The Race for Chinese Travel Demand Is Now a Fight to Get on the AI Shortlist

A study by Create Consulting China tested 240 travel queries across five major Chinese AI platforms: Baidu's ERNIE Bot, ByteDance's Doubao, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen, DeepSeek, and Tencent Yuanbao. The research finds that AI's most consequential influence on travel happens early, at the consideration set stage, by determining which destinations even make it into a traveler's shortlist. How a question is phrased dramatically alters recommendations: broad, open-ended queries cluster around a handful of safe, familiar, visa-friendly, and nearby destinations like Singapore, Thailand, and Japan, while continent-specific queries surface places like South Africa and Mexico that never appeared in op…