Hainan Island’s Bid to Attract Tourists Drawn to Southeast Asia

The 90-minute bullet train ride from Haikou Airport to Sanya eases out of Boao station. Riding from north to south in Hainan Island, the tropical landscapes segue from rainforested hills to beautiful sandy bays and surf beaches. Palm trees are ubiquitous. From the window, China’s island province looks like South East Asia. Given its location, this is little surprise. At its closest point, Hainan is just 320 kilometers from Vietnam’s east coast.

I am here for tourism not geography, though, and as we hit cruise velocity of 250kph, my mind turns to a speech made here a decade ago. At the annual Boao Forum for Asia in 2015, President Xi Jinping made the first reference to the power of China’s fast-growing outbound travel sector.

“In the coming five years, China will import more than US$10 trillion of goods, Chinese investment abroad will exceed US$500 billion, and more than 500 million outbound visits will be made by Chinese tourists.” President Xi said. That five-year period, 2015-2019, would culminate in the Covid pandemic, and China closing its borders for almost three years.

Hainan island was carefully chosen for the speech. The Boao Forum gathered government and business leaders from across Asia, and China wanted them to get an taste of its big plans for the island, which extend far beyond tourism. These are now being rolled out in full.

The “Essence of China” in South East Asia

Three years after reopening its borders after the Covid isolation, China wants to complement having the world’s largest outbound and domestic travel markets by attracting more foreign tourists to Hainan. The twin goal is to boost spending and China’s national branding. The southern coastal city of Sanya is integral to China’s goal of “building Hainan into a globally influential tourism destination by 2035.”

“How can Sanya compete with South East Asian destinations, like Bali and Phuket?” This was a question I got frequently asked during my November visit to speak at the 2025 Tropical Coastal City Tourism Event.

Hosted by Sanya Tourism Board and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the three-day conference took place at various locations, such as a golf course, a LEED-certified hotel, a clifftop cultural centre and the roof deck of Sanya’s tallest tower. It brought together tourism leaders from 25 countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Maldives, Vanuatu, Fiji, Cook Islands and Tonga, to discuss the shared challenges for coastal and tropical destinations.

Hainan’s pitch to foreign tourists is structural and soft-powered. It offers visa-free stays of up to 30 days for citizens of 59 countries, who can explore a destination that “encapsulates the essence of China in a tropical land," says Fan Weizheng, Vice Mayor of Sanya. 

But it hasn’t reached this point overnight. I’ve been visiting Hainan since 2005, when I lived in Shanghai. Sanya’s beaches, branded resorts, yacht marinas and duty-free malls, plus the five other coastal bays developed for tourism, have changed hugely during that time. 

So has the positioning. Hainan has shifted away from calling itself “China’s Hawaii” (the two islands share a similar latitude) to focus on its own natural and cultural attractions – although flowery Hawaiian-style shirt-and-shorts combos remain popular with mainland tourists.

Tariff-Free Trade + Tourism

Hainan’s marketing experts are now working on the next phase of its global positioning, which commenced on 18 December. On that date, the entire island become a Free-Trade Zone. This enables global businesses to import a large range of products tariff-free for distribution and sale across China.

This is the culmination of a pilot “special customs operation” introduced in 2018. Hainan’s authorities are also targeting investment from tech-intensive sectors, including logistics, aerospace, agricultural, marine and bio sciences and medical technology. Just like Hong Kong and Singapore in previous decades, bringing corporates and start-ups to invest in Sanya aims to bolster business travel and the lucrative, and highly competitive, MICE sector.

Connecting shipping, trade and visa-free tourism places Hainan in direct competition with the travel economies of ASEAN. It enjoys some physical benefits, being six times larger than Bali, 62 times bigger than Phuket and 46 times the size of Singapore. Transport infrastructure is far more advanced than either Bali or Phuket with bullet trains circling the island, and departing every 20 minutes between Sanya and the capital Haikou.

Although annual international visitors are estimated to be around 1.5 million, they are growing fast. More scheduled and charter flights from ASEAN capitals like Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are touching down in Haikou, a new service launched from Nha Trang in Vietnam, and there are now seasonal charters from Brunei.

Most visibly, Sanya is attracting Russian visitors – which increased by 266% in the first half of 2025 and account for around 40% of foreign tourists. Russians, of course, are a key source market for South East Asian destinations. Plus, new wintertime flights bring “snowbirds” seeking sunshine escapes from Minsk in Belarus and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia.

The Challenges Ahead

First-time visitors confront certain surprises. The island’s 264 kilometers of shoreline include world-class waves at Wanning and Shimei Bay that nurture a thriving Chinese surf culture and host international competitions. China’s first surfing-themed resort recently opened here featuring “an Olympic-grade surf lagoon powered by advanced pneumatic wave technology.”

The island is also investing in pop culture. Hainan’s Governor Liu Xiaoming notes “a growing trend of visiting for concerts and music festivals." Recent performers to rock up include Kanye West, Travis Scott and Charlie Puth. Meanwhile, IP-inspired tourism projects are springing up across China, and the first Hello Kitty-themed resort is being built near Sanya.

Over the past two decades, Sanya was developed specifically for Chinese holidaymakers to enjoy tropical beach breaks. More than 30 million mainlanders visit each year. Flight tickets and resort rates skyrocket for Chinese New Year and the summer school holidays. Its transport systems, tourism and hotel services and ticketing, and ride-share apps all use proprietary Chinese technology reflecting this alignment to the vast domestic tourism market.

This can prove challenging for foreign visitors who don’t read Chinese characters or speak Mandarin, with many struggling to navigate China’s app-based economy. I saw several frustrated visitors asking hotel staff – via AI-enabled voice translation apps – why their credit cards and RMB notes were being rejected in restaurants and stores.

Another challenge is environmental protection given the scale of resort and apartment development across the south coast. “Hainan has China's highest density of luxury hotels,” says Wu Pu, Director of the China Tourism Academy’s Strategy Institute. “We see a potential for Chinese hotels to reduce emissions by 30%, and Hainan must take a lead. We are looking to establish climatic therapy destinations which will be combined with life sciences technologies being developed here.”

-Asia Media Centre