China's Golden Week holiday runs October 1 to 7, and importers spent September getting ahead of it. NRF's Global Port Tracker put September at 2.31 million TEU, up 9.6% year over year, the busiest import month of the year. Transpacific spot rates sat near $7,000 per FEU to the U.S. West Coast and $8,000 to $9,000 to the East Coast during the month.

What comes next is familiar. Factories close for the holiday, carriers blank sailings to match lower bookings, and volumes and rates soften for several weeks. Some industry reports in early September described peak season as nearing an early close (Freight Right); NRF has since described an extended peak. Both can be true on different lanes, and the practical point is the same: there is a quieter stretch coming before the Lunar New Year rush in Q1.

That quiet stretch is the best time of the year to automate ocean workflows, because you can build and test while volume is manageable.

Why did September become the peak?

Front-loading. Importers moved cargo earlier to avoid the Golden Week factory shutdown, uncertainty around tariffs and routings, and the risk of late-season capacity crunches. We tracked how that played out in rates in our analysis of transpacific spot rates and the early peak.

The consequence for forwarders and import-focused 3PLs is that their inboxes peaked with the cargo: booking confirmations, schedule changes, rolled containers, arrival notices, customs holds and demurrage questions, all at once. Teams handled it with overtime and manual tracking spreadsheets.

What typically happens after Golden Week?

Post-holiday weeks bring three patterns:

• Blank sailings — What it means for ops: Bookings move to later vessels; customers need notice
• Softer spot rates — What it means for ops: Quote volume shifts; pricing needs to be current
• Lower volume — What it means for ops: Capacity to fix processes without falling behind

Blank sailings do not stop the work. They move it. Every cancelled sailing means rebooked cargo and changed ETAs that someone has to communicate. But the overall load drops enough to change how the team spends its time.

What should you automate before the next rush?

Automate the four ocean workflows that broke under September's volume: booking confirmations and changes, rolled-cargo alerts, arrival notices, and demurrage and detention evidence. Each is high-volume, repetitive and tied to a clear document or status event, and each will spike again with the Lunar New Year rush in Q1.

1. Booking confirmations and changes. Carriers send confirmations, amendments and schedule changes by email in varying formats. An agent reads each one, updates the booking in your TMS or forwarding system, and notifies the customer when something material changes, such as a new vessel, cutoff or ETA.

2. Rolled-cargo alerts. When a container is rolled to a later sailing, the customer should hear it from you the same day, not discover it from tracking. We laid out how to catch rolls early in our guide to rolled-cargo and booking-change alerts. An agent monitors carrier notices and tracking, detects the roll, updates the ETA and sends the customer a clear message with the new schedule.

3. Arrival notices. Arrival notices trigger a chain of tasks: customs filing, delivery order, trucking, appointment. An agent extracts the key details, including vessel, ETA, container numbers, free time and charges, and starts the next steps rather than leaving the notice in a shared inbox.

4. Demurrage and detention evidence. D&D disputes are won with timestamps: when the container was available, when the appointment was requested, when the terminal was congested. Capturing that evidence as events happen, instead of reconstructing it weeks later, is the difference between a successful dispute and a paid invoice. We covered this in our playbook for demurrage and detention invoice disputes.

Why automate now rather than during the next peak?

Three reasons.

You can test on real volume without risk. Lower volume means you can run the agent alongside the team, compare outputs and adjust rules before depending on it.

Disruption risk has not gone away. Routing through key chokepoints remains unstable, and a sudden shift can bring volume and exceptions back quickly. Our supply chain chokepoints playbook and our guide to managing exceptions during Hormuz and Red Sea rerouting both make the same point: the teams that handle disruptions well are the ones whose routine work is already automated, so people are free for the exceptions.

Lunar New Year arrives fast. The Q1 pre-holiday rush often starts building in December. A workflow automated in October is proven by the time that volume arrives. A workflow started in December is being debugged during the rush.

How do you prioritize with limited time?

Use September as your data set. Pull the last four weeks and count:

1. Booking confirmations and amendments received, and how long each took to process.
2. Rolled containers, and how many customers were notified before they asked.
3. Arrival notices, and median time from receipt to next action.
4. D&D invoices received, and how many were disputed with evidence.

Start with the workflow where the gap between volume and response time was largest. For most forwarders, that is booking changes or rolled-cargo notices, because they drive the most customer calls.

What does a good ocean agent need?

• Works with your existing systems. It reads carrier emails and portals and updates your TMS or forwarding software, rather than requiring a new platform.
• Handles every channel your customers use, including email, chat and WhatsApp, which many international customers prefer.
• Keeps a timestamped record of every notice received and every message sent, which doubles as D&D evidence.
• Escalates exceptions with context, such as a customs hold or a roll affecting a time-critical order, to the right person.

Frequently asked questions

When is Golden Week 2026? China's Golden Week holiday runs October 1 to 7, 2026. Factory output and bookings slow during and immediately after the holiday.

Why was September 2026 so busy for imports? Importers front-loaded shipments ahead of Golden Week. NRF's Global Port Tracker put September at 2.31 million TEU, up 9.6% year over year.

What happens to ocean rates after Golden Week? Carriers typically blank sailings to match lower demand, and volume and spot rates often soften for several weeks, though the pattern varies by lane.

Which ocean workflow should be automated first? Usually booking changes or rolled-cargo alerts, because they create the most customer inquiries when handled late.

The bottom line

September's front-loaded peak put pressure on every ocean team's inbox, and the post-Golden Week lull is a short window before the Lunar New Year rush. Use it to automate booking confirmations, rolled-cargo alerts, arrival notices and D&D evidence capture, test them on lower volume, and go into Q1 with the routine work already handled.

Debales deploys AI agents for ocean booking updates, rolled-cargo alerts, arrival notices and the D&D evidence trail. Book a demo.