- Alibaba’s travel affiliate pushes deeper into AI-powered hotel operations
- Tool handles pricing, inventory, customer service and operational analysis
Alibaba’s online travel and booking platform Fliggy (飞猪) on May 20 launched an AI-powered hotel management assistant across its platform, offering the tool free of charge to hotel operators as China’s online travel agencies (OTAs) race to integrate generative AI into day-to-day business operations.
The platform said more than 110,000 hotels have already connected to the system, which is designed to automate tasks ranging from room inventory adjustments and invoicing to pricing analysis and customer follow-up—and 24 hours a day.
The AI assistant allows hotel operators to manage room availability, inventory and invoices through natural-language commands, replacing what previously required manual processing.
The system also monitors factors including local events, weather shifts and market demand changes, proactively suggesting pricing and inventory strategies before traffic surges arrive.
According to testing data released by Fliggy, participating hotels improved operational efficiency by 70%, while inquiries related to orders, billing and financial reconciliation were answered within five seconds.
The company said the AI achieved a 99% accuracy rate in identifying merchant requests and resolved more than 95% of submitted issues.
The platform added that average decision-making time for pricing and inventory management fell from roughly two hours to 10 minutes during testing, helping lift overall hotel revenue by more than 20%.
Consolidation
The current assistant consolidates a series of separate AI hotel-management tools that Fliggy began testing in the second half of 2025.
Now the assistant has evolved from isolated automation functions into what the company describes as a more comprehensive AI agent capable of participating in operational decision-making.
Additionally, the system’s upgraded contextual memory allows it to retain instructions and conditions across conversations, enabling hotel managers to continue workflows without repeatedly re-entering parameters.
On the customer-service side, the assistant can generate pre-check-in reminders, recommend personalized guest services and prompt staff to prepare for arrivals.
After customer checkout, it can also assist with issues including lost items, invoice requests and extended stays.
For online review management, the AI analyzes guest comments, categorizes complaints and drafts suggested responses based on ratings, booking details and other operational data.
Fliggy said nearly 7,000 hotels are already using the review-management function daily, with merchants adopting about 90% of AI-generated responses.
Ecosystem coordination
Fliggy is among a number of services within the Alibaba ecosystem embedding agentic AI across their everyday operations, ranging from ride-hailing and booking to enterprise workflow management and AI-enabled real-time translation.
Market observers say that the rollout of free AI tools also deepens Fliggy’s ties with hotel operators, directly challenging the supplier-side advantages long held by rivals such as Trip.com Group.
As hotel pricing and operations become increasingly reliant on Fliggy’s systems, switching costs could rise sharply, signaling that competition among travel platforms is shifting from consumer traffic acquisition toward locking in merchants.
