Travel is one of the largest categories on Rednote (小红书), and many Chinese travellers research their Europe trip there rather than on Google. That’s the starting point. What follows from it for your work is more interesting.
In September 2026 we analysed, for nine European cities, the five searches travellers actually make before departure, and read the fifty top-ranked posts per search – 2,193 in total. Three findings change how you plan travel content there.
1. Your post gets filed, not consumed
We split the posts into two groups: those whose titles read as a trip plan (攻略 guide, 推荐 recommendation, 必吃 must-eat, 合集 collection) – and everything else.
| posts | likes | saves | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trip-plan titles | 428 | 153,004 | 181,095 |
| the rest | 1,765 | 1,366,407 | 556,325 |
For the trip-plan posts, saves run higher than likes. For all the others it’s less than half as many.
A good travel post isn’t celebrated, it’s filed. And reopened three weeks later at the airport.
Which also means: such a post’s success isn’t visible on publication day. If you check the likes after 48 hours and feel disappointed, you’re measuring the wrong number.
2. Posts last for years
Seventy-nine percent of the posts in our survey are from 2026. But the post sitting at the top of the Lisbon searches is from May 2022 – four years old, 1,275 likes, and still collecting.
On Instagram it would have vanished after three days. On Rednote it gets found through search, again and again, by people planning their trip right now.
For you that’s the real news: reach builds slowly there – in exchange it doesn’t decay. Ten good posts about one city are an asset, not a series.
3. The search results aren’t claimed
Behind the 2,193 posts are 1,929 different accounts. Ninety percent appear with exactly one post; the most active has twelve, across nine cities and 45 searches.
Nobody owns “Europe travel on Rednote”. That’s rare, and it won’t stay that way forever.
What works in travel content
- Routes & itineraries: “3 days in …”, “road trip through …”. Specific and reproducible – exactly what gets saved.
- Insider tips: less Eiffel Tower, more the café only locals know. In our city surveys it’s the posts with names and addresses that rank high.
- Practical detail from a Western perspective: train instead of car, tipping, Sunday opening hours.
- Seasonal: Alps in winter, Tuscany in summer, Christmas markets in December. Those get found again every year.
- Titles that make a decision. Median seventeen characters, 42 percent start with a country flag. They don’t hedge: “In Rome! If you only eat at one pasta place!”
And one format you probably overrate
Of the 2,193 posts, 2,081 are image posts and 112 are videos. If you come from Instagram and start with Reels, you’re working against the platform’s format. Rednote is a photo set with substantial text.
The perspective advantage
As a European creator you have something purely Chinese travel accounts don’t: the view from inside. You know when it’s crowded, where it isn’t worth it, what’s closed on Sunday. That can’t be researched.
Cities or country – or both?
Many successful travel creators combine a fixed home base (see European cities on Rednote) with trips into the surrounding region. That builds niche authority while keeping enough variety.
Don’t forget the foundation
Reach is only half the job. For travel content to become a channel that belongs to you and earns, you need a verified account and a clean payout to Germany. Whether the effort is worth it for you is covered here: Is Rednote worth it?
The detailed city surveys are here: Munich, Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Vienna.
You make travel content and want to go to China? Book a free first call.
On method
Rednote search results from September 2026 for Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, Madrid, Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome and Milan; five searches per city, fifty top-ranked posts per search, 2,193 after deduplication. Not platform statistics – read out by us. The ranking is personalised and changes daily. The Hamburg results include posts about hamburgers as food, because 汉堡 means both; they are part of the totals.