According to the latest Dragon Trail Research Chinese Outbound Travel Trade Survey, published on July 29, 2026, AI adoption is nearly universal among Chinese travel agencies, with most expecting increased use.
“In Dragon Trail’s summer 2025 Chinese Outbound Travel Trade Survey, 82 per cent of travel agents said their company was already using AI – one year later, the proportion has risen to 99 per cent,” noted Sienna Parulis-Cook, director of marketing and communications at Dragon Trail International.
Dragon Trail’s summer survey of 310 Chinese travel trade professionals currently engaged in selling outbound travel products explored how Chinese travel agents are using AI, as well as the technology’s current limitations and opportunities for future improvement.
The results showed that 99 per cent of travel agents reported at least some AI adoption by their companies, with 25 per cent saying the technology has been widely adopted across multiple business areas and another 46 per cent saying it is used in some business areas.
Looking ahead to the next 12 months, 89 per cent of respondents expected AI adoption by their companies to increase.
“Chinese travel agencies are using AI for a wide variety of business areas, the most popular of which are travel information collection and management for products such as hotels and flights, and translation and multi-lingual support, both selected by half of respondents,” said Parulis-Cook.
The survey also found that travel agents want to use AI to enhance personalisation but face challenges in doing so.
“Over half of our respondents (53 per cent) say this is the area where AI has the greatest potential to help them improve their business – but at the same time, customer information management is currently the area where travel agencies are least likely to be using AI and data security and privacy concerns are seen as the biggest challenge to applying AI to their business by 63 per cent of respondents,” Parulis-Cook elaborated.
She added that over the last year, Dragon Trail has been rolling out new AI tools for B2B marketing, including AI-powered support for live events and AI-enhanced travel trade marketing hubs, helping its clients to “connect more easily to the Chinese travel trade and empower travel agents to keep selling to this still-hungry market”.
