The picture shows tourists visiting and experiencing the immersive AI digital art exhibition at the Shandong Art Museum in Jinan City. Posted by Xinhua News Agency (photo taken by Hao Xincheng)

  Before traveling, use DeepSeek to make travel guides to realize personalized AI itinerary customization services; in scenic spots, you can have an all-weather, one-on-one personal tour guide by swiping the code; in museums, you can see the underwater world built by AI and "dance" with whales...

  As application scenarios are accelerating, AI and cultural tourism continue to spark new sparks.

  The reporter learned that with the development of artificial intelligence technology, many scenic spots and cultural and tourism enterprises are accelerating their transformation, laying out and deepening their cultivation of the new smart cultural and tourism track. Experts believe that the next three to five years will be a key window for AI to reshape the cultural and tourism industry structure.

  AI custom travel becomes a trend

  At present, AI is becoming the travel "companion" for many young people. Entering travel time, budget, hobbies and some special requirements, in just a few minutes, a detailed travel plan generated by AI was placed in front of you... During this year's May Day holiday, Ms. Liu, a Shanghai citizen, tried to complete the long-awaited trip to Yunnan through AI's personalized itinerary customization services.

  "In the past, before every trip, I had to go to various platforms to check a large number of strategies, filter out attractions, and constantly check various air tickets and hotel information. It was too tiring!" Ms. Liu told reporters that during this trip, AI helped her solve the big problem of making strategies, and also booked a cost-effective air ticket and hotel. Not only did she greatly improve her efficiency, but she also truly enjoyed the fun of travel.

  Nowadays, more and more tourists are choosing to use AI to customize their personalized itineraries. On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, hundreds of thousands of notes related to topics such as "Use DeepSeek for travel strategies" and "Customized Travel in AI".

  Many tourism platform companies have also keenly captured this market trend and made plans.

  In April this year, the "AI Assistant" tourism application Agent independently developed by Tuniu Travel Network was officially launched. "AI Assistant" combines travel vertical application scenarios and open source models to provide users with one-stop services such as intelligent search, automatic price comparison, personalized recommendation, and packaged reservations for air tickets, hotels, train tickets and other products. Taking the air ticket booking requirements as an example, the entire process takes only 10 seconds from the user's request to the "AI Assistant Maverick" to complete search, comparison, and intelligent recommendation.

  In the same month, Fliggy launched an AI product called "Ask". The products include itinerary assistants, route customizers, smart transportation consultants, hotel consultants, strategy experts, local tour guides, budget managers, service guarantee specialists and other professional assistants. "Ask a question" supports multi-modal input, and users can interact with each other with voice or even communicate in dialect; what is generated for users is not just a boring text, but a travel plan that combines pictures, product cards and scenic spot links.

  Liu Hongmin, the product manager of Fliggy "Ask Ask", revealed that the next "Ask Ask" will continue to iterate and upgrade, and there are currently many new functions under development. "Our AI application exploration is just beginning, and there are unlimited possibilities in this field."

  In the industry's view, travel consumption needs are often highly personalized. Various services such as air tickets, hotels, tickets, cars, local games, etc. are combined with conditions such as departure time, connection, and catering, so users face high decision-making costs. In addition to standardized mass travel products, personalized travel customization services are not only rare in quantity, but also expensive. Nowadays, with the support of AI, large-scale and batch customized tours are expected to truly become a service within reach.

  Industry intelligent transformation accelerates

  From personalized itinerary customization to virtual scenic spot guides, from AR real-life navigation to immersive experiences... With the increasing richness of application scenarios, AI is injecting more vitality into innovation in the cultural and tourism industry.

  In the Tang Dynasty City never sleeps in Xi'an, the AI ​​virtual person "Tang Xiaobao" can interact with tourists and provide travel services; in the "Seeking the Land of Dunhuang" digital exhibition hall in Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang City, Gansu Province, tourists can wear VR glasses and immersively walk into the 285th Cave of Mogao Grottoes, watch the murals at zero distance and explore the details of the cave 360 ​​degrees; in the High-tech Branch of the Shaanxi Provincial Library, people can paint with art masters and independently draw patterns in front of the screen. In a few seconds, they can generate masterpieces of the same brushstroke color painting of Monet.

  A report released by the China Institute of Information and Communications shows that in the analysis of the application maturity matrix of AI+ vertical industries, the AI ​​contribution of the cultural and tourism industry ranks among the forefront of the service industry, and the space-time dimension of AI applications continues to expand. From cultural gene decoding to intelligent content production, all "hot" products that subvert the traditional cultural and tourism ecological scenarios have been produced, breaking the regular experience of tourists and stimulating the generation of new economic consumption growth points.

  The reporter learned that recently, many scenic spots such as Huangshan, Anhui and Lushan, Jiangxi have announced their access to the DeepSeek big model, achieving comprehensive upgrades in terms of intelligent interaction, scene services, and escort experience. At the same time, many tourism companies such as China Travel International, China Youth Travel, and Lingnan Holdings have also widely applied AI in fields such as intelligent customer service, virtual tour guides, etc., to promote the transformation and upgrading of the cultural and tourism industry toward intelligence and personalization.

  Not long ago, Lenovo Group officially signed a cooperation agreement with Xinhualian Cultural Tourism and Hanshe Cultural Tourism Group to jointly release the first domestic cultural and tourism industry intelligent body. According to the relevant person in charge, the cultural and travel industry can respond in concert with the intelligent body in multiple fields such as transportation and security. At the same time, relying on Lenovo's full-stack hybrid AI solutions and services, it realizes the full-chain empowerment of government supervision, enterprise operations and tourist experience, and becomes the first one-stop smart cultural and tourism entrance.

  "The current integration of cultural and tourism industry and artificial intelligence has broken through the initial stage of technological superposition and is giving rise to the reconstruction of a new service ecosystem. On the demand side, AI-driven personalized services are reshaping the tourists' decision-making model; the changes on the supply side are deeper, and AI is reconstructing the value chain structure of the cultural and tourism industry." Zhu Keli, executive director of the China Information Association and founding director of the China Research Institute of New Economics, told the Economic Reference News reporter.

  Deep fusion still has bottlenecks

  The "Smart Tourism Innovation and Development Action Plan" jointly issued by the General Office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and other five departments pointed out that by 2027, the scale of the smart tourism economy will be further expanded, the infrastructure of smart tourism will be more perfect, the level of smart tourism management will be significantly improved, the marketing results of smart tourism will be more obvious, the supply of high-quality smart tourism products will be richer, and the service and experience of smart tourism will be more convenient and comfortable.

  "'AI+Cultural Tourism'' has broad prospects. It can not only provide tourists with personalized, convenient and intelligent services and improve tourism experience, but also help cultural and tourism enterprises optimize management, precise marketing, improve operational efficiency, and promote industrial innovation and development." Hong Yong, an expert from the think tank of the China Digital Integration 50 Forum, said in an interview with the Economic Reference News.

  Zhukeli believes that the next three to five years will be a key window for AI to reshape the cultural and tourism industry structure. Those companies that can take the lead in completing the genetic transformation of tissue capabilities and precipitate AI technology into new service capabilities are expected to gain the first-mover advantage of defining new industry standards.

  However, the interviewed experts also said that there are still some key bottlenecks in the deep integration of AI and culture and tourism.

  "First of all, the data island problem, the data standards of scenic spots, transportation, hotels and other links are not unified, making it difficult to form a complete map of tourists' behavior; secondly, the technical adaptation cost is too high, small and medium-sized cultural and tourism enterprises lack customized development capabilities, and general solutions are often not adapted to the local environment; in addition, compound talent teams that understand the laws of tourism operations and master the characteristics of AI technology are seriously scarce. The superposition of these problems has led to many AI applications staying in the demonstration stage and being unable to form a sustainable business closed loop." Zhu Keli said.

  Regarding the layout of cultural and tourism enterprises, Zhu Keli suggested grasping three core principles: First, technology penetration needs to be deeply connected with the pain points of the scene to avoid being intelligent; Second, data application should establish a dynamic governance mechanism to find a balance between tourist privacy protection and commercial value mining; Third, ecological construction should break through the boundaries of enterprises, and share the risks of technology research and development by co-building innovation consortiums with technology companies and research institutions.

  "Cultural and tourism enterprises should combine their actual situation and reasonably choose AI application scenarios to avoid blindly following the trend. In addition, they should also pay attention to user experience, combine AI technology with humanized services, and create a unique smart cultural and tourism brand." Hong Yong said.

  Experts generally believe that the ultimate test standard for the transformation of "AI + Culture and Tourism" is not the coolness of the technology application, but whether it has truly created irreplaceable tourist value and whether it has activated the innovative expression of cultural heritage. When the tourism experience empowered by AI allows tourists to touch the true pulse of culture in digital interaction, this integration can truly reach the essence of industrial upgrading. (Reporter Ban Juanjuan)

[Editor in charge: Zhou Jingjie]