AI: Use Cases for Tourism Marketing in China

AI has taken off for travel in China, from trip planning and booking, to navigating menus and use by Chinese travel agents. With our focus on digital innovation, Dragon Trail is also embracing and developing new AI tools to enhance and expand our services, and make sure our clients stay up to date.

AI for travel in China

By the start of 2025, all of China’s leading OTAs had introduced their own AI tools, including itinerary planners, local area guides, and menu translation tools. This year, there’s a shift towards agentic AI, with new functions introduced by Chinese internet giants Alibaba and ByteDance that allow chatbots to perform tasks such as ordering a coffee.

As Alibaba’s travel platform, Fliggy’s AI interface is now able to process travel bookings, and during the 2026 Chinese New Year period, Fliggy’s overall AI orders increased by 800% – with attraction ticket bookings proving the most popular use case.

According to the China Tourism Academy, 70% of Chinese travelers currently use AI to plan their trips, and they are using a wide range of AI platforms and tools. Large language models (LLMs) are the most widely adopted AI tools for travel: 64% of respondents in Dragon Trail’s September 2025 survey said they had used DeepSeek and 63% had used Doubao for trip planning. 51% of travelers had used AI assistants from the Trip.com Group, with another 45% using RedNote’s AI function.

The Chinese travel industry has also adopted AI very rapidly, and 82% of respondent in our July 2025 survey of Chinese outbound travel agents said their companies were already using AI technology for business. While much of the AI development in China’s travel industry has been consumer-facing, it’s very clear from our survey that there’s huge potential to use AI as a B2B tool, and this is largely how we’ve been using it in our work so far.

How Dragon Trail is using AI to boost travel marketing in China

Trip Builder Pro: Bringing together travel agents and DMOs
In 2025 Dragon Trail developed our own AI platform called the Trip Builder Pro. This is a B2B tool that travel agents can use to generate highly personalized and totally accurate travel itineraries in just a few minutes, powered by destination tourism boards’ POI databases, and it can be integrated into larger travel trade marketing hubs available to travel agents.

Language Support
Dragon Trail has been using AI for translation and interpretation at B2B events for our clients, including China roadshows for the Georgian National Tourism Administration, Egyptian Tourism Authority, and Tourism New Zealand. This includes simultaneous interpretation during event presentations, as well as during one-to-one business meetings.

Professional Content Creation
AI is incredibly helpful in video production, to review raw footage and assemble polished highlight reels in minutes rather than days. Paired with tourism brands’ already available content, we’re also using AI to quickly generate training course materials and quizzes for use by the travel trade.

Digital Dashboards for Sentiment and Campaign Monitoring
Dragon Trail is now building AI reporting dashboards to help clients to track brand reputation on Chinese social media, and get detailed insights on the performance of their ad campaigns across multiple platforms, along with suggestions and action plans about the steps these brands should take next to respond to customer feedback and optimize campaigns going forward.

GEO Auditing and Optimization
We know GEO – generative engine optimization, or SEO for AI – is top of mind for many brands these days, and this is why we’ve developed a new auditing tool for Chinese websites, based on Chinese GEO theory. We’re able to offer complimentary audit reports to clients to assess GEO readiness, tech issues, and suggestions for content optimization. Please get in touch with us directly if this is something you’d like to carry out for your own Chinese website.

Register for Dragon Trail’s June 2026 webinar to learn more about China’s digital trends for travel, including developments in AI. Sign up for our monthly newsletter and follow us on social media for regular updates on China’s digital landscape and latest travel trends.