242.2 billion (about US$34 billion) in 2026, up roughly 13.6% year on year, according to the China Study Tourism Market Research Report cited by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Financial News and China News Service. The sector was worth RMB 90.9 billion as recently as 2022.
Yet the people actually running the trips say the money is getting harder, not easier. Ahead of the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, New Oriental has launched more than 20 parent-child travel routes and TAL's Sixueersi is selling study products built around aerospace, the Harbin Institute of Technology, AI and robotics. Scenic sites, camps, travel agencies and education companies are all pushing one-, two- and three-day programmes. In some regions, new spring and autumn school breaks are widening the calendar window further.
"A big market and your ability to make money are two different things," says Zhang Liangsuan, known in the industry as Tuan Ge, who has worked in Shandong's cultural tourism and study travel business for more than two decades.
The policy backdrop keeps expanding. In July 2026, nine Shandong provincial departments issued measures on the high-quality delivery of primary and secondary school study practice, explicitly separating school-organised "study practice" from marketised "study tourism", proposing study weeks built around spring and autumn breaks, and bringing study practice into school teaching plans.
Plaques, however, are not purchase orders. After study travel policies began rolling out in earnest in 2016, localities rushed to badge camps and bases as study destinations. Schools now ask harder questions: which grade is the course for, what will students actually do on site, what will they produce, and how will it be assessed.
Zhang describes an investor who committed RMB 120 million to build a camp after a local official backed the project — with no document, no implementation rules and no long-term cooperation mechanism. The official was later transferred and the promised student flow never arrived. "In this industry it is easy to mistake 'someone supports it' for 'someone pays for it'," he says.
A second structural split is emerging. School-organised study travel is decided by schools, which weigh safety, curriculum fit, organisation and liability. Family-purchased programmes are decided by parents, who ask whether the child will enjoy it, whether it is worth the money and what they bring home. The same aerospace base becomes two different products depending on who is buying.
That gives education companies an edge with parents and tourism companies an edge on destinations and service delivery. But the binding constraint is neither resources nor demand: it is course design and delivery. A venue's capacity is no longer measured in beds and parking spaces but in how many students can genuinely learn there in a day.
His conclusion is blunt: study travel has long been a project business rather than a product business, with curriculum development, mentor training, quality control and delivery split across different players and nobody owning the whole outcome. Few technology startups have entered the category, because the hard problem is not a standalone tool but plugging local resources into a school's existing teaching system.
Yet the people actually running the trips say the money is getting harder, not easier. Ahead of the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, New Oriental has launched more than 20 parent-child travel routes and TAL's Sixueersi is selling study products built around aerospace, the Harbin Institute of Technology, AI and robotics. Scenic sites, camps, travel agencies and education companies are all pushing one-, two- and three-day programmes. In some regions, new spring and autumn school breaks are widening the calendar window further.
"A big market and your ability to make money are two different things," says Zhang Liangsuan, known in the industry as Tuan Ge, who has worked in Shandong's cultural tourism and study travel business for more than two decades.
The policy backdrop keeps expanding. In July 2026, nine Shandong provincial departments issued measures on the high-quality delivery of primary and secondary school study practice, explicitly separating school-organised "study practice" from marketised "study tourism", proposing study weeks built around spring and autumn breaks, and bringing study practice into school teaching plans.
Plaques, however, are not purchase orders. After study travel policies began rolling out in earnest in 2016, localities rushed to badge camps and bases as study destinations. Schools now ask harder questions: which grade is the course for, what will students actually do on site, what will they produce, and how will it be assessed.
Zhang describes an investor who committed RMB 120 million to build a camp after a local official backed the project — with no document, no implementation rules and no long-term cooperation mechanism. The official was later transferred and the promised student flow never arrived. "In this industry it is easy to mistake 'someone supports it' for 'someone pays for it'," he says.
A second structural split is emerging. School-organised study travel is decided by schools, which weigh safety, curriculum fit, organisation and liability. Family-purchased programmes are decided by parents, who ask whether the child will enjoy it, whether it is worth the money and what they bring home. The same aerospace base becomes two different products depending on who is buying.
That gives education companies an edge with parents and tourism companies an edge on destinations and service delivery. But the binding constraint is neither resources nor demand: it is course design and delivery. A venue's capacity is no longer measured in beds and parking spaces but in how many students can genuinely learn there in a day.
His conclusion is blunt: study travel has long been a project business rather than a product business, with curriculum development, mentor training, quality control and delivery split across different players and nobody owning the whole outcome. Few technology startups have entered the category, because the hard problem is not a standalone tool but plugging local resources into a school's existing teaching system.
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