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In China, tourism digitisation commonly combines cloud infrastructure, data-driven “smart tourism” platforms, and immersive media with virtual digital humans positioned as front-end service and storytelling interfaces. Typical deployments focus on visitor-facing functions such as attraction explanation, navigation, trip planning, and enquiry handling, while also supporting destination marketing through digital IP, short-form promotional content, and interactive cultural-heritage experiences. The activity frequently involves cross-organisation partnerships between tourism operators and technology suppliers, and it also includes moves toward formalisation through customer-service digital-human standardisation and compliance-oriented mechanisms for registering or listing digital culture-and-tourism products.
[16x Dec 2025]
Baidu AI Cloud (百度智能云) - Described as exporting a “smart tourism” solution bundling AI with VR/AR and big data, including digital-human modules for culture-and-tourism deployments.
Baidu AI Cloud’s “smart tourism” (智慧旅游) stack functions as a destination operating layer that unifies visitor guidance, immersive attraction presentation, and service operations: attractions and tourism bureaus consolidate POI, transport, event, ticketing, and venue content into a governed data store and a tourism knowledge base, then use an LLM-driven agent layer (RAG plus tool-calling) to deliver itinerary planning, POI Q&A, routing, queue/time guidance, multilingual assistance, and after-sales support; VR/AR components provide spatial previews and on-site overlays such as AR navigation, contextual exhibits, and virtual tours, while the digital human module serves as the front-end “guide/concierge” interface in kiosks, apps, and livestream marketing, combining real-time avatar rendering with ASR/TTS, lip-sync, and task execution against back-end systems; the system is operated as a cloud service with media streaming/CDN acceleration and continuous measurement of engagement, conversion, intent-resolution, and latency to improve both visitor experience and tourism-service efficiency.
Beijing Mutianyu Great Wall Tourism Service Co., Ltd. (北京市慕田峪长城旅游服务有限公司) - Mentioned in connection with tourism-service upgrades at the Mutianyu Great Wall site alongside an interactive digital-human experience.
Beijing Mutianyu Great Wall Tourism Service Co., Ltd. is positioned within Beijing’s Great Wall cultural-tourism modernization as the Mutianyu site operator advancing end-to-end visitor-service upgrades while an interactive digital human is used, in the same modernization framing, to exemplify how interpretation can become a conversational on-site experience: at the Gubeikou Great Wall digital experience venue, a Qi Jiguang–themed digital human (数字人) is described as engaging visitors through real-time dialogue and interactive storytelling, showing how heritage education can be delivered through a character-based interface rather than static signage. In parallel, Mutianyu’s upgrade track is described through technology-assisted immersive programs and participatory activities, with the company’s deputy general manager Guo Min (郭敏) describing the use of laser projection and light-and-shadow interaction for offerings such as a Great Wall laser show, alongside hands-on additions like Great Wall brick-making and stargazing study programs, aligning operational service improvements with more experience-driven cultural engagement.
China International Travel Service Jiangsu (中国国旅（江苏）) - Referenced as presenting an AI digital human in a cultural news bundle.
China International Travel Service (CITS) is involved with digital humans through tourism-industry cooperation and applied R&D: under a cooperation agreement based on Baidu Intelligent Cloud’s digital cultural-and-tourism solution, the collaboration scope includes featured maps, AI digital humans, and digital marketing, with the goal of promoting technological innovation and practical deployment in the cultural-and-tourism sector; on 27 December 2025, an additional step was the unveiling of the “China International Travel Service (Jiangsu) AI Digital Human Intelligent Agent R&D and Application Center,” established to explore how AI can be combined with traditional cultural activities and to develop a “Guandan” (掼蛋) digital-human intelligent agent for related applications.
Cixi Culture and Tourism Group (慈溪文旅集团) - Reported to have listed compliant digital culture-and-tourism products (including intangible-heritage “digital humans”) on the Zhejiang Big Data Exchange Center.
Cixi Culture and Tourism Group was reported to have put its first batch of culture-and-tourism data products—built around local cultural IP—on the Zhejiang Big Data Exchange Center after completing the platform’s compliance requirements, framing the move as a shift toward “digital assetization” of the local culture-and-tourism sector; the reported batch is organized into three product series: smart venue management, scenic-area interactive-screen marketing, and intangible-cultural-heritage “digital humans,” and one cited example within the digital-human line is the “Digital Ouyue Music Ensemble” (数字瓯乐团) 3D digital-human product, which is described as relying on the Shanglin Lake celadon cultural inheritance park and using collected data from AI visual-perception systems and holographic terminals to construct a comprehensive model intended to support evaluation of intangible-heritage dissemination, content optimization, and follow-on “secondary consumption” development.
Guizhou Tourism Group (贵旅集团) - Promoted a “Huang Xiaoxi” digital-human smart tour guide positioned as a practical travel assistant and destination-branding tool.
Guizhou Tourism Group promoted “Huang Xiaoxi” (黄小西) as an AI-powered digital-human smart tour guide designed to serve as both a practical travel assistant and a destination-branding interface for Guizhou, using a tourism-domain large-model foundation to answer natural-language visitor questions and generate personalized travel guidance that can bundle attractions, dining, accommodation, and transportation into itinerary-style recommendations within seconds, including longer-stay “travel-living” planning; the build and technical delivery are attributed to the group’s subsidiary Guizhou Guilv Shuwang Technology Co., Ltd. (贵州贵旅数网科技有限公司), with deployment described as integrated into provincial tourism services and platforms such as “One-Click Tour Guizhou” (一码游贵州) and “Guikehui” (贵客荟), and with reported infrastructure reliance on Huawei Cloud’s underlying technology and large-model stack.
Hubei Cultural Tourism Group (湖北文旅集团) - Reported to have deployed an ultra-realistic digital human (“Chuchu”) for visitor-facing tourism experiences.
Hubei Cultural Tourism Group, via its Digital Travel Group (数旅集团/湖北数旅集团), is reported to have deployed an ultra-realistic digital human named Chuchu (楚楚) for visitor-facing cultural tourism experiences, combining a model-driven digital-human pipeline with performance capture to support lifelike presentation and interaction in public settings. Reported technical components include a NOKOV optical motion-capture system and a motion-capture configuration described as MARS cameras paired with a XING·YING solution, intended to produce natural movement for dance, staged performance, and audience engagement. On the interaction side, Chuchu is described as supporting voice-based conversation and simple natural-language Q&A, along with “intelligent recommendation” functions for tourism guidance, and backend support for application scenarios such as big-data-driven interaction and content generation, positioning the character as both a front-end interface for real-time visitor engagement and a digital content/engagement node for broader tourism promotion and service delivery.
Jilin Culture and Tourism (吉林文旅) - Reported to have released a promotional short drama incorporating digital virtual-human IP characters.
The Jilin Culture and Tourism (吉林文旅) project is described as a promotional short-form drama built around branded virtual-human IP characters, using a scripted episodic narrative to showcase Jilin’s destinations, seasonal scenery, local culture, and tourism products in an entertainment-led format rather than a conventional advertisement. In this framing, the virtual-human characters function as recognizable anchors for the campaign, appearing on-screen as recurring personas that guide the story, deliver place-based information, and create continuity across episodes and social-platform cuts, while also enabling consistent brand control and rapid reuse in future content. The intended outcome is to convert viewership into tourism interest by combining plot, character familiarity, and location-specific scenes, and distributing the series through short-video channels where drama formats can sustain repeated exposure and engagement.
Qinghai Guotou Tourism Resources Development Co., Ltd. (青海国投旅游资源开发有限公司) - Described as co-developing an Antarctic-themed immersive large-space VR experience guided by a virtual digital human.
An Antarctic-themed, walk-through “large-space” immersive VR exhibition launched in Xining, Qinghai on November 20, 2025, introduced through cooperation between Qinghai Guotou Tourism Resource Development Co., Ltd. and Xining Cultural Tourism Investment and Development Group as a cultural tourism attraction. Visitors wear VR headsets and move through a mapped physical space that corresponds to a virtual Antarctic environment, with the experience framed as a polar expedition narrative and led by a virtual digital human acting as an in-world guide. The content includes a sequence in which participants “board” the Xuelong (Snow Dragon) polar research vessel, positioning the exhibition as a story-driven VR product that blends experiential entertainment with science-and-exploration themed public education and on-site tourism spending.
Sanmenxia City Culture and Tourism Group (三门峡市文旅集团) - Listed as a participating entity in the context of a national standard for customer-service virtual digital humans.
SenseTime (商汤科技) partnered with Sanmenxia City Culture and Tourism Group and the Lingbao municipal government to create and launch what was presented as China’s first AI large-model–driven “Laozi digital human,” unveiled at the Hangu Pass historical and cultural tourism area in Lingbao, Sanmenxia, Henan, in late May 2025 and linked to activities around the 30th Sanmenxia Yellow River Culture and Tourism Festival; the project was framed as a “dialogue across time” that digitally re-presents Laozi and the cultural setting associated with the Tao Te Ching, with the character design produced by SenseTime’s digital human team and positioned as a cultural-tourism application of AI for cultural storytelling and related uses such as media communication and education, with some posts also associating it with broader digital-human deployment scenarios like e-commerce livestreaming.
Shandong Digital Culture Group (山东数字文化集团) - Reported (with Shandong Rail Investment Group) as signing a cooperation agreement that included co-building digital humans as part of cultural digitization efforts.
Shandong Digital Culture Group (山东数字文化集团) and Shandong Rail Investment Holding Group (山东铁投集团) were reported to have signed a strategic cooperation agreement on 27 November 2025 in Jinan that positions “co-building AI digital humans” as a core workstream within broader cultural digitization and “culture + technology” integration, alongside joint development of industry large models, data-asset transformation, and shared use of computing platforms; in practical terms, the initiative frames digital humans as interactive virtual personas that can be jointly developed and deployed across cultural communication and transport-related scenarios to digitize, present, and disseminate cultural content and narratives such as stories tied to Shandong’s high-speed rail development.
Shanxi Cultural Tourism (山西文旅) - Mentioned as a cultural-tourism partner in a cooperation where JD digital humans presented Yungang Grottoes content.
A cultural-tourism partnership in Shanxi, centered on Datong and the Yungang Grottoes, applied JD Cloud’s digital-human generation and speech technology to turn heritage narratives into virtual guides and story-driven social video campaigns: it began with the April 25, 2024 debut of the “Hua Mulan” (Digital Mulan) cultural-tourism digital human, jointly unveiled by Datong’s municipal digital-city investment company and JD Cloud and then deployed as a virtual guide for Datong attractions (including the Yungang Grottoes and the City Wall) and for livestream-style promotion of local cultural products; it later expanded when JD introduced JoyStreamer 4.0, a platform for generating digital-human videos, and Shanxi Cultural Tourism (Shanxi Wenlv) used it to publish narrative promotions such as animated Yungang Buddhas presenting Shanxi culture on official channels; the collaboration assigned JD Cloud the core AI stack (JoyStreamer plus the “Yanyi” speech models trained on over 50,000 hours of speech data for lifelike voice and animation), while the Datong-side entity integrated the avatar into tourism systems and Shanxi Wenlv coordinated themes, scripting, and distribution; reported outcomes included viral engagement on Douyin and cumulative cross-platform view counts above 10 million, framed as improving public access to heritage content through more interactive, character-led storytelling.
Tencent Cloud (腾讯云) - Mentioned in a Jiangsu tourism-platform digitization case where a tourism platform integrated a digital human for visitor services such as navigation and trip planning.
Nanjing Museum (南京博物院), in Jiangsu Province, launched a WeChat mini-program–based “Public Digital Service Platform” in late 2023 that digitizes the end-to-end visitor journey, and Tencent Cloud’s role is described as delivering the mini-program platform and supplying the underlying cloud, data, and AI capabilities that support functions such as in-museum navigation and a digital human guide (digital docent/assistant) for visitor Q&A and exhibit interpretation; it also describes Tencent Cloud as standardizing the platform’s design and workflows so previously separate functions such as ticketing, interpretation, and museum shopping are brought together through a single unified entry point, framing Tencent Cloud as the technical and product integrator for a tourism-facing digital human experience within the broader visitor services system.
Tujia (途家) - A homestay platform (linked to Trip.com Group) that launched an immersive AI room-selection experience featuring a dialect-capable digital human.
Tujia (途家) is a China-based homestay and short-term rental booking platform that has positioned “landlord digital humans” as a product layer inside its accommodation listings: a human-like digital persona associated with a property or host that stays available around the clock to present the accommodation’s facilities, highlights, and differentiators, and to answer prospective guests through interactive dialogue, with support for dialect variation and expressive audiovisual output such as voice timbre, lip movement, and modeled affect; in Tujia’s framing, this digital-human layer is paired with immersive “AI space house-selection” (panoramic, layout-focused preview) so that discovery and pre-booking evaluation feel closer to an in-person host walkthrough while remaining scalable across many properties.
Ximalaya (喜马拉雅) - Mentioned via the “Ximalaya Tao Cang Ideal Village,” framed as a technology-oriented cultural-tourism complex featuring digital-human experiences.
Ximalaya (喜马拉雅) is a major Chinese audio platform for audiobooks, podcasts, and other spoken-word content that has increasingly positioned “digital humans” as part of its creator and listening ecosystem, mainly through voice-first virtual presenters, synthetic narrators, and AI assistants built on its large content library: it has promoted AI creation infrastructure such as the “Zhufeng” (珠峰) audio model and related AIGC services that combine text understanding, text-to-speech, large voice libraries, and “digital human” capabilities for producing voiced content at scale, and it has also launched creator-facing production tools like YinJian AI (音剪AI) for AI-assisted audio editing, packaging, and character/role handling, while extending into conversational audio experiences through products like the “Xiaoya” (小雅) agent that can recommend and control audio content via dialogue; in practice, Ximalaya’s digital-human relevance is less about humanoid visuals and more about industrialized voice generation, personality-driven audio delivery, and platform tooling that lets creators and partners deploy virtual narrators or audio companions across listening and content-production workflows.
Yike Illusion Technology (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. (天津壹刻幻象科技有限公司) - Described as demonstrating holographic digital humans and being positioned for applications including scenic-spot explanation.
Tianjin Yike Huanying Technology Co., Ltd. (天津壹刻幻象科技有限公司) is an AI digital-human systems company founded in 2021 with R&D centers in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Tianjin, focused on training natural-language models and building digital virtual avatars; it promotes a “holographic digital human” capability that supports 360-degree viewing with high-definition rendering of fine body-motion details (for example, costume folds and movement under holographic-style presentation), and it positions its products for use cases such as virtual character performances, interactive digital humans, and photo live-streaming services, while also describing collaboration and business presence connected to higher-education innovation parks and universities, including activity in the Tianjin “Tiankai” higher-education science-and-innovation park (Jinnan area).
Yunnan Tourism Co., Ltd. (云南旅游股份有限公司) - Noted in market coverage as associated with “virtual digital human” and online-travel related concept exposure.
Yunnan Tourism Co., Ltd. is a listed tourism company in Yunnan that positions itself as a “whole-region tourism integrated service provider” and, in market-facing disclosures and concept classifications, is repeatedly associated with “virtual digital humans” alongside online tourism, VR/metaverse themes, and cultural-tourism technology operations; in this digital-human context, the company is described as applying AI digital-human video-style presentation to scenic-spot content to make visitor communication more contemporary, and it has referenced digital-human technology within its broader research and development planning, indicating an interest in using humanlike virtual presenters or assistants as part of tourism platform and destination operations rather than treating digital humans as a standalone product category.