AI Tour Guide in Xi'an: What Does China's New Cultural Tourism Model Signal?
In Xi'an, one of China's most important historical cities, the BoGuan multimodal AI model, developed for cultural tourism, is beginning to be used more widely. At first glance, the news seems like a technological announcement, but in reality, it signals a travel trend that could influence the sightseeing, museum visits, and itinerary planning of Hungarian tourists in Chinese cities in the coming years.
According to a Huawei announcement on June 29, 2026, the BoGuan Large Model has entered a broader application phase in Xi'an. The model's goal is not merely to provide general travel tips, but to build digital services from cultural heritage data, images, videos, audio materials, 3D models, and structured texts that simultaneously support the visitor experience, local content creation, and the presentation of heritage.
Xi'an is a particularly suitable location for this. The city is one of China's most renowned historical centers, an iconic stop for international tourism as the eastern starting point of the Silk Road and because of the Terracotta Army. For Hungarian travelers, it can be increasingly easily integrated into a China tour, especially when the trip is built around Beijing, Shanghai, or other major hubs. On the UniFly page, departure options from Budapest, the Xi'an Xianyang Airport, and Budapest-Xi'an flight searches can be checked separately, which can be a practical starting point for assembling a multi-stop Chinese journey.
What Happened in Xi'an?
According to the announcement, the BoGuan model is being used for cultural tourism developments within the environment of the Shaanxi Culture Industry Investment Group and its partners, including Huawei, China Telecom Shaanxi, and the China West Airport Group. The system did not appear recently: it was introduced in September 2025, but the news value now is that it is already being used operationally in several application areas.
Based on the announcement, the model is linked to an AI-based travel assistant, AI photography services, digital cultural heritage content, short video and short drama series productions, as well as the creation of local cultural IPs, meaning marketable digital characters and products. The AI travel companion operating in the GO-SHAANXI application was available to more than 4 million users by March, according to the published data.
An important distinction is that this does not appear as a simple chatbot. The model is multimodal, meaning it does not work only with text. According to Huawei's announcement, the training and operational database contains more than 1.2 petabytes of material, including 31 million images, 4.4 million minutes of video, 2.18 million minutes of audio recordings, 510 3D models, and 960 million structured text elements. These numbers indicate that the development is backed not by general tourism texts, but by a vast amount of cultural, visual, and heritage data.
Why Is This Important in Tourism?
One constant difficulty of cultural tourism is that visitors often have little time to understand the historical layers of a place. A European tourist in Xi'an can easily walk through the most important points, but the connections between local dynasties, legends, archaeological details, and folk crafts are harder to grasp, especially if the visitor does not speak Chinese and only has a few days in the region.
AI-based cultural services offer a new answer to this. A well-designed digital tour guide can personalize the itinerary, provide explanations for an artifact, suggest an alternative program in case of bad weather or crowds, and even take into account whether the user is arriving with family, elderly travelers, for a short city tour, or with a deeper historical interest.
In practice, this could mean that future Chinese city tours will be less reliant on pre-printed programs and general audio guides. Tourists may instead encounter applications that modify the plan in real-time, link sights with transportation, performances, tickets, and on-site offers, while museums and cities can more accurately measure which content keeps visitors there longer.
What Could This Mean for Hungarian Travelers?
From a Hungarian perspective, the news is interesting because China continues to offer more favorable entry conditions for Hungarian citizens until the end of 2026. According to information from the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Budapest, Hungarian travelers with a valid ordinary passport can enter China visa-free for up to 30 days until December 31, 2026, for tourism, business trips, family visits, exchange programs, official visits, or transit, provided they meet the conditions.
This does not mean that a China tour automatically becomes simple. Flight tickets, domestic connections, payment solutions, data connectivity, accommodation, entrance fees, and local transport still need to be planned in advance. However, digital tour guides and AI travel companions can reduce linguistic and informational friction, especially in cities with a vast cultural offering where choosing between programs is time-consuming in itself.
Hungarian travelers should, however, handle AI suggestions with caution. An application can be useful for inspiration, assembling itineraries, or on-site recommendations, but it does not replace the verification of official opening hours, entry requirements, visa-free status, insurance, and airline conditions. Especially in China, it may be important for the traveler to clarify in advance which applications work with foreign phone numbers, which payment methods are accepted, and whether local data connectivity or an eSIM is needed.
AI Photography, Digital Heritage, and New Spending Points
The introduction of BoGuan is not just about information services. According to the announcement, the system also supports AI photography mini-programs, which can integrate visitors' photos into historically inspired, generated scenes. This is one of the fastest-growing areas of tourism: the visitor does not just buy a souvenir, but places themselves into a digitized historical world.
Product sales derived from digital cultural IPs associated with the model exceeded 2 million yuan, according to the published data. This figure alone is not a global tourism revolution, but it clearly shows that AI-based cultural content can be more than just an educational or museum supplement; it can be a direct source of revenue. For cities, attractions, and providers, this creates a new product category: digital memories, personalized content, virtual characters, and site-specific experiences can appear alongside classic entrance tickets, gift shops, and guided tours.
This trend is instructive for the Hungarian tourism market as well. Budapest, Pécs, Eger, Veszprém, Esztergom, or even the spa towns are also rich in stories that would be better understood by foreign visitors in digital, multilingual, and personalized forms. The question is not whether every city needs to develop its own large language model, but how prepared the cultural data, museum content, local itineraries, and visitor services are for AI-based utilization.
The Network Is Also Part of the Experience
Another important element of the Xi'an development is the 5G-A network. According to Huawei's announcement, a network solution was installed in the Grand Tang Mall tourist area that theoretically offers 600 Mbps upload and 3.5 Gbps download peak capacity, and supported the service of 23,000 simultaneous users during the May 1st holiday period in 2026.
This detail is important because the modern tourism experience is increasingly data-dependent. Ticket verification, map usage, translation, live streaming, social media, AI tour guiding, and digital payment all rely on the same infrastructure. If the network slows down during peak periods, even the best application provides a poorer experience. If, however, the network is stable, the site can not only handle more visitors but also sell more digital services.
According to the published data, the average user dwell time nearly doubled during 5G-A live streams at the Grand Tang Mall, and the average transaction value increased by 62 percent. These are corporate data, so they should be handled with caution, but they are important as a direction: in cultural tourism, digital attention is increasingly becoming actual spending.
What Should Those Preparing for Xi'an or China Pay Attention To?
- Don't just look at the big city entry: Xi'an is not a simple stopover, but can be a multi-day cultural destination alongside Beijing, Shanghai, or Chengdu.
- Check the connections: Instead of direct Budapest-Xi'an flights, connecting routes are typically expected, so total travel time and baggage handling are more important than the first-seen ticket price.
- Prepare with digital tools: Without a translator, map, payment application, eSIM, or roaming package, on-site AI services cannot be used comfortably.
- Treat AI as an assistant: It is useful for program planning and inspiration, but official rules, opening hours, and entry conditions must always be checked separately.
- Pay attention to data protection: For AI photography, facial recognition services, and personalized applications, it is worth checking what data the provider requests.
What Is the Bigger Message?
The application of BoGuan in Xi'an shows that China wants to develop cultural tourism not just with more visitors, but with higher digital added value. Sightseeing, museum interpretation, the local performances, digital souvenirs, and social media are increasingly becoming a single interconnected product.
From the perspective of Hungarian travelers, this means two things. First, China can become a more easily planned distant destination with 30-day visa-free entry and digitized tourism services. Second, travelers must prepare more consciously: it is not enough to buy a flight ticket, but the digital environment, applications, entry rules, and data management issues should also be considered in advance.
The news, therefore, is not about AI replacing tour guides. It is much more about how the competition in cultural tourism is increasingly decided by who can better connect heritage, technology, transportation, and visitor decisions. Xi'an is now one of the striking Chinese examples of this, which Hungarian travelers and domestic tourism players should pay attention to.