On the eve of this year's Lantern Festival, which fell on Tuesday, a 25-year-old consumer surnamed Wen shared her plans aloud to her phone: "I want to see the lantern displays on Lantern Festival night, and maybe visit a theme park."

In under 30 seconds, the AI assistant on her device generated a complete, tailored itinerary. It recommended theme parks ideal for enjoying lantern shows, suggested less-crowded entry times to avoid the heaviest crowds, and mapped out the optimal transportation routes. To her pleasant surprise, the system also pulled in highly rated nearby restaurants based on her location - complete with menus, user ratings, and direct links to order set meals on the spot.

This small moment powerfully illustrates how seamlessly AI can now anticipate and orchestrate everyday experiences, turning a casual wish into a ready-to-go plan. This experience is becoming increasingly common among Chinese travelers. As large models and AI agents accelerate their real-world application, AI is evolving from a simple information search tool into a "travel concierge" that covers trip planning, on-site guidance and spending decisions, embedding itself across the entire tourism consumption chain.

Notably, during this year's Lantern Festival, AI tools emerged as a new popular travel assistant, with multiple platforms reporting a surge in users relying on AI for itinerary planning, traffic updates and crowd forecasts.

"In the past, I had to switch between different apps to check guides, read reviews, book tickets and reserve restaurants. Now everything - the itinerary and spending options - can basically be arranged in one place," Wen told the Global Times. "For people like me who decide to go out on the spur of the moment, it's very convenient and makes us more willing to spend a bit more along the way because of the attractive advice."

Traditional searches for travel or dining options can be cumbersome, as keyword queries must be precise and leave little room for mistakes, which can be mentally taxing for users, DonLi, a spokesperson for the "Xiaotuan" AI assistant project at Chinese e-commerce company Meituan, said. "Now users can simply speak or type freely - even with typos or without punctuation - and the model understands. As Xiaotuan evolves, it will become a personal assistant and concierge for users."

Data from Tongcheng Travel showed that as of 4 pm on Monday, searches for "lantern fairs" related to the Lantern Festival via its AI travel assistant DeepTrip had surged more than 40 percent from a week earlier, with destinations including Shanghai, Shenyang, Northeast China's Liaoning, and Zigong, Southwest China's Sichuan, drawing the most attention, according to a statement the platform sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, AI-powered services are also gradually expanding into offline tourism venues. For instance, in museums and historical sites, more visitors are choosing to rent AI-powered guide devices, which can automatically plan touring routes. When they approach exhibits, the devices deliver explanations through Bluetooth-enabled audio.

"Through one-on-one in-depth dialogue, we build dedicated knowledge bases and artifact knowledge graphs for each venue, ensuring traceable and expandable content," Chen Zhenfeng, vice president of Aikesheng Digital Cultural (Beijing) Co Ltd, a leading developer of AI guide systems, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The system supports more than 10 major languages including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German and Spanish, along with more than 70 additional languages and dialects, serving global visitors in planning touring routes and delivering real-time explanations, according to Chen.

As of March 2026, the company's AI digital human guide system has been deployed in more than 100 museums and scenic sites across China, said Chen.

Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said that AI has already become deeply embedded in holiday travel and local consumption scenarios.

"It is evolving from a simple information provider into an intelligent decision-making partner," Wang told the Global Times.

Beyond helping travelers decide where to go, AI is now transforming how they spend - and becoming a new reliable driver of consumption, which is crucial in China's overall economic growth.

And the potential is massive given the huge AI user base in China. The number of China's generative AI users had reached 602 million by December 2025, up 141.7 percent year-on-year, according to data released by the China Internet Network Information Center last month.

Chen said that these AI assistants provide interactive engagement with over 98 percent recognition accuracy and support instant multilingual switching.

Latest data from Meituan showed that since the Spring Festival holidays through the end of February, more than 100 million visits relied on its AI assistant "Xiaotuan" to plan dining and leisure activities, with entertainment, dine-in services and short-haul trips among the most frequently searched categories.

Driven by such demand, the AI assistant verified more than 700 million pieces of merchant information nationwide and cross-checked them against 1.3 billion authentic user reviews, helping channel traffic to offline brick-and-mortar businesses, Meituan told the Global Times in the statement on Tuesday.

Industry insiders said that AI is reshaping the underlying logic of consumer decision-making, a shift that is expected to increasingly show up in consumption data.

AI tools are helping bridge the gap between consumer demand and supply by rapidly matching user preferences with suitable services. This significantly shortens the decision-making process and unlocks new consumption opportunities that might otherwise remain untapped, said Wang.

"AI is also activating previously fragmented long-tail demand," Wang said. "Through algorithmic matching, niche exhibitions, specialty markets and immersive experiences are becoming easier for users to discover, helping create new consumption hotspots."