Chinese OTAs Turn AI Into Booking Engines for Global Expansion

Chinese online travel agencies are using AI for more than trip inspiration.

They are building it into the booking process itself as they look for wider international growth. That is the main takeaway from a Phocuswright research update published in early April, which says Chinese OTAs are moving toward AI-driven planning, decision-making, booking, and payments.

AI tools are moving closer to the point of sale

Chinese travel companies first introduced AI tools mainly to help users research trips and build itineraries. Phocuswright points to products such as Trip.com’s TripGenie, Fliggy’s AskMe, Tongcheng’s DeepTrip, Tuniu’s Xiao Niu, and Mafengwo’s Xiao Ma as examples of that early phase.

Now those tools are becoming more commercial. Trip.com said in March that 60 percent of TripGenie interactions are tied to booking decisions, while use of its AI-assisted features rose 300 percent year over year. That suggests travelers are starting to use AI not just to get ideas, but to help them choose and book.

Chinese OTAs may be well placed to benefit

Chinese OTAs may have an advantage because they already operate in mobile-first digital ecosystems where users are used to doing many things in one app. Over time, China’s tech sector has built strong links between content, payments, shopping, and services.

Trip.com Chairman James Liang said in late February that AI agents are becoming an important new interface, but he also stressed that travel still depends on live pricing, secure payments, booking fulfillment, and customer support.

Scale also matters. In its latest annual filing, Trip.com said that by the end of 2024 it offered products in 24 languages, supported 35 local currencies, and operated 40 local sites.

Stronger China travel market gives them room to test and grow

China’s travel market is again operating at a very large scale. During the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, the country recorded 596 million domestic trips and more than 800 billion yuan ($117.2 billion) in tourism spending. Authorities also said cross-border travel increased during the holiday.

That gives OTAs a large real-world testing ground for AI. Heavy travel volumes create more searches, more itinerary changes, more bookings, and more customer-service interactions.

Phocuswright also argues that domestic, outbound, and inbound travel all support this strategy in different ways. Domestic demand gives OTAs scale, outbound travel helps them build international partnerships, and inbound travel helps them serve travelers coming into China. AI can help connect those three areas through more usable planning and shopping tools.

AI booking is becoming more real

Recent developments suggest this shift is already moving beyond the testing stage. Travolution reported on March 27 that Fliggy had gone live with bookings through its AI interface.

For suppliers, that creates both opportunity and risk. AI tools may help smaller travel businesses create multilingual content and appear more effectively in digital distribution systems, which Phocuswright says could make these platforms more accessible to companies with fewer resources. But it also means OTAs may gain more control over how travel products are presented and chosen.

AI interfaces are emerging as the next distribution gatekeepers

AI is starting to influence travel distribution beyond China. Booking Holdings warned that platforms such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini could become new gatekeepers in hotel search and booking, highlighting the same core issue: as AI moves closer to trip planning and purchase decisions, visibility, pricing, and supplier access may increasingly depend on who controls the interface travelers use first.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash