- Jackie Chan fronts Trip.com Group's new global China travel campaign, with Guilin as the launch destination, a city where international flight bookings surged 75% year-on-year in Q1 2026.
- The campaign debuted at Trip.com Group's "Guilin Night" event on June 1, 2026, drawing over 3,500 international guests from 78 countries and regions.
- Chan personally highlights the Li River, Longji Rice Terraces, and Reed Flute Cave as his top three Guilin experiences, framing the campaign around cultural immersion over checklist tourism.
- The campaign is Trip.com Group's boldest single-talent push yet, backing its five-year goal of 200 million inbound tourists to China by 2030.
Trip.com Group has launched a global China travel campaign fronted by legendary Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan, with southern China’s Guilin as its first featured destination.
The campaign debuted at Trip.com Group’s “Guilin Night” event, bringing together more than 3,500 international guests from 78 countries and regions. International flight bookings to Guilin grew 75% year-on-year in Q1 2026, ranking it among China’s fastest-growing cities for global travellers.
The campaign centres on three experiences Chan personally champions: the Li River cruise, the 600-year-old Longji Rice Terraces, and the illuminated underground world of Reed Flute Cave, all framed around cultural connection rather than sightseeing checklists.
Evenings come alive through the large-scale Impression Liu Sanjie outdoor performance, directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou and set against the Li River with hundreds of local performers.
For Jackie Chan, the Trip.com Group campaign follows his 2024 role as HONOR’s Year of the Dragon Ambassador for the Magic6 smartphone launch, a deal rooted in Chinese cultural identity, much like this one.
The travel space, however, is a more natural fit for Chan’s personal brand mission of reintroducing China to global audiences.
Just as iShowSpeed’s recent collaboration with Expedia targeted Gen Z travellers through creator-driven storytelling, Trip.com Group is betting that Chan’s cross-generational, cross-cultural credibility can do the same for experiential China travel.
Similarly, Olivia Culpo’s sensory travel campaign with Samsonite reinforced that travel deals built on authentic personal narratives consistently outperform generic ad formats.
Trip.com Group brought in 20 million overseas tourists to China in 2025, with an average stay of 6.1 days and spending 40% higher than in 2024, benefiting 150,000 hotels, scenic spots, and travel agencies. The Guilin campaign is the first major on-the-ground activation under that momentum.
Takeaways
Trip.com Group isn’t running a typical destination ad here, it’s using Jackie Chan to reframe what China travel even means to a global audience.
Guilin is a smart opening move: visually striking, culturally rich, and far less polarising than major metros. Chan’s message “don’t rush, be curious, come with an open mind” is doing heavy strategic lifting, shifting the narrative from logistics to emotion.
With 75% flight booking growth already happening organically, the campaign arrives at exactly the right moment to pour fuel on an existing fire rather than spark one from scratch.
Is Guilin’s 75% flight booking surge sustainable, or will it plateau before Trip.com Group’s broader 200-million-tourist goal gains full traction? Can Jackie Chan’s legacy appeal genuinely move younger international travelers who may be less familiar with his filmography?
