Fliggy goes live with bookings via AI interface

AI interface now processes bookings in China

Fliggy has moved its artificial intelligence interface into production for booking fulfilment after a pilot phase, confirming it can now process reservations end to end. Following the launch of a suite of planning tools in 2025, Alibaba’s travel platform says the assistant now goes beyond itinerary support to handle transactions. During the 2026 Lunar New Year campaign, it reports a sharp rise in AI-handled orders and conversion rates for air, rail and attraction tickets that are now comparable with long-established OTAs.

The booking capability is powered by Qwen App, Alibaba’s consumer AI application. The integration is designed to connect core services across the Alibaba ecosystem so travellers can state needs in natural language while the AI orchestrates search, product selection, payment and related services in the background. The aim is to provide continuity from inspiration to decision and transaction without switching channels.

“Alibaba’s AI-native application, Qwen, can now deeply integrate core services across Alibaba’s ecosystem — including Fliggy, Taobao, Taobao Instant Commerce, Alipay and Amap. Leveraging this capability, Fliggy is leading the shift: consumers can now use natural language to ask the AI to complete travel bookings on their behalf, while travel is increasingly integrated with more lifestyle scenarios such as shopping, food delivery and booking cinema tickets,” said Dr. Alex Chen, Chief Technology Officer at Fliggy.

“Already consumers are moving from using AI just for search to actually using AI to execute tasks – we are pleased to see that dozens of forward-thinking destinations and major travel brands have already partnered with Fliggy to explore potential AI collaborations to be a part of this shift,” Chen added.

Spring Festival test

The strategy is to support a shift in behaviour: AI is moving from search to task execution. According to Alibaba, Qwen App processed more than 200 million AI-native shopping orders during the Spring Festival campaign. Fliggy says its AI orders rose by 800%, with attraction ticket bookings jumping more than 24-fold. Meanwhile, conversion rates for air, train and attraction tickets are said to be comparable with OTAs that have decades of experience.

In 2025 the company launched several AI-powered products: the consumer-facing assistant AskMe and a B2B solution from its business travel arm AliBtrip. European partners are already integrating these tools to attract and serve Chinese outbound travellers in new ways, opening the door to AI-steered direct distribution.