"Stay a bit longer and enjoy a slower pace!" Liu Hua, a traveler in her 60s from Northeast China is visiting Hainan for the second time. "The climate here is mild, making it perfect for a winter vacation. The community I am staying in even has senior-friendly services like a 'senior canteen', which makes it so comfortable and nice."

As the temperature plunges in many parts of northern China, a silver wave of travelers like Liu are heading south for the season to escape the cold and improve their health and wellness. Online travel platform data shows that Haikou and Sanya are among the most popular destinations for these "snow birds".

Thanks to the island province's unique travel offerings, the number of "silver surfers" riding the wave of Hainan travel is on the rise, creating a new travel craze that is reshaping the senior travel market.

The "Snow Bird" Phenomenon

From snapping fun photos to enjoying health and wellness programs, and from group tours to solo road trips, more and more senior citizens are heading south to Hainan, creating a new senior travel landscape on the island.

Travelers enjoy a visit to the Haikou Volcano Park.

Photo provided by interviewee.

"The scenery is gorgeous, and the air is so fresh." Jiangsu retiree Wang Yufen and her friends have been staying in Haikou for a while. They frequently visit the Haikou Volcano Park, where they enjoy hiking and sightseeing. "The travel experience is so important. In addition to nature, we like to explore the local customs and traditions and learn about the history and culture of the area."

Wang isn't alone in feeling this way. "Senior citizens account for over 50% of our visitors, making the park a popular choice for older vacationers," explained a representative of the Haikou Volcano Park.

The main route to the top of the volcano isn't too steep, and offers plenty of places to stop, take a break, and enjoy the view. The hike takes only one or two hours, making it ideal for middle-aged or elderly travelers. Here, visitors can enjoy unique scenery - as China's only urban coastal volcano, the park provides close-up views of volcanic craters, lava tunnels, and other reminders of the long-ago pyroclastic activity. The trails are well-maintained and clearly marked, and the natural environment is excellent, with a high amount of green coverage and a high concentration of negative oxygen ions. Thanks to all of this as well as Haikou's average annual temperature of 23.8℃, the park is an excellent vacation and wellness choice. There's also a high educational value thanks to the park's volcanic science museum, which offers clear, intuitive explanations of volcano geology, keeping travelers of all ages on their toes and contributing another key factor to the park's continuing appeal to retirees.

"We've found that relaxed itineraries, health and wellness, and excellent service are popular with older travelers," said a park representative. The attraction plans to continue to optimize service details to further improve comfort for middle-aged and elderly travelers, ensuring that they can "travel at their own pace and enjoy themselves to the fullest."

The hospitality sector has also welcomed a significant influx of senior travelers. "Since the start of autumn, the number of older 'snow bird' travelers has gone up quite a bit." Since October, a large hotel located in Sanya's Tianya District has seen wave after wave of silver-haired visitors.

"There are 5-10% more retired travelers than we had during this period last year. The hotel has made special adjustments to our service schedule to meet the demand. Warm sunshine, abundant negative oxygen ions, and comfortable health and wellness facilities - everything here is perfect for the needs of the senior traveler population," explained a representative of the hotel.

Data backs up the market enthusiasm. According to the Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television, and Sports of Hainan Province, Hainan welcomed 1.5785 million "snow bird" travelers last year, a year-on-year increase of 14.4%, with seniors aged 55 and above accounting for a high of 93.2%.

This year, at the start of the winter/spring travel season, the "snow birds" are flying south even earlier than in previous years, with bookings for popular routes to destinations like Haikou and Sanya exceeding expectations. The travel platform Qunar shows that Sanya and Haikou remain the most popular destinations for senior travelers. Flight bookings on the Beijing-Sanya route from the end of October to December 31 have surpassed those for the Beijing-Guangzhou route.

Making Travel Better for Seniors

According to estimates of the China Tourism Academy, the senior tourism market will be worth approximately 2.7 trillion yuan by 2028. As a popular travel destination, how can Hainan meet the needs of this growing group?

"We need to shift from meeting basic needs to improving quality of experience, ensuring that older travelers not only have somewhere they can stay, but an excellent stay experience, suggested an expert from the Capital Research Institute for Cultural and Tourism Development of Beijing International Studies University. The expert further recommended that Hainan should develop and improve high-quality travel products, providing personalized and customized travel options for older travelers with different travel needs, interests, and physical conditions, allowing every senior citizen to find their own travel bliss.

Travelers visit the Sanya Tianya Haijiao Scenic Area.

A Hainan Health Tourism Association expert proposed a development strategy of combining regional collaboration with resource integration. "By leveraging 'snow bird' travel trends, we can analyze visitor flow and preferences to launch regionally coordinated themed health and wellness routes," he suggested. He also recommended creating a "East Hainan Medical and Health Wellness Loop," integrating medical resources in Boao Lecheng with coastal hot spring resorts in Qionghai and Wanning. A 'Central Rainforest Clean Air and Wellness Route' will also be set up, connecting the rainforest resources of Wuzhishan and Baoting to achieve mutual traveler exchange and provide complementary features. Service providers organizing themed tours along the route will be eligible for per person subsidies designed to stimulate market activity.

Deepening the integration of medical and senior care is a key breakthrough. To meed this need, the coverage of the "specialized illness and rehabilitation" service package in the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone will be expanded, and mature services such as sleep management and chronic disease rehab will be standardized and promoted in "snow bird" gathering areas such as Haikou and Sanya, so that older travelers can enjoy professional medical services right where they are staying. Meanwhile, medical institutions are encouraged to collaborate with high-end hotels and resorts to develop 'treatment-style travel and accommodation' packages that integrate health management into daily life, travel, and accommodation.

Infrastructure and service guarantees also need to be upgraded, accelerating construction of health and wellness stations along the Hainan Coastal Scenic Highway, and improving senior-friendly facilities. The study explores the possibility of establishing free shuttle buses or discounted routes for senior travelers moving between different cities and counties to address mobility bottlenecks. A unified big data platform for older travelers is in the works, and will integrate information from transportation, culture & tourism, health, and other departments to analyze and predict the scale, distribution, and service demand changes of senior traveler populations, providing support for product design and resource allocation.

"We also need to strengthen market supervision, guide tourism enterprises to set reasonable prices, eliminate low-price tours and forced sales, establish an efficient public opinion monitoring system, create a good atmosphere for senior tourism, and move Hainan's 'snow bird travel' market towards long-term retention for high-quality development," the expert emphasized.

Regarding the future development of senior tourism in Hainan, a representative of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Radio, Television, and Sports of Hainan Province stated that Hainan will next promote the senior-friendly transformation of all industries and create a multi-level, multi-format, full-chain senior tourism industry ecosystem to fundamentally solve the supply and demand mismatch issues such as 'unsuitable or unavailable tourism products'.

At the same time, Hainan will enrich senior living tourism packages, optimize the market environment for senior tourism, create tropical island senior tourism packages such as "countryside, vacation, cultural, sports, and medical hospitality packages", and launch more new "tourism+" and "+tourism consumer scenarios and models to attract seniors to Hainan for in-depth health and wellness vacations.