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Doubao hotel sales rose over 71% in China's 13-day holiday. See what AI hotel booking means for Chinese travelers and how to prepare your property.
AI assistants moved from search to booking over China's 13-day holiday: sales through Doubao (豆包) hotel booking rose over 71% versus September, Douyin (抖音) reports.
Why it matters: A new gate beside the OTAs
Chinese travelers now pick and book hotels inside AI assistants as well as on online travel agencies (OTAs). Doubao says it sells no ranking and charges only when an order completes, according to Yangtze Evening News. PingWest (品玩) puts the fee at about 12%.
That gives you a pay-on-result channel to test against OTA commission plus bidding ads.
The assistants recommend from clear, checkable data: room types, prices, availability, location. Hotels that publish it give them a reason to surface you.
Outbound destinations that prepare Chinese-language, machine-readable content now will be ready if assistants add overseas products.
By the numbers: Doubao orders and sales both jumped
Platforms report fast month-on-month growth in AI-assisted travel over Mid-Autumn and National Day.
Doubao hotel sales rose over 71% month on month, says Douyin's National Day report, as relayed by Hotel & Travel Report (Jiulü Baogao). Orders concentrated in Beijing, Chengdu and Xi'an.
Doubao hotel order volume rose over 56% month on month, according to Douyin Life Services data reported by BTiii (Jinglv).
Meituan (美团) said its assistant Xiaotuan (小团) checked merchant information 750 million times. About 80% of its users are under 35.
Fliggy (飞猪) said interactions with its AI assistant rose 158% month on month, and flight and hotel bookings it guided rose 110%.
Flashback: Fliggy's AI orders jumped 800% at Spring Festival
Alibaba's Qwen and Fliggy moved AI from answering questions to completing orders earlier this year. Fliggy said its AI-driven orders rose 800% during Spring Festival 2026, according to India Outbound, after Qwen processed over 200 million AI-native shopping orders.
Doubao followed in August. From 20 August 2026, hotel orders that come through Doubao and complete on Douyin's merchant platform carry a combined fee of about 12% (11.4% software service fee plus 0.6% payment fee).
What they're saying: "Might get no orders"
A top domestic hotel group told PingWest that its Doubao-channel orders had grown over the previous two to three weeks and that it now treats the channel as a priority to watch. It said:
如果不用豆包，可能一单都没有
"If we don't use Doubao, we might get no orders from it at all."
The group's open question is whether pre-, during- and post-stay service can run as one closed loop.
What to do: Make your property readable
Start with small tests while the channel is young.
Audit room types, prices, availability and location text for clarity and consistency in Chinese. (DO NOT put your texts in images for aesthetic reasons, as many larger brands do on WeChat.)
Publish Chinese-language Douyin and OTA content, then ask each assistant about your property to see which one surfaces you.
Compare a roughly 12% pay-on-result fee with your current OTA commission plus ad spend.
Track outbound demand. China's National Immigration Administration (NIA) counted 4.444 million mainland outbound trips over National Day, up 9.3% year on year.
Watch where demand goes. Douyin's top outbound destinations were South Korea, the Maldives, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Fliggy said European partners already use its tools to attract Chinese travelers.
Sources
Ready to win Chinese customers?
Brands Without Borders helps businesses abroad reach Chinese travelers and consumers on Xiaohongshu and WeChat, from hotels and destinations to restaurants, retail and luxury brands. We handle account setup and verification, creative, media buying and the WeCom handoff that turns a post into a booking or a sale.
