Why coachloads of Chinese vacationers are flocking to your favorite magnificence spot

The quiet side roads in the shadow of West London‘s bustling high streets are not where you would normally expect to see a minibus full of Chinese Gen Z tourists being dropped off.

Yet these Asian travellers are ditching the wave-flagging tours of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace for the wisteria-draped facades of million-pound mansions in Kensington and Notting Hill. 

And what is the catalyst behind the purple bloom boom and rerouting of Britain’s tourism map? RedNote, or as it is more widely known in its native country, Xiaohongshu.

The social media platform’s name translates in English to ‘Little Red Book’, and it is the UK’s wisteria-lined streets featuring on its digital pages that are attracting the eager ‘digital sightseers’. 

Armed with the app, it is becoming a tour guide bible for the Chinese people who turn up in minibuses, armed with portable changing rooms to allow for multiple outfit changes, for the perfect Instagram-worthy shot. 

York, the surrounding North York Moors and Cotswold villages such as Bibury and Bourton-on-the-Water are also seeing a swell in Asian tourists after featuring on RedNote – while Bicester Village in Oxfordshire is an ever-popular trip too.

The platform experienced an influx of American users who dubbed themselves ‘TikTok refugees’ when there were fears of a potential ban of the social media app in the US.

RedNote now has more than 350million monthly users and is predominantly used by middle to upper-class women aged in their 20s and 30s, according to Chinese firm Nanjing Marketing Group. 

Its name has been linked with the colour of the Chinese Communist Party, although Chinese culture in general reveres the colour as a symbol of good fortune and prosperity. 

In West London, the owners of some photogenic homes say the crowds have grown larger and more organised, directed to precise locations by dedicated ‘wisteria tours’ posted on social media.

There has been a particular spike this year in extravagantly dressed tourists from Asia, especially Japan, where wisteria originally comes from.

In Stafford Terrace in Kensington, one homeowner had to erect a sign asking influencers not to pick his flowers or lean against them after repeated damage took a toll on the plant.

He said: ‘We just put the sign up so that people respect the flowers – it’s a lot of people. People are fine, the problem is when professionals come. 

‘Every now and then you get professional photographers, stylists, and they become a problem because they try to make this into a set; that, for us, is not so nice. They come with changes, stylists, furniture, they put chairs and tables, they make sets out of it.

‘Last year, we had a car dealership taking pictures of cars here. If the public wants to look at the plants, please, but for people who try to make a business out of it, we don’t like it that much.

‘Some people grab the flowers and try to manipulate it, that’s not nice, but otherwise I would say the great majority is fine.’

The resident of 25 years said that tourists had descended on his home following the pandemic – after it was featured on RedNote. 

He added: ‘It’s all since Covid, we found out we got into the Little Red Book, since then it’s gone viral. Before Covid, no one would come.’

Thai YouTuber Neti Wichiansasen, who runs the Neti’s Cinematic Journeys channel, was filming a walking tour in West London for his account.

The 60-year-old said: ‘The information [about walking tours] is spread on the internet – before that it was cherry blossoms.

‘I saw some TikTokkers spend a lot of time in front of houses, sometimes they’re sat on the fence.

‘Last week I went to Portobello Road for the cherry blossom, they were carrying suitcases with many outfit changes. They spend nearly two hours – I think that’s annoying.’

York, too, is fast becoming a ‘must-go place’ after it featured on RedNote, with the Chinese wanting ‘to experience something of British life’. 

Meanwhile Asian tourists are also heading to seaside towns in the North York Moors, with some drawn to Whitby because it is mentioned in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

Will Zhuang, who works with the York tourism agency, told the Economist that they are now no longer streaming out of coaches to take a few pictures before hurriedly moving on. Now, they arrive in small groups and linger. 

‘They come to Yorkshire and they say, ‘This is England’,’ he said. 

Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire is also regularly crowded with international visitors taking pictures and vlogging, after it was dubbed the ‘Venice of the Cotswolds’ for its beautiful low bridges which connect it to the River Windrush.

It led councillors to claim the tranquil surroundings were being ‘ruined’, after locals in the small village with a population of just 4,000 had to battle hundreds of thousands of tourists.

Visitors have been pictured standing in the river, blocking roads and causing endless queues at local pubs and bakeries.

Indeed, residents have said they have had enough, with a survey finding that nine in ten of those living in Bourton say tourists are ‘blighting their lives’.

The survey by Bourton Residents’ Voice asked 4,000 locals and got 200 responses. It found that 95 per cent of residents believe there are too many visitors, and 91 per cent reported a negative impact on their quality of life.

It also found that 93 per cent felt traffic and parking was not run properly, while 82 per cent say Bourton has lost its sense of community.

July and August are the busiest months in the village, with weekends and bank holidays particularly crowded.

Last year, an annual duck race on July 20 completely packed out the area as people gathered to watch the yellow plastic animals get carried along with the current.

The event, which attracted locals and tourists, also featured a Tombola and ‘Play Your Cards Right’ and was advertised on the North Cotswolds Rotary.

Children and adults were filmed splashing about in the shallow stream in footage posted on social media to show off the ‘beautiful English village’.

But in reaction to the video, one person replied: ‘Yes a beautiful English village ruined by marauding tourists.’

The influx of visitors is partly driven by influencers promoting the village as a perfect day trip destination away from big cities such as London on social media.

Meanwhile, Bicester Village is one of Britain’s most unlikely visited tourist attractions – especially by those visiting from Asia.

The outdoor designer outlet shopping centre in Oxfordshire pulls in 7.3million shoppers every year, many of them big spenders from China lured in by bargain deals on big luxury brands, Mandarin-speaking staff and easy rail access from London.

In fact, Bicester Village is now so loved by Chinese tourists that they flock there in larger numbers than any destination in the UK bar Buckingham Palace – with ads and posts on social media site Weibo only serving to boost its popularity even further.

The site has now inspired a string of similar ‘village-style’ shopping centres across Europe, the Middle East and China itself, including the seemingly incongruous ‘Bicester Village Shanghai’.

Over in Bibury, Gloucestershire – once described by 19th century writer William Morris as the ‘most beautiful village in England’ – locals in recent years have been left frustrated by tourists.

Exasperated villagers in 2025 took to putting signs on their gardens calling on people not to trample across them, while others have blocked their drives with cones.

One person has even placed a sign saying ‘private’ in traditional Chinese characters in a bid to ward off unwanted foreigners, while another sign, in Japanese, outside the Swan Hotel reads ‘private gardens are off limits’.