Tourism industry piggybacks on DeepSeek's AI prowess, creating new opportunities

People who used to spend hours juggling ticketing apps and tourism websites to arrange a travel itinerary can now type a simple description of their plans into an AI platform -- such as the latest release from DeepSeek -- and their work is done.

On Jan 20, roughly a week before this year's Spring Festival, Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released its latest open-source model R1, which boasts a technological breakthrough in leveraging pure deep learning methods to allow AI to spontaneously emerge with reasoning capabilities.

With its top-class performance and cost-effectiveness, the DeepSeek-R1 has not only stirred up the tech world, but also gone viral among people from various sectors. Since its launch, the model has also become a new favorite for many travelers to generate their travel plans.

Take Xi'an, one of China's most popular travel destinations, as an example. Inputting "a five-day tour to dive deep into historical sites, specialties and folk culture in Xi'an" into DeepSeek-R1 will yield a detailed travel plan instantly, including daily schedules, as well as suitable times and modes of transport to visit every scenic spot and dining choice along the way.

Zhang Yu, who visited Xi'an with the aid of DeepSeek earlier this month, shared the novel experience with local media. "DeepSeek proved my worries -- that unexpected things might ruin the AI-generated travel plan -- were completely unnecessary. The trip was so well-planned that I managed to visit all the sites smoothly and seamlessly, and enjoyed every moment of it."

Zhao Xinyue, a university student who has posted many Xi'an travel vlogs on the Xiaohongshu lifestyle-sharing platform, echoed Zhang's view.

"As a person who cares so much about details, I found that travel plans generated by DeepSeek did a very good job with all the specifics. They not only recommended popular tourist attractions but also presented distinctive niche sites to enrich my travel experience. DeepSeek can also adjust travel plans based on real-time weather and crowd-flow data, which is very helpful," Zhao said.

During this year's Spring Festival, traditionally a bustling holiday season for travel and consumption, cities including Nanjing, Zhanjiang and Weifang kicked off an experiment to generate tourism promotions with DeepSeek on social media. Based on AI-generated content, these posts have introduced local scenic areas, cuisines and cultural heritage to potential travelers, gaining huge traction online.

"During the early stage of trialing DeepSeek to create content, we found the AI-generated answers were more intelligent and efficiently presented than we expected. It's helpful for us when we're writing," said a social media staff worker promoting culture and tourism of Shaanxi Province.

DeepSeek also brings new momentum and increased productivity to tourism enterprises. Recently, Chinese online travel platform Mafengwo announced that it has upgraded its smart travel services in Guizhou Province by connecting them with the DeepSeek model.

Simulating the logical thought process of human beings, the platform factors in various user demands and how different tourist sites correlate, and it also coordinates times, traffic and the physical condition of travelers.

"This deep integration with DeepSeek not only provides more accurate and personalized services for tourists through AI, but also mirrors the tourism industry's transformation from traditional algorithm-based recommendations to interpretable, traceable, intelligent decision-making," according to Mafengwo's AI project manager. "This has ushered in a new chapter of smart tourism."