Most agencies sell you reach. In inbound tourism the only thing that matters is whether a foreign traveler who has never heard of you ends up asking for a quote — and that traveler is scrolling Instagram, Facebook and TikTok in another language, on another app store, in another time zone. Xingtu Online is built entirely around that gap. We run the overseas accounts, we shoot the content inside China, we answer in English on your market's clock, and we report in cost per inquiry.
China's inbound market moved from recovery to growth in 2026. The bottleneck is no longer demand or policy — it is the number of operators with the capacity to be found by foreign travelers.
Read those four numbers together and the marketing conclusion is uncomfortable but simple. Arrivals are up 20.4%, the visa barrier is gone for most source markets, and the money per traveler is rising — while the people who could sell to them are competing on supply that is visibly scarce. Foreign-language capacity is short by design and cannot be fixed by hiring faster. What can be fixed immediately is discoverability: whether a traveler planning a China trip ever sees your name in their own feed. That is the exact problem a China-side marketing team exists to solve.
Social media for inbound tourism only converts when content, community and paid reach are run as one system. Sold separately, each piece looks cheaper and performs worse.
| Link in the chain | What we actually deliver | Why it has to sit next to the others |
|---|---|---|
| Account setup & packaging | Overseas profiles built under your ownership — positioning, bio and name searchability, link routing, highlights, business assets, pixels and Conversions API verified before any content ships. | A perfect post with a dead bio link produces nothing. Setup is the difference between reach and an inquiry. |
| Content production in China | Original photo and short-video content filmed on location by our in-house China-based creators — the streets, the food, the transfers, the small logistical details foreign travelers worry about. | Stock footage and reposted clips do not build trust. Only real, verifiable ground-level footage answers "is this trip actually going to work?" |
| English copy & platform packaging | Hooks, captions and edits written natively for foreign travelers — not translated from Chinese — and cut to each platform's format, length and rhythm. | Translation carries the grammar and loses the reason to stop scrolling. The algorithm also distributes by language, so this is not a cosmetic step. |
| Community & direct messages | Comment replies on your market's clock plus first-response handling in the DM thread, handoff scripts, and a target of answering new inquiries within five minutes during business hours. | Quotes are negotiated in DMs. An unanswered English comment tells every later visitor that nobody is home. |
| Paid amplification | Meta and TikTok campaigns run inside your own ad accounts — lead form ads, click-to-message, retargeting of people who already engaged, ad spend never marked up. | Ads only work when they amplify content that already earned engagement. Campaigns without a warm content base burn budget on cold audiences. |
| Reporting & lead ledger | A monthly ledger: reach, saves, DM volume, and every inquiry traced to its source post and original DM screenshot, reported as cost per inquiry. | Impressions cannot be audited into revenue. Cost per inquiry can, and it is the number that decides next month's budget. |
What we do not sell: standalone ad buying without content and community management (it does not work in this niche and we would rather decline it than bill for it), guaranteed follower counts or booking volumes (structurally impossible to promise), and domestic Chinese-platform marketing for outbound tourism. If your product takes Chinese travellers abroad, we are the wrong agency — and we will tell you so on the call.
No creative surcharges, no reporting fees, no setup fees. Ad spend is always separate and always routes through your own ad account.
Fully managed option (quarterly): ~US$4,150 / quarter (RMB 29,600) including ~US$1,060 of ad budget — production, publishing, community, ads and the lead ledger run end to end while the accounts stay 100% yours. Ask about it in your audit call.
Pricing note: all service fees are RMB-denominated; US$ figures are indicative conversions (~7.2 RMB/USD) for overseas readers. Billing cycles, deliverables and ad budgets are finalized in your written proposal. Ad spend is not a markup — it runs through your own ad account with invoices you can see.
Published benchmarks put tourism retainers at US$4,000-25,000 per month, with small operators paying US$3,500-7,500 in fees before media spend. Here is the honest line-by-line comparison.
| Dimension | Typical Western agency | Xingtu Online |
|---|---|---|
| Service fee | US$3,500-7,500/month for a small tour operator; US$4,000-25,000/month for tourism retainers | From ~US$1,100 per cycle, published openly on this page |
| Total out-of-pocket | Reported to run 20-40% above the quoted retainer once setup, creative and reporting lines appear | No setup, creative or reporting fees — the tier is the tier |
| Who shoots the content | Often the client ships footage, or stock and licensed clips fill the calendar | In-house China-based creators filming on location |
| Timezone & language | English only, typically the agency's own working hours | English-native content, community handled on your market's clock |
| Ad account ownership | Commonly held by the agency — leaving costs you the conversion history and audience data | Accounts, pixels and audience data are 100% yours from day one |
| What gets reported | Frequently impressions, reach and follower growth | Cost per inquiry, with each lead traced to its source post and DM |
| Contract length | 12-month minimums are standard in tourism | No lock-in beyond the billing cycle you chose |
| Time to first content | 4-8 weeks of onboarding before publishing starts | Content live from week 2 |
How we price below the market without cutting the work: we are a China-based team billing in RMB for China-based production, so location shooting, editing and community capacity cost a fraction of a Western agency's cost base — and the majority of our clients come from word of mouth rather than paid acquisition, which keeps our own overhead low. The trade-off is honest too: we are specialists in one niche, not a full-service shop, so we do not run PR, web development or traditional media buying.
Not mockups, not concept art, not rented case studies. These are the real profiles of our client New Oriental Cultural Tourism, open for anyone to inspect. Follower counts are shown as they stand and are not the metric we sell on.
Destination and experience content for US and Spanish-speaking audiences.
Beijing food and destination shorts built for short-video discovery.
The inquiry backbone: page, community and message routing.
Why show accounts instead of a results slide? Because in inbound tourism the fastest way to judge an agency is to look at what it publishes when nobody is asking: whether the English reads like English, whether the footage is genuinely filmed in China, and whether the comments get answered. All three are visible on the profiles above. Client results and booking numbers are shared privately in an audit call, with the client's consent, in line with how we handle every client's data.
No onboarding maze and no multi-month discovery phase. The first 90 days have a fixed shape.
A 30-minute call where we ask more than we pitch: your products, your source markets, your average booking value, who currently answers your DMs, and what your inquiries cost today if you know. We finish with a written recommendation — including if we think you should not hire us yet.
Scope, deliverables per cycle, timeline and price in writing before anything starts. Ad budget is stated separately from the service fee. You review it offline — we do not run expiry-date pressure, because a decision this size deserves a night's sleep.
Accounts and business assets under your ownership, pixels and Conversations API verified, content pillars and hooks agreed, first batch of China-shot content produced and scheduled. Publishing begins in week 2 — not after a quarter of strategy decks.
Steady publishing on your market's clock, community and DM handling with a five-minute first-response target, cold-start ad testing from weeks 3-4, then scaling the creative that earned engagement. Monthly ledger reported as cost per inquiry against the target we set together.
These come from published agency-vetting guides, not from our sales deck. Ask every shortlisted agency exactly the same questions and compare the answers. We have written ours in plainly.
Red flag: campaigns run inside the agency's own ad account. You lose the conversion history and audience lists the day you leave — this is consistently rated the most expensive mistake in agency contracts. Our answer: everything is created under your ownership; we hold user access only.
Red flag: the strategist who wins the pitch disappears after signing, and nobody will say in writing who actually does the work. Our answer: the production lead you meet in the audit is named in your proposal and stays on the account.
Red flag: setup fees, platform fees, creative production fees and reporting fees that surface after signing and add 20-40% to the quoted number. Our answer: the tier is the tier — no setup, creative or reporting surcharges, and ad spend is never marked up.
Red flag: any yes. Guaranteed follower counts are described in vetting literature as a structural impossibility — no ethical agency can promise them. Our answer: we commit to a cost-per-inquiry target and a publishing cadence, never to a follower or booking number.
Red flag: a PDF of impressions and reach, with no dashboard access and no conversion context. Our answer: you keep admin access to every account, and the monthly ledger ties each inquiry to its source post and original DM screenshot.
Red flag: 12-month minimums with no performance exit, plus early-termination penalties worth the remaining balance. Our answer: no lock-in beyond the billing cycle you chose — if a cycle's work is not worth continuing, you simply do not renew.
Red flag: the agency expects you to supply footage, or fills the calendar with stock and licensed clips. Our answer: in-house creators based in China, filming on location, which is the reason our cost structure works.
Red flag: a blanket refusal. Confidentiality reasonably covers numbers, not the existence of a client relationship. Our answer: yes, with the client's consent, during the audit process — alongside the live accounts you can inspect right now without asking us.
A specialist agency is defined as much by what it turns down. Reading this list saves both sides a call.
One 30-minute call. We will ask about your products, your source markets and where your inquiries come from today, then tell you honestly what we would do first — and whether hiring us is even the right next step. You will leave with:
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