Golden Week 2026: Chinese families still picked Australia. Many will come back to buy.

The holiday is the first inspection.

China’s National Day holiday ran from 1 to 8 October. Millions travelled overseas, and Australia was on the long-haul shortlist again.

Airbnb’s Golden Week outlook found search interest for Australia doubled on last year. It put Australia in its top 10 outbound destinations, alongside Italy, Japan and New Zealand. Some regional spots grew faster still: searches for Esperance in WA were up sixfold. After the holiday, one Chinese travel wrap quoted tourists in Sydney and Melbourne: “forward, back, left, right, all fellow Chinese.”

Sources: Tourism Australia (August 2026); Airbnb Golden Week outbound trends report (August 2026).

Why Australia, again

For a Chinese family, Australia isn’t just a holiday. It feels close, safe and familiar, in ways the other big long-haul choices don’t.

Flight times are typical direct schedules. Community figures from the 2021 Census. On a phone, swipe the table sideways.

Close, in the way that matters. The flight is similar to the US West Coast, but the clock is the real difference. Melbourne is only two or three hours ahead of Beijing. A parent can call a child at university over breakfast, and a business owner can run a company in Shanghai from a Box Hill kitchen table.

Safe. Safety comes up in almost every Chinese conversation about where to send children. In April 2025, China’s tourism ministry told travellers to “fully evaluate the risks” before visiting the US. Australia carries no such warning.

A long relationship. Chinese families have been part of Australia since the gold rush of the 1850s, and the two countries have had diplomatic ties for more than 50 years. Over the past 15 years, migration and study have built a community of about 730,000 China-born residents, and Mandarin is now the most spoken language in Australia after English, with 685,000 speakers.

Home away from home. Most visiting families already have relatives or friends here. In Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Chatswood or Hurstville, they can shop at a Chinese supermarket, eat the food they grew up with and be understood in their own language. It feels familiar from the first day.

Good schools, and English. Above all, Australia offers what most families are planning around: well-regarded schools and universities, and children who grow up fluent in English in a multicultural country.

When Chinese families explain why they chose Australia over the US or Canada, the first reasons are usually safety and having family already here. Price comes later.

Why this matters to an agent

Tourism and property are tied together for Chinese families. A first trip is a holiday. The second is often a visit to a child studying here. The third is an inspection trip with a budget. Families who have walked the streets, seen the schools and eaten in Box Hill are the ones who later buy with confidence.

Many ACproperty enquiries mention a place the family has already visited: “we stayed in Glen Waverley last year”, “our daughter studies at Monash”.

What they can buy. An overseas visitor can’t buy an established home until June 2029. They can buy new homes, off-the-plan and land, with FIRB approval. Relatives who are citizens or permanent residents can buy anything. So the Golden Week visitor is most relevant to new projects today, and to every type of home once family here is involved.

The trip ends, the search doesn’t

A family goes home on 8 October and keeps looking, on their phones, in Chinese, for months. The listings they see in that time become the shortlist for the next trip. That is why being visible in the Chinese market works as an ongoing part of the marketing plan, not something switched on for one campaign. And it gives the vendor a clear answer when they ask who the campaign reaches: the local buyer, the Chinese-Australian buyer, and the family who visited this spring and is planning to come back.

Enquiry on ACproperty tends to rise in the weeks after a Chinese holiday, as families settle back home and start searching.

The line for the vendor: “Chinese families chose Australia again this Golden Week. Many of them come back to buy, and they start searching from home.”

Photo: Kris Cui / Unsplash.