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Invest Shanghai
China's inbound cruise tourism market saw an unprecedented surge in 2025, with Shanghai ports handling a total of 538 inbound and outbound cruise calls during the year, up 16.2 percent year-on-year, CCTV News reported on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Tianjin International Cruise Home Port received more than 400,000 inbound and outbound passenger trips, while cruise arrivals at Xiamen Port jumped 129 percent year-on-year, according to the report.
The Tianjin Dongjiang border inspection station told the Global Times on Wednesday that over the past year, it worked to ensure smooth and secure port clearance. To cope with rising passenger trips, the station coordinated in advance with joint inspection authorities, cruise operators and terminal companies, analyzed passenger profiles, streamlined inspection procedures, deployed additional officers and expanded clearance channels to improve the traveler experience.
The station processed more than 170 inbound and outbound cruise calls over the past year, with total cross-border movements exceeding 400,000, including more than 300,000 cruise passenger trips. Over the past year, visa-free foreign arrivals topped 3,000, up nearly 20 percent year-on-year. Both cruise calls and cross-border passenger trips at Tianjin's cruise port ranked first in northern China and second nationwide, the station said.
Also on Wednesday, the China and Asia Cruise Economic Prosperity Index and the 2025 China cruise industry development report (the Cruise Industry Green Paper) were released, according to the Shanghai International Cruise Business Institute. The data highlighted the strong momentum and vast potential of China's cruise market.
The figures showed that China's cruise market rebounded against the broader trend, with domestic brands' market share surging to 40 percent, foreign tourist numbers soaring 210 percent, and further breakthroughs achieved in the construction of domestically built cruise ships, the Green Paper said.
According to the Green Paper, the global cruise market staged a strong recovery in 2024-2025, with the number of passenger trips expected to reach 37.7 million, up 106 percent from pre-pandemic levels.
The Asia-Pacific region has emerged as the main growth engine, with the Chinese market contributing more than half of the incremental increase.
As the world's second-largest source market, China has recovered at a markedly faster pace than the global average, with home-port passenger trips surging year-on-year in 2024, injecting greater certainty into the global cruise industry, the Green Paper said, according to the institute.
Convenient customs clearance measures have been a key driver behind the rapid growth of the nation's cross-border cruise industry.
An official of the Shanghai General Station of Immigration Inspection said that innovative approaches such as "onboard inspections" have cut clearance times for foreign passengers arriving by visiting cruise ships to just seconds, according to CCTV News.
Following the introduction of electronic arrival cards, foreign travelers can complete the required information online in advance, either before the cruise arrives or while waiting for inspection, the official said.
The nation's continued upgrades to entry facilitation measures have also become a key driver in boosting inbound tourism.
Also, the nation's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) has set the continued promotion of culture and tourism development as a key goal, noting that more convenient and foreigner-friendly services should be provided for inbound tourists.
The rapid rise of the cruise sector is delivering a multidimensional economic boost, and the growing capacity to accommodate multiple cruise ships simultaneously is helping some ports evolve from cross-border transport nodes into broader consumption and tourism hubs, stimulating surrounding services-sector clusters, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
Consumption is also shifting from fragmented spending to more comprehensive services-based demand, extending visitor stays and driving a transition from site-based tourism to full-area experiential travel, according to Wang.
Through institutional innovation, efficiency gains and upgraded visitor experiences, the cruise economy is helping move China's inbound tourism from isolated competition toward coordinated maritime corridor development, reshaping consumption chains and regional cooperation networks and emerging as a new driver of economic growth, Wang said.