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…
Impact and considerations
AI is reshaping the decision funnel for Chinese outbound travel. Destinations and travel brands must optimize Chinese-language content and AI visibility or risk being excluded before travelers even consider them. OTAs and suppliers should monitor AI's role in discovery while leveraging their continued dominance in the…
Key points
- 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.
- AI's biggest influence is upstream: it shapes which destinations enter a traveler's shortlist, and query phrasing alone can make a destination appear first or vanish entirely.
- AI favors destinations with easy visa access, short flight times, strong safety records, and abundant Chinese-language content.
- The availability of Chinese-language content creates a compounding feedback loop that strengthens already-popular 'winner' destinations.
- 44% of Chinese travelers use AI for planning, yet they still rely on OTAs to compare and book, keeping AI complementary rather than a replacement.
Sources and time
- Primary source
- Skift
- Other sources
- 0
- First source publication
- 3 Sept 2026, 12:52
- Page published
- 3 Sept 2026, 13:23
- Last updated
- 3 Sept 2026, 12:52
- Original links
- Skift Feed：The Race for Chinese Travel Demand Is Now a Fight to Get on the AI Shortlist (opens in a new tab)Primary source · en · Published 3 Sept 2026, 12:52