During this National Day holiday, scenic spots welcomed not only crowds of visitors but also a new batch of robot "employees." They are no longer just "performing guests" doing flips and dances on stage but have begun working shifts, selling goods, handling payments, conducting inspections and security patrols, and putting on nighttime performances. According to incomplete statistics, nearly 30 embodied intelligence and robotics companies have entered cultural tourism, retail, and consumer service scenarios, with thousands of units deployed during the National Day period. At the same time, the "rush to rent" robots has disappeared, with daily rental prices falling from the tens of thousands of yuan level in early 2025 to under one thousand yuan. After bidding farewell to the performance model that relied on novelty to attract attention, cultural tourism scenarios have become a real-world testing ground for embodied intelligence. Robots "being able to work" has been achieved, but achieving sustainable profitability still requires the industry to overcome multiple structural barriers.

After Rental Price "Avalanche," the Cultural Tourism Track Bids Farewell to Pure Performance Economy

The robot rental market, which was ignited by the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, once made "one machine hard to find" the norm. Since the beginning of this year, daily rental prices for humanoid robots have fallen sharply, from the tens of thousands of yuan "daily wage" in early last year to 2,000 to 3,000 yuan in early this year. A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noted that current daily rental prices for humanoid robots have fallen below one thousand yuan. E-commerce platforms such as Xianyu show that some merchants have listed Unitree humanoid robot rental starting prices as low as 289 yuan per day. The deep reason behind the sharp drop in robot rental prices is not just track congestion but also severe homogenization of "robot performances" within cultural tourism scenarios. When every scenic spot can rent a robot that can dance and shake hands, "novelty" is no longer a scarce resource. The most significant change during this National Day period is that the functional boundaries of robots have expanded from "being watched" to "doing work for people." It is not hard to see that robots in scenic spots are no longer just "performing guests" who dance and sing but are truly working at major scenic spots, and retail and service scenarios are expected to be the first to generate positive cash flow. At the Taoxichuan Cultural and Creative Block in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi, a reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily observed that Galbot's humanoid robot Galbot G1 has already "taken up a post" as a salesperson inside a mobile vending vehicle. On the shelves behind it are retail goods such as bottled water and cultural creative souvenirs. The robot can autonomously complete greeting, product recommendation, order placement and payment, grasping, and delivery. Many children gathered around the window to interact with the robot, even singing and dancing with it. In addition to Taoxichuan, Galbot's Galaxy Space Capsule smart retail stores have opened in scenic spots such as the Summer Palace, Old Summer Palace, Badaling Great Wall, and Dunhuang Mingsha Mountain. It is reported that the space capsules have now been deployed in approximately 200 locations across about 50 cities nationwide. From October 1 to 7, Qingtian Zu joined hands with Sinar Mas Group to launch a "Robot National Day Wonderful Night" at Shanghai White Magnolia Plaza. AgiBot's humanoid robot Lingxi also served as a one-day store manager at offline stores of ski brand BURTON and fragrance brand AD VITAM, responsible for customer interaction and photos, guiding store visits, and consultation and recommendations. Qingtian Zu told a reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the overall performance of the linked brands during the National Day holiday was strong, with AD VITAM increasing 9% year-on-year and Burton's average transaction value increasing 16%. On the eve of National Day, an embodied intelligence-themed park jointly created by AgiBot and Chimelong opened at Hengqin Chimelong Spaceship Park. More than 300 robots were deployed across over 100 locations, "working shifts" and undertaking tasks such as science popularization lectures, table tennis matches, writing Chinese calligraphy, and rock-paper-scissors interactions. As National Day holiday visitor traffic arrived, this batch of robots began entering the park's daily operations. In addition, during the National Day period, Crossdimension Intelligence operated more than 30 robot commercial service kiosks in cultural tourism scenic spots, theme parks, and commercial complexes, with humanoid robots providing freshly made and retail services such as ice cream, popcorn, coffee, and beverages. It is reported that during the golden week, these kiosks received a cumulative visitor flow of more than 110,000 person-times, with a single robot serving more than 500 orders per day on average, and a benchmark store achieving total holiday revenue of 150,000 yuan. At the same time, inspection and security are another B-end entry point that is opening up. The Shenxianju Scenic Area in Zhejiang activated intelligent robot dog patrols during the National Day period to "build a 'human defense plus technical defense' safety line." The four-legged patrol robot dogs at Huayan Temple in Datong were put into normalized duty, undertaking tasks such as civilized guidance, daily patrols, and fire inspections, achieving 24-hour uninterrupted duty.

After the "Newbie Village" Trial, How Can Embodied Intelligence Cross the Scenario and Cost Barriers?

The concentrated deployment of a large number of humanoid robots during the National Day holiday completed a large-scale real-world drill. This trial proved that robots already possess the ability to work, but to complete a commercial profitability loop, the industry must face a series of structural challenges more thorny than immature technology. The most direct challenge comes from the seasonal dependence of the operating ledger. At present, the revenue of most cultural tourism robot projects mainly relies on the novelty dividend and holiday visitor traffic. But what truly determines profitability sustainability is whether non-holiday periods can absorb operation and maintenance costs. The industrial sector has clear quantitative standards for evaluating robot value, but commercial accounting in cultural tourism scenarios is much more complex: tourists' willingness to interact, whether incremental consumption is generated, supporting labor and maintenance costs, and so on all still lack standard answers. Taking the embodied intelligence-themed park jointly built by AgiBot and Chimelong as an example, Xiong Yan, AgiBot partner, co-president, president of the Central R&D Department, and president of the Interactive Business System, revealed to a reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the current ratio of robots to operating personnel at the Chimelong site is about 3:1, "but the 3:1 ratio is not long-term. Our basically expected goal is 10:1, with 10 robots paired with 1 person. Both sides believe the ideal target should be 20:1." Based on Chimelong's scale of more than 300 robots, on-site operation and maintenance personnel already exceed 100. Wang Chuang, AgiBot partner, senior vice president, and president of the General Business Department, further broke down the cost reduction path: optimizing the human ratio from 3:1 to 10:1 and then to 20:1, while extending equipment service life to amortize procurement costs and controlling network, token fees, and spare parts losses, aiming to reduce customers' overall costs across various differentiated scenarios. At the same time, the "data scarcity" is becoming the biggest bottleneck in the industrialization of embodied intelligence, as internet data cannot replace real physical interaction data. For robot companies, another value of cultural tourism scenarios lies in the continuous stream of real human-robot interaction data feeding back into algorithm iteration. Robots receive large numbers of tourists every day and collect cases of interaction failures and recognition errors, which can continuously iterate models and potentially form a flywheel effect of "scenario use—data feedback—technology iteration—experience upgrade." However, there is still an unresolved question: whether cultural tourism scenarios can become a springboard for embodied intelligence to land across thousands of industries. Many industry insiders regard cultural tourism scenarios as the "newbie village" for embodied intelligence, where tasks are relatively standardized and the tolerance for error is far greater than in industrial scenarios. Even robot stuttering or falling can create topics and trigger secondary spread online. But whether the practical experience of the "newbie village" can be reused in more complex real business scenarios remains unknown. "To truly achieve what the general public considers completely unnecessary debugging, just like a person, I think it will take at least 3 to 5 years," Xiong Yan told a reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily. "But this does not prevent robots from beginning to enter thousands of industries. It is just that efficiency, experience, and how many tasks can be completed are still in a process of continuous improvement, but this process is necessary." The concentrated National Day deployment confirms that humanoid robots can already work in the real world, but seasonal profitability, operation and maintenance costs, and scenario migration remain real tests. Novelty will eventually fade, and how to run through the commercial loop is the key for embodied intelligence to move beyond cultural tourism scenarios.