Following the start of the National Day holiday, the cultural tourism market has heated up once again. This year's National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival "coincide happily," and influenced by favorable factors such as visa-free policies and flight resumptions, cross-border travel demand among Chinese and foreign travelers is strong. The National Immigration Administration predicts that daily cross-border travelers during the National Day holiday will exceed 2 million.

The latest data from Qunar platform shows that China's holiday period has also attracted many foreign friends to experience "China Travel." On October 1st, foreign travelers taking domestic flights on the Qunar platform increased by more than 40% year-on-year, flying to 70 domestic cities, with Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou becoming the top three cities for National Day inbound tourism.

According to Trip.com Group data, this year's National Day popular source countries include South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, the United States, Russia, and Australia. The recent mutual visa-free policy between China and Russia has boosted Russian tourists' enthusiasm for visiting China. As of now, Russian travelers' inbound booking volume for this holiday period has increased by 75% year-on-year.

In interviews, it was discovered that what attracts foreign tourists is not only China's tier-one cities, but more and more foreign friends also hope to travel deeply to "small places" to explore China's beautiful scenery, cuisine, and folk culture. Among these, language barriers, infrastructure that needs improvement, and the need for timely response and communication have become urgent issues requiring improvement.

To better accommodate international traffic, behind the continued heating up of "China Travel," an invisible digital upgrade is underway.

**Inbound Tourism: Opportunities and Challenges Coexist**

Facing the continuously heating "China Travel," how to continuously and effectively seize market opportunities is a challenge many small and medium-sized businesses face.

"First is the language barrier - small and medium hotels lack multilingual service capabilities and find it difficult to respond to inquiries; second, they must face cultural differences, as some international tourists often have specific requirements for facilities (such as smart toilets) and services (such as smoke-free environments); additionally, some businesses also face unfamiliarity with digital tools, low operational efficiency, and need systematic upgrades," a Trip.com Group representative told reporters.

In the view of Trip.com Group Vice President Qin Jing, domestic high-end hotel supply has an annual growth rate of 12%-14%, but demand-side growth has not kept pace, leading to intensified homogeneous competition. Inbound tourism can introduce more international consumers and rapidly expand market capacity.

To help platform merchants quickly seize inbound tourism opportunities, Trip.com Group focuses on helping merchants (especially small and medium enterprises) improve multilingual service capabilities in supply chain empowerment.

According to Qin Jing, first is helping merchants achieve multilingual information coverage, translating hotel information in real-time into 26 languages to enhance international customer acquisition capabilities; second, integrating AI tools into merchant backends to support real-time consultation responses in over 20 languages, allowing processing of overseas orders even without foreign language front desk staff.

Additionally, Trip.com Group has launched tag-based operations, such as introducing "Hi China" inbound-friendly tags to help hotels precisely reach international customers, with hundreds of mid-range hotels in Guangzhou achieving nearly triple-digit growth in overseas orders through this approach.

It's also understood that besides helping small and medium enterprises rapidly improve digital infrastructure, facing the influx of inbound tourists during the National Day holiday, Trip.com Group has pushed "China Travel" convenience measures to the forefront.

During this year's National Day holiday, Trip.com Group established the nation's first one-stop inbound service center at Beijing Capital Airport, where tourists can receive over 10 consultation services including bilingual guidance, payment support, and itinerary customization, along with gift voucher packages and free half-day tours through the Beijing inbound consultation center.

Since the consultation counter's launch, consulting tourists have mainly been from European countries such as Russia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, and Spain. With the expansion of visa-free policies, tourists from various European locations are also showing growth momentum.

Main consultation questions focus on communication, transportation, and accommodation, such as "transportation advice from airport to main city attractions," "comfortable and convenient hotel choices near the airport," "how to activate mobile SIM card data," etc. Additionally, participation methods for the Beijing free half-day tour activity created for inbound tourists have also become popular consultation topics.

**Breaking "Three Barriers" to Welcome "Global Traffic"**

It's also understood that targeting efficiency bottlenecks, inbound service capability gaps, and homogeneous competition pain points faced by different types of domestic hotels, Trip.com Group previously launched the "Smart Travel Future" hotel empowerment plan. This plan uses AI technology as its core driving force, with Trip.com Group planning to assist 200,000 partner hotels within three years.

Breaking language barriers, traffic barriers, and technology barriers have become three key words for the platform helping small and medium enterprises with digital upgrades.

First is breaking the "language barrier." Long-term language barriers have separated many mid-range hotels from the international tourist market. However, currently at a four-star hotel in Shanghai, front desk staff are communicating fluently with Korean tourists through the backend.

It's understood that through the multilingual AI system embedded in Trip.com Group's merchant assistant, which can translate 26 languages in real-time, this hotel lacking foreign language talent has achieved "zero-cost" reception of international clientele for the first time.

The hotel's general manager stated: "In the past three months, the hotel's overseas consultation handling efficiency has improved by over 300%, and in July, inbound orders accounted for over 50% for the first time."

According to Trip.com Group, this comprehensive solution integrating multilingual translation, intelligent responses, and other multi-functions is becoming a powerful weapon for hotels to capture inbound tourism recovery dividends, expected to drive partner hotels to achieve 100% annual growth in inbound orders.

Second is breaking the "traffic barrier." Facing high-star hotels' expectations for differentiation and raising value ceilings, how to precisely reach new customer groups and develop incremental markets has become a key challenge.

Trip.com Group has deployed a combination of "content marketing + scenario experience," helping partners effectively expand their market foundation and achieve 100% new customer growth targets through deep exploration of hotel characteristics, packaging differentiated experiences, precise matching of target customer groups, and comprehensive content penetration.

Additionally, Trip.com Group's "AI Merchant Assistant" and other AI tools are also helping hotels break through "technology barriers" and improve operational efficiency.

Li Wei, who operates an economy hotel in Chengdu, recently discovered that after integrating Trip.com Group's "AI Merchant Assistant," employees said goodbye to being overwhelmed by room status maintenance and various consultations - the system intelligently handles 80% of daily user consultations, with response speed and accuracy significantly improved.

It's understood that over a thousand economy hotels are currently using this solution.

Beyond daily operations, Trip.com Group's AI image-to-video tool can automatically generate introduction videos based on hotel photos, having already generated detail page videos for tens of thousands of hotels. This feature has now been upgraded to incorporate information about hotels' surrounding scenic areas and cuisine, enhancing the attractiveness of hotel surroundings and thereby improving order conversion rates.

"The platform and hotel partners are a community of revenue growth. Through this transformation with win-win as its foundation, we can dissolve cross-border communication barriers and release more human resources to provide better service," said Trip.com Group Vice President and CEO of the Major Accommodation Business Group Xiao Yuan.