From paper tickets and manual registration to one-click booking and smart check-in on mobile phones, every iteration of the tourism industry is inseparable from the promotion of technology.

However, artificial intelligence has become the core force of a new round of industrial transformation, and its penetration in the tourism field has shown a trend of “controversy and potential”:

Some people regard it as a “variable that disrupts the industry”, as if it can change the world and reshape the industry overnight; Some people also think that AI thunder and rain are small, and feel that except for sporadic applications on the consumer side, it has not had a substantial impact on the core logic of the industry.

Whether AI will bring disruptive changes to the industry or a gradual evolution, no one can give an absolute answer now. What is certain is that it is not an overnight revolution, but needs to be implemented in subdivided scenarios and specific businesses in order to gradually change the operating logic of the industry.

As an in-depth participant in the online travel (OTA) industry, Tongcheng Travel’s exploration of AI applications is the epitome of the industry’s “quiet evolution”.

On September 10, at the main forum of the 2025 Global Travel News Summit, Yu Pei, CTO of Tongcheng Travel, delivered a speech titled “The Future Has Arrived, Quietly Evolving AI Travel Ecology”, dismantling the specific value of AI in improving efficiency, optimizing experience, and empowering industries from the perspective of industry practice, and showing us how AI can move from “concept” to “landing” and promote the evolution of tourism ecology.

The following is a transcript of the speech, the content of which has been deleted:

Hello friends! I am Yu Pei of Tongcheng Travel. Today, on behalf of Tongcheng Travel, we will share with you our practice and thinking on the AI travel ecology from the three dimensions of efficiency, experience and empowerment.

Let’s talk about the improvement of internal efficiency by AI first. Now, all management systems of Tongcheng Travel have been fully connected to AI, and more than 10,000 employees turn on their computers every day, accompanied by AI auxiliary tools, from daily office to business processing, AI has long become an indispensable part of work.

Not only that, our finance, legal, HR and other departments have also achieved AI: legal affairs use AI to pre-examine contracts and control risks, and the efficiency is much improved compared to manual labor; Engineers rely on “AI Code” to complete most of the code writing and focus more on innovation; HR analyzes the talent data of tens of thousands of employees through AI to optimize recruitment evaluation and risk control.

It can be said that AI has shifted internal management from “human-driven” to “intelligent-driven”, breaking the limitations of traditional work models, releasing a large number of labor costs, and making a qualitative leap in work efficiency.

Finally, let’s talk about the empowerment of AI on the industrial chain. We have been thinking about how to use the Internet and technological thinking to deeply implant AI into traditional products, so that the services of the entire industrial chain are more efficient and intimate. To this end, we put forward the concept of “Tongcheng Intelligent Manufacturing”, hoping to penetrate AI capabilities into all aspects of the industrial chain.

For example, our intelligent guest control has now allowed the hotel TV to be connected to AI, after the user checks in, he asks the TV “Is there any food that locals often go to nearby”, and the TV machine directly calls the function of “DeepTrip” to recommend the corresponding content on the screen; The hotel’s AI voice butler is also very “down-to-earth”, whether the hotel uses the work order background, WeChat group, or walkie-talkie to process work, AI can open up these systems, guests pick up the phone and say “need slippers and mineral water”, the demand will be directly synchronized to the corresponding department, and after the robot delivers things, it will also remind users through the TV screen, forming a closed loop of service.

In response to the pain points of hotel reception, we have launched the “front desk multilingual screen”, which can realize multilingual interaction without additional equipment, which solves the problem that many hotels are difficult to receive foreign tourists due to the lack of multilingual service capabilities after the visa policy is liberalized.

In terms of scenic spot services, the “exoskeleton equipment” we have developed will soon be implemented in several large scenic spots in China, which can help tourists who want to enjoy the beautiful scenery but lack physical strength go further and see more.

This year, we will also introduce an optimized self-check-in machine.

In the past, the automation rate of online ticket purchase and movie viewing was already very high, but the hotel self-service check-in rate has not been able to rise, and the core is that the experience has not kept up. We hope that through AI upgrades, self-service check-in machines can take into account different needs and truly play a role: users who like humane service can find the front desk, and users who want to check in quickly can complete it efficiently through self-service machines.

Some people may ask, these smart devices and services, many companies have already done it, why does Tongcheng still want to enter the game?

At its core, we want all products to be not only smart, but also connected. We regard AI as the “brain”, connecting all platform systems, PMS systems, and back-end intelligent devices, so that these smart products are no longer isolated products, but form a collaborative intelligent ecosystem.

For example, users place orders through voice butlers in the hotel room, robot delivery, and TV reminders, and the whole process does not require manual intervention; Users query surrounding information, and the TV can directly call the itinerary planning tool to achieve seamless service connection.

We believe that only by linking these smart products can we truly provide users with efficient, reliable and warm services.

Looking back at the technical iteration of the industry, around 2018, most enterprises completed mobile and online transformation, and some also began to lay out private domains early; In 2022, various technology items, such as robots and other intelligent devices, will gradually enter hotels and scenic spots, allowing everyone to feel the fresh experience brought by technology.

After 2026, we predict that the intelligence of the tourism industry will achieve full-link interoperability, that is, only when AI opens up every link of the industrial chain, the temperature, quality and convenience of services can truly exert the maximum value.

These attempts we have made today may be insignificant in the long river of industry development. But just like countless streams converge into rivers and seas, every bit of exploration and innovation on the road of “AI + travel” will become a force to promote the evolution of AI travel ecology.

The future has arrived, and the changes of AI to travel continue, and we look forward to working with all of you here to continue to explore and jointly create a better travel ecosystem, so that AI can truly serve every traveler and the progress of the entire industry.