Artificial intelligence has become increasingly embedded across the country during the Spring Festival holiday, reshaping areas including payments, trip planning and on-the-road consumption.

Ant Group said the number of users of Alipay's AI Pay service surpassed 100 million during the holiday, with transaction volumes exceeding 120 million last month.

The company refers to the service as "the first AI-native payment product globally" to see both 100 million users and 100 million transactions, signaling a larger scale of commercial adoption of the cutting-edge technology.

Ant also said the user number of its stand-alone AI healthcare product — Ant AFu — surpassed 100 million over the holiday, with more than half of new users coming from third-tier cities, highlighting the technology's widening geographic reach.

The wide use of AI also coincided with rapid growth in the travel boom during the holiday. Online travel platform Fliggy said domestic travel orders hit a record high over the holiday, with ticket bookings rising more than 80 percent year-on-year and hotel room stays increasing 75 percent.

Per capita spending on domestic trips surged about 10 percent from 2025 levels, while bundled packages combining accommodation and entertainment saw orders jump 140 percent year-on-year.

AI-driven services played a growing role in that surge. Fliggy said AI-generated orders increased more than eightfold compared with pre-holiday levels.

AI-powered ticket bookings were the most popular, with order volumes rising more than 24 times.

Higher-value services were also increasingly completed via AI tools, with average air ticket prices exceeding 700 yuan ($97) and hotel bookings averaging nearly 300 yuan per night.

Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, Shanghai, Chongqing, Wuhan in Hubei province and Zhengzhou in Henan province were among the most popular destinations for AI-assisted hotel bookings.

Data from DeepTrip, an AI-supported tourism service platform, showed that transport ticketing accounted for 57.4 percent of holiday-related AI inquiries, while questions about attractions made up around 20 percent and local customs 12.9 percent.

Among users posing queries about Spring Festival traditions, the majority were aged under 30, pointing to strong adoption among younger generations.

Dai Qionghai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that AI has become a core engine of new quality productive forces. Demand-driven innovation in consumer markets is accelerating AI's integration into the real economy.