Global Luxury Goods Mega-Transect: Consumer Engagement Continues to Improve Despite Challenging Backdrop

We return to 10 luxury malls across four Chinese cities during the 2026 Golden Week holiday. After a difficult summer, golden week is incrementally looking up - traffic reached its highest level across the periods measured since October 2024, exceeding even Chinese New Year 2026. Overall traffic across the 10 luxury malls we track increased +55% YoY and +8% vs. CNY'26, reaching 1,484 shoppers. Chengdu was the principal engine of improvements, with traffic +41% from CNY'26 and +166% YoY to 503 shoppers, making it the busiest city in our survey. Beijing also improved sequentially by +4%, while Hong Kong was broadly stable and Shanghai declined -16% from CNY'26 but remained +112% above Golden Week 2025. Soft luxury led sequential improvement (+13% vs. CNY'26; +70% YoY), with Dior (+57% sequentially;