China Focus: Travel smart: Chinese tourists hit the road with AI guides

BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhua) -- "Could you please craft a four-day itinerary for a family vacation to Jilin Province in northeast China? We're a family of four from Beijing," inquired Wang Qian, a mother of two, via DeepSeek, ahead of this year's May Day holiday.

"Our budget for lodging is approximately 1,000 yuan (about 140 U.S. dollars) per night, and we have a penchant for barbecue cuisine. Kindly suggest suitable hotels and dining establishments," she also asked.

Wang told Xinhua that compared with traditional tourism platforms, artificial intelligence (AI) platforms offer more interactive experiences. "Remarkably, they can tailor plans to suit our preferences, including accommodation budgets and food flavors."

Wang is part of a growing number of Chinese tourists leveraging AI to enhance their travel experiences. This trend is attributed to the widespread adoption of AI technology by travel agencies and local tourist authorities.

In China, AI technology has been rapidly and widely applied to the tourism industry this year. Major tourism platforms have integrated AI technologies, while various provinces and cities have launched AI tourism service platforms with unique features.

On platforms like Tongcheng, Tuniu and Trip.com, tourists can give simple instructions, such as inquiries about must-visit attractions for a three-day stay in Shanghai or requests for a 15-day trip to western Canada with a preference for natural landscapes. AI typically provides corresponding advice within minutes.

Liang Jianzhang, chairman of Trip.com Group, said the company's large model has provided users with comprehensive intelligent services before, during, and after their trips by screening high-quality travel data and combining it with real-time data.

"Currently, 80 percent of inquiries can be swiftly resolved by AI, reducing users' decision-making time for a trip from approximately 9 to 6.6 hours," Liang stated.

Industry insiders recommend that tourists use at least two platforms to obtain AI recommendations and make informed decisions after comprehensive consideration to meet their basic travel planning needs.

Sun Xiaolei, a travel expert who drove freely in western Canada for 17 days, gave a score of 6 to 7 for the AI recommendations suggesting Canadian self-drive routes on various tourism platforms.

"To create a self-drive strategy for western Canada, I spent nearly a month browsing through numerous travel guides and notes," Sun said, adding that the AI recommendations overlapped with his carefully planned route by 70 to 80 percent.

In the past months, Chinese provinces and municipalities, notably Guizhou Province and Shanghai, have launched their AI agents offering tourism advice.

Huang Xiao Xi, a digital human adorned in Guizhou ethnic attire, can generate personalized tour plans in mere seconds and help tourists order local delicacies with just one click.

Debuted at a recent conference in Guizhou Province, Huang Xiao Xi is the core carrier of Guizhou's tourism large model, providing intelligent services throughout the travel process, including itinerary planning, intelligent ordering and tour guides.

Hu Xiao You, a smart tourism service system launched by tourism authorities in Shanghai, connects in real time with information on business outlets, scenic spot passenger flow, traffic conditions, surrounding public transportation and even toilet locations.

Zhong Xiaomin, director of the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism, said that AI has allowed the seamless integration of authoritative information from cultural and tourism departments with the creative and personal experiences of businesses and tourists.

Zhong added that Hu Xiao You will continue to learn based on user feedback, enabling Shanghai's tourism resources to more accurately meet and satisfy tourists' personalized needs.

Wearable smart guide devices have also become more prevalent in China, especially in museums. These devices provide users with a private AI tour guide at a fraction of the cost of human tour guides.

Through the integrated application of new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D, users can "talk" with ancients, "interact" with cultural relics, and turn ancient paintings into dynamic real scenes.

A mother surnamed Li, who was visiting the Chengdu Museum in Sichuan Province with her 8-year-old son, both wearing AR glasses, exclaimed, "The smart navigation saves me a lot of trouble."

Industry practitioners have noted a general trend where simple itinerary planning is being replaced by AI. However, they believe that AI model training is still in its infancy.

"Currently, tourism platform AI mainly relies on the capturing and induction of backend data, such as extracting other tourists' itinerary trajectories and highlighted activities," noted the head of customized travel at a major tourism platform, who gave the surname of Xu. "But when it comes to complex scenarios such as international driver's license certification and emergency handling of sudden vehicle breakdowns during overseas self-drive travel, AI training is far from sufficient."

According to Xu, major tourism platforms are collaborating with technology companies to provide specialized training for large models, striving to reduce AI errors, enhance the accuracy of recommendation results, and provide more reliable suggestions.

Gan Chunhui, executive vice president of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that introducing new technologies has helped the tourism industry form new quality productive forces. Instead of discarding traditional industries, China aims to revitalize them with technological innovations tailored to local development needs.

Gan anticipated key improvements in the industry, including informatization, networking, digitization, automation and higher efficiency. ■