Most Malaysian hotel owners think of Xiaohongshu (RedNote / XHS) as "the Chinese Instagram." That's the wrong picture, and it's costing bookings.
Unlike Instagram, Chinese travellers search for a destination, read real reviews, and decide where to stay, often months before they book on Xiaohongshu (XHS). Why? This is because of Xiaohongshu's emphasis on "Notes" over images. Its users write small blogs (called Notes) on XHS. These notes often feature their travel experience and their recommendations. This is the reason why many use XHS for travel research. Imagine "Notes" as a small blog with content and images that fits into a mobile app. Unlike a traditional blog, XHS uses an algorithm to recommend content relevant to its users.
credit to mikolim._rednote ID: 4298233885, credit to Traveloka Malaysia
If your hotel has no presence there, you're invisible at the exact moment guests are deciding.
I believe Malaysians use RedNote as a search engine more than a social media platform. As a Malaysian Chinese RedNote user, I search for reviews before making a purchase decision, and that's the moment a browsing consumer becomes a paying customer.
At a Xiaohongshu representative sharing session in Melaka, the platform shared real data on how Malaysia gets searched, what content wins, and how hotels should show up, and near the end, we'll show you exactly how to turn that attention into bookings.
RedNote is China's top search platform for lifestyle decisions. People don't just scroll. They actively search before they spend money on skincare, restaurants, and hotel rooms.
This matters for hotels. A good post doesn't stop working after a day. It keeps showing up in search results for months, quietly bringing in bookings long after you've moved on to the next campaign. We see this pattern across our own hotel customers too. The properties that treat every post, every listing description, every FAQ as searchable content are the ones with steadier direct bookings, not the ones running the biggest ad spend that month.
Simple takeaway: Write your posts like helpful answers to real questions, not ads.
RedNote's data shows Chinese traveller searches for Malaysia rise and fall in three clear windows each year:
- Mid-year holidays:
Starts climbing late May, peaks mid-August
- New Year:
Starts climbing early October, peaks late January
- Labour Day:
Starts climbing early March, peaks late April
Each peak has a 60–90 day planning window before it. That's your deadline. If you want the August surge, your content needs to be live by late May, not July.
Simple takeaway: plan your content 60 days ahead of each peak, not during it.
If you run a B&B in Malacca, this is good news; your city and category are both trending.
- Durian
- Coffee
- Seafood
- Chocolate
- Bak Kut Teh
- Nyonya cuisine.
Malacca and Kuala Lumpur lead in food-related content.
Simple takeaway: if your hotel is near great food or a heritage site, that's your content idea, not another "book now" post.
This is good news for independent and boutique hotels; you're not out-gunned by bigger chains here.
The real question is how to use that opening without breaking RedNote's "no hard-sell" rule. That's where seeding comes in.
"Planting seed" (种草, literally "planting grass") is a Chinese marketing term for building genuine interest before you ever ask for the sale.
Instead of pitching your hotel directly, you plant small, honest moments of value, so that when a reader is ready to book, they already trust you.
This fits RedNote's rules perfectly. The platform penalises hard-selling, so hotels that try to "seed" trust instead of pushing a sale are the ones that actually get seen.
Story: Softinn wasn't aware of the RedNote's ability to drive hotel sales until one of our customers tried it. The hotel installed the booking engine on RedNote, and it just went crazy. Within a month, the hotel set a sales record, and more than 90% of bookings came from RedNote (Yes, it's higher than OTA). They invited a few RedNote bloggers to their town and hotel. That's what it takes.
Know These 3 Things Before You Hit Publish
Before writing anything, answer:
What are you really offering?
(A room, or a rooftop breakfast with a heritage view?)
When would someone need this?
(Honeymoon, family trip, solo work trip?)
Who exactly is this for?
Answer these three, and your content gets sharper immediately.
Here's the part most hotels miss: Getting discovered on RedNote only solves awareness. It doesn't guarantee a booking.
I've come to believe this is where most Malaysian hotels lose the most value: the moment between getting noticed and getting booked.
Hotels spend weeks creating content and running ads. They get real attention.
But then that attention goes straight to an OTA, because there was never a direct booking path set up to catch it.
We see the difference this makes in our own customer base: 56.94% of Softinn hotels use our Booking Engine, and 43.52% of them now operate with little to no reliance on OTAs. That's not a coincidence; it's what happens when a hotel actually builds the path from attention to direct booking, instead of leaving it to chance.
Getting noticed was never the hard part. Building the path to a direct booking was.
This is exactly the gap our Hotel Direct Booking Path Framework is built to close.
🎁 Free Template: The Hotel Direct Booking Path Framework
It's a simple, practical framework -Traffic → Offer → Convert - for turning any source of attention (Xiaohongshu, Instagram, Google, walk-ins) into a direct booking on your own website, instead of paying commission to an OTA for a guest you already won over.
We've turned this into a free, ready-to-use template so your team can map your own booking path without starting from scratch.
RedNote isn't a trend to dabble in. For hotels in Malacca, Semporna, Kota Kinabalu, or Kuala Lumpur, it's becoming a real search engine, one where Chinese travellers are deciding where to stay, 60 to 90 days before they book.
The hotels that win won't be the ones spending the most on ads. They'll be the ones publishing honest, useful content on a predictable schedule with a clear, direct path from "discovered on RedNote" to "booked with us."
Start with content that's worth searching for. Then make sure the path to a direct booking actually exists.
Want to build that path? These will help:
→How to Promote Your Hotel on Xiao Hong Shu (RED / REDnote): A Practical Guide for Malaysian Hoteliers
→Smart Strategies To Increase Your Hotel Direct Booking
→How to Get the Right Traffic on Your Hotel Facebook Page