When Xiaohongshu user “Dabing” set up his campsite in Fujian province in 2021, he was probably hoping to ride the wave of a booming trend for camping that was sweeping across China. Instead, two years later his venture had gone bankrupt. “Don’t start a camping business!” he implored his followers via a post on the social media platform on April 6.

In his post, Dabing described a scenario many campsite owners are familiar with in 2023: rising costs, increased competition from hotels and other campsites, a struggle to attract customers during bouts of bad weather, and even facing the risk of being shut down by authorities for using local land without permission.

Dabing’s account suggests China’s camping boom of the last three years may be coming to an end. According to Qichacha, an online business database, more than 6,000 camping-related companies have gone bankrupt in 2023 so far. The media has reported on a “wave of campsite bankruptcy,” while the hashtag “Why doesn’t anyone like camping anymore?” has garnered over 3.8 million views on Weibo since April. Camping soared during the pandemic, but now many businesses are suffering, or having to adapt.

Camping popularity has been on a steady increase in China since around 2010 but became a craze among travel-starved urbanites in 2020 when pandemic restrictions stopped many Chinese from traveling abroad and even made domestic travel a hassle, particularly across city or provincial borders. Many flocked to the outskirts of their cities—Beijing’s Mentougou district, or Dongping and Sheshan national forest parks in Shanghai, for example—where they could enjoy the sensation of traveling, embrace nature, and take photos in beautiful scenery, without having to cross borders.

In November 2022, a new plan for the development of China’s outdoor sports industry released by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism and seven other government departments reported that over 400 million people participated in outdoor sports, including camping, in 2021. According to Tianyancha, a business data query and investigation platform, over 56,000 new camping-related businesses emerged in 2021 and 2022.

But since late 2022, China’s pandemic restrictions have loosened. With no more barriers to travel or enforced quarantine for arrivals from abroad, people are free to holiday where they wish again—many have turned away from tents.

“The camping industry is indeed declining this year. We see lots of news of campsites going bankrupt online, but these are only the ones we hear about, there are more we don’t see, smaller ones that are now closed,” the manager of a campsite in Chengdu, Sichuan province, told Cover News in April this year. The manager also claimed that 90 percent of Chengdu’s campsites were losing money. “I only know one that is profitable, and the rest are gone before they get a chance to make money,” they said.