Have you noticed the way you book flights and hotels is quietly changing?

Previously, booking a hotel involved using an online travel agency (OTA), sorting by price, and scrolling through dozens of pages of reviews.

Now, it is about asking AI to "Plan my 7-day trip to London," and simply selecting the top-ranked hotel.

This is not a future trend; it is actually happening today. Data from TravelDaily's "2026 China Tourism AI Marketing White Paper" shows that 86% of travellers already use AI to plan their trips, and 64% of people assume that the top-ranked brand recommended by AI is the most authoritative.

AI is no longer just an execution tool. It has become a primary source for travel decisions.

Those who do not make it onto AI's shortlist of recommendations miss out on high-value customer traffic. However, these five findings are the real questions worth considering.

I. Shifting decision-making channels: AI has become a "primary source"

Over 86% of tourists use AI to plan their trips, and 64% believe that AI-recommended, top-ranking brands have more authority. The channels through which users obtain information are also changing: social media accounts for 65.4%, conversational AI for 59.51%, and traditional search engines have dropped to 43.39%.

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This means the core battleground for tourism marketing is shifting. In the past, the competition was for search engine rankings and top OTA placements. It is now about who can be included in AI answers. AI does not steal OTA purchases, but it shifts the power behind those purchase decisions. Once AI completes the initial screening for users, brands that are not on the recommendation list stand little chance of being considered.

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II. AI-generated visuals: a risk zone for high-end brands

While AI-generated landscape images can be beautiful, 53% of users explicitly stated that they "only appreciate them and do not refer to the actual scenery." More alarmingly, high-income groups have a lower tolerance for inaccurate AI content.

Data shows that among those earning over 50,000 yuan per month, 50% frequently use AI, but they are also the most capable of identifying fake images. Upon seeing an overly beautified AI-generated image of a room, users who have already stayed in high-end hotels will regard it as unrealistic, not beautiful. Once trust is broken, subsequent conversions become impossible.

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For high-end brands, AI-generated content requires extreme caution. Real photography remains irreplaceable in product demonstrations and real-world presentations.

III. Generation Z has higher standards for AI-generated visuals

Younger users demand greater realism from AI-generated images than older groups. Nearly half of those aged 18-30 view AI visual content negatively. "It doesn't look real" is their primary objection.

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This means that trying to reach young customers with low-quality AI visuals can be counterproductive. Marketing targeting Generation Z should minimise obvious AI traces, instead utilising more genuine blogger content, on-site footage, and native social media images.

IV. High-income travellers are the most reliant on AI.

The higher the income, the higher the frequency of AI use. The more often they travel, the stronger their dependence on AI is.

Among those earning over 50,000 yuan per month, 50% use AI as their primary search tool. 53% of frequent travellers who take more than 10 trips per year regularly use AI. The core demand for high earners is not cheapness, but rather saving time and decision-making costs.

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This means that the most valuable customer group is actively filtering and segmenting using AI channels. Brands that do not consider how AI recommendation systems work will directly miss out on this segment.

V. The AI era actually amplifies the value of human services

A counterintuitive finding: After the widespread adoption of AI, high-income earners are actually more willing to pay for human services.

Among those earning over 50,000 yuan per month, 75.86% are willing to pay a premium for fully personalised human services, and this willingness is positively correlated with income. When AI solves the efficiency problem, users value genuine, warm interpersonal interactions even more.

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AI handles efficiency, humans handle trust. They are not substitutes for one another, but instead handle different tasks. After the technology-intensive stages, human interaction becomes the differentiating premium.

The logic of competition is being rewritten
These five findings illustrate that AI isn’t optimising old rules, but it is establishing new ones.

In the past, the focus of tourism marketing was to grab attention — buying keywords, competing for rankings, and investing in advertising.

Now, the competition is shifting to "grabbing AI's understanding." Only by being understood, recognised, and recommended by AI can brands enter their user’s decision-making path.

This signifies three major shifts:
From short-term investment to long-term assets, AI recommendations rely not on a single advertisement, but on the brand's long-term accumulated reputation, tags, and credible content.

From execution capabilities to cognitive capabilities, using AI tools is just the beginning. More importantly, it is about understanding how AI changes how users make choices.

From a traffic-driven mindset to a trust-driven mindset, AI can change the way we reach people, but not the underlying logic of business. People will ultimately only buy from those they trust.

Moving forward, whoever can gain the trust of both AI and users earliest will be more likely to gain an advantage in the next stage of tourism marketing competition.

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