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AI Quietly Powers China's National Day Golden Week Consumption, From Smart Museum Tours to Multilingual Travel Apps
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
According to a CGTN report on October 4, artificial intelligence technology has been quietly woven into everyday consumption scenes during China's 2026 National Day "Golden Week" holiday (October 1–7). From smart recommendations and instant translation to virtual tour guides, AI applications have spread across tourism, retail and cultural venues — not only improving tourists' travel and spending experiences but also serving as a window onto the practical application level of China's AI industry.
Travel volumes during this year's Golden Week reached unprecedented scale. China's Ministry of Transport projected about 2.13 billion cross-regional trips over the holiday, or roughly 300 million per day. Flight data showed bookings for domestic routes over 2,000 kilometers up about 14 percent year-on-year, while bookings for outbound international flights surged 22.5 percent, reflecting a marked rebound in cross-border travel demand.
To support holiday spending, China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism launched a "National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival Cultural and Tourism Consumption Month" campaign on September 22, spanning the Mid-Autumn holiday (September 25–27) and the National Day holiday (October 1–7) and running through the end of October. Officials said localities across the country planned to hold more than 20,000 cultural and tourism events and distribute more than 310 million yuan (roughly $43 million) in consumer vouchers and subsidies to stimulate cultural and tourism spending and boost domestic demand.
Against this backdrop, the spread of AI technology has drawn particular attention. Provincial-level museums in multiple regions have rolled out affordable, easy-to-use smart-glasses guided-tour services, turning what used to be passive viewing into a more immersive cultural experience. By wearing smart glasses or simply snapping a photo of an artifact with a mobile AI assistant, visitors can instantly pull up its historical background and artistic value; some cultural venues have also introduced VR, AR and digital display technology to "bring static relics to life," enhancing the sense of immersion and engagement.
The rollout of such smart-glasses guided-tour services is closely tied to Chinese AI eyewear makers such as Rokid, which has spent recent years building out smart cultural-tourism scenarios. Shanghai Museum's East Building previously partnered with Rokid and the "Cloud Viewing Museum" platform to launch AI-glasses guided tours; the Zhejiang Provincial Museum likewise teamed up with Rokid on an AR guided-tour service themed "Ten Thousand Years of Zhejiang"; and the Dunhuang Academy has also deployed a Rokid AR touring solution to digitally "bring to life" the murals of the Mogao Caves and other precious relics. According to the makers of such devices, the AI glasses can track a visitor's route, dwell time and interaction preferences in real time, automatically match a narration style to visitor characteristics such as age, and push information about exhibits tailored to individual interests — corroborating the CGTN report's description of museums nationwide rolling out "affordable, easy-to-use" smart-glasses tour services this National Day holiday.
Beyond museums, AI-powered travel assistants aimed at the general public have also played a significant role during the holiday — offering route planning, multilingual guidance and recommendations tailored to a visitor's real-time location, making a level of "customized" service once reserved for professional tour guides accessible to anyone, so ordinary tourists can also enjoy relatively sophisticated smart-tourism experiences.
At the corporate level, Alibaba's Fliggy travel platform has partnered with Amap's AI travel assistant "Teacher Xiao Gao" to give users precise recommendations on dining, lodging and attractions. Ctrip has used AI to upgrade its multilingual customer-service system, helping inbound tourists and hotel partners communicate more smoothly, while also using AI content-moderation technology to detect and deal with fake reviews and protect the authenticity of platform content. Baidu's partnership with Ctrip has focused more on underlying infrastructure: Baidu's intelligent cloud provides computing and AI power to help Ctrip improve operational efficiency, enhance customer experience and cut costs, while Baidu's own Ernie large language model is deeply integrated with Baidu Maps to offer trip-planning services, and Alibaba's Tongyi large model has likewise been embedded in Fliggy and other travel apps.
Separately, according to another CGTN report, the combination of the BeiDou satellite navigation system and AI technology has also played a role in holiday transport management, with the technology used to monitor and forecast traffic flow, helping ease congestion during the holiday travel peak and improving overall travel efficiency and safety — another example of AI being put to practical use in transport scenarios.
Analysts note that this wave of consumer-facing AI applications fits with China's broader "AI Plus" push in recent years, aimed at deeply integrating AI technology with the real economy, public services and everyday life. Golden Week has long been watched as a key barometer of Chinese consumer confidence and domestic demand, but multiple data points suggest that even as trip numbers hit new highs, per-visitor spending has remained relatively cautious — earlier holiday data had shown average per-trip spending falling to a three-year low. Against this backdrop, companies are leaning more heavily on AI to boost operational efficiency, match supply with demand more precisely and lower service costs, in an effort to sustain or even improve conversion rates amid a more rational, cautious consumer environment.
Notably, this wave of consumer-facing AI applications is closely tied to the "Opinion on Deepening the Implementation of the 'AI Plus' Action," issued by China's State Council in August 2025. The document lays out six priority directions — technology, industry, consumption, livelihood, governance and global cooperation. Its "AI Plus Consumption Enhancement" action specifically calls for expanding new scenarios for service consumption and fostering new business models for product consumption, while its "AI Plus Livelihood Well-Being" action encourages AI to play a greater role in cultural content production, cultural dissemination and cultural exchange, and supports using AI to help create content infused with elements of Chinese culture. Several analysts say the proliferation of AI applications across cultural and tourism scenes during this year's Golden Week is a concrete expression of that national policy direction taking hold on the consumer side.
Overall, this year's Golden Week is being seen as a notable marker of China's AI industry moving from research and development toward large-scale deployment in everyday consumer scenarios — whether it is smart guided-tour glasses in museums or AI travel assistants on smartphones, both point to AI gradually spreading from enterprise-level applications into the daily lives and holiday spending of ordinary people.
