The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and Chinese travel platform Mafengwo have launched an immersive AI-focused tourism experience in Beijing, extending a multi-year partnership aimed at using artificial intelligence to personalize how Chinese travellers discover and plan trips to Singapore.

Called the Singapore AI Inspiration Lab – Lion City Adventure • More Fun, More You, the pop-up opened August 23 and is designed around three traveller groups: younger and newly employed consumers, families and senior travellers. The initiative combines AI itinerary planning with physical experiences intended to showcase less conventional aspects of Singapore travel.

The latest activation is part of a broader push by STB to integrate artificial intelligence into destination marketing and visitor services. In 2025, the tourism board signed a memorandum of understanding with OpenAI to explore advanced AI applications for personalized recommendations, multilingual assistance, immersive storytelling and tourism-sector productivity.

AI Moves From Travel Search to Destination Discovery

At the Beijing event, visitors can interact with Mafengwo's AI travel assistant, which demonstrates how natural-language conversations can be used to develop Singapore itineraries based on traveller interests.

The concept moves beyond conventional destination marketing, where travellers typically browse attraction lists, hotel pages and prebuilt itineraries. Instead, AI can interpret preferences such as travelling with children, exploring local neighbourhoods or planning a slower-paced trip for older family members.

Mafengwo's earlier AI XiaoMa initiative provides evidence of how the partnership has evolved. According to Singapore Tourism Board data, the generative AI travel assistant featured Singapore as its first overseas destination and had generated more than 15,000 personalised itineraries since its June 2024 launch.

The two organizations subsequently expanded their collaboration from AI-generated travel content toward smart tourism services and physical visitor experiences.

The new Beijing installation continues that progression.

Three Traveller Segments Drive the Experience

The event is designed around different travel motivations rather than treating Chinese visitors as one homogeneous audience.

For younger travellers, the experience emphasizes urban exploration, street art, nightlife and less familiar neighbourhoods. A Mafengwo travel creator demonstrated how AI planning can generate routes around emerging cultural and lifestyle destinations rather than focusing exclusively on major attractions.

Family travel is another focus. A four-day, three-night Singapore itinerary demonstrated how AI can potentially adapt recommendations based on children's ages and interests while incorporating attractions, nature and other family-oriented activities.

The third segment is senior travellers. A Nanyang-style photography studio was designed specifically for older visitors, while AI itinerary planning was positioned as a way to create slower-paced schedules with fewer logistical demands.

That segmentation reflects a wider change in tourism marketing. Rather than optimizing solely for destination awareness, tourism organizations are increasingly using data and AI to tailor experiences to specific traveller needs.

From Digital Assistant to Physical AI Experience

The Beijing pop-up combines digital planning with several physical interaction zones, including a traveller personality test, Singapore-themed graffiti wall, Nanyang-style photo studio, AI travel assistant demonstration, embodied-AI installation and co-branded marketplace.

Visitors can also create collectible pin buttons and collect stamps linked to the event.

One of the more technology-focused installations demonstrates the AI travel assistant on high-definition screens, showing how travel information can be transformed into conversational recommendations.

The event also features AI-enabled robot dogs positioned as future travel guides.

That concept has already moved beyond marketing demonstration into Singapore tourism venues. In April 2026, STB partnered with Mafengwo, Sentosa Development Corporation and Mandai Wildlife Group on a month-long pilot deploying multilingual AI-powered robodogs at Sentosa Sensoryscape and Mandai Wildlife Reserve. The robots were designed to provide visitor assistance and storytelling in English and Mandarin.

STB later cited the pilot as an example of how technology could improve visitor engagement and support a more seamless visitor journey.

Market Landscape: Singapore Targets a High-Value Chinese Market

The AI initiative comes against a strong tourism backdrop for Singapore.

Singapore recorded 16.9 million international visitors in 2025, generating S$32.8 billion in tourism receipts, according to Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry. Mainland China was among the country's three largest tourism-receipts markets.

China was also Singapore's largest source market by visitor arrivals in 2025, with approximately 3.1 million visitors, according to figures reported by Singapore tourism authorities.

The scale makes China strategically important for destination marketers, but competition for Chinese outbound travellers is intense. Singapore competes with destinations across Southeast Asia and other international markets for travellers seeking family holidays, urban experiences and short-haul international trips.

AI provides a potential differentiation layer by allowing destination marketers to promote a wider range of experiences without requiring travellers to manually research them.

Singapore Builds an AI Tourism Ecosystem

The STB-Mafengwo partnership is part of a larger technology strategy rather than an isolated campaign.

STB has developed an AI playbook for tourism businesses and is encouraging the sector to explore AI for visitor engagement, operational productivity and data-driven decision-making.

The tourism board has also experimented with AI-driven campaigns beyond Mafengwo. Its 2024–25 annual report says an AI-powered collaboration with Visiotrip generated more than 100 million media impressions and achieved 15% higher cost efficiency than industry benchmarks in driving travel bookings.

This suggests Singapore's approach is moving toward an ecosystem model in which destination marketing, travel planning, in-destination assistance and tourism operations increasingly use AI.

The challenge will be converting engagement with AI tools into actual travel demand and better visitor experiences. Personalization is valuable only when recommendations are accurate, commercially relevant and useful throughout the travel journey.

Strategic Outlook

The STB-Mafengwo collaboration illustrates how destination marketing is evolving from promotional content toward interactive travel services.

AI can help tourism organizations address a basic discovery problem: travellers may know they want to visit a destination but have limited awareness of the experiences that fit their interests. Conversational planning can potentially close that gap by connecting broad preferences with specific places, activities and itineraries.

For Singapore, the strategy also supports a broader effort to diversify how the destination is perceived among Chinese travellers. Rather than relying only on established attractions, AI can surface neighbourhoods, food, culture, retail, nature and new entertainment offerings.

The next stage will likely involve connecting pre-trip inspiration with in-destination assistance and post-trip engagement. Singapore's experiments with multilingual robot guides indicate that this transition is already underway.

For travel marketers and technology providers, the larger lesson is that AI is becoming less of a standalone content-generation tool and more of an interface connecting travellers with destination information, services and physical experiences.

Top Insights

• STB and Mafengwo launched the Singapore AI Inspiration Lab in Beijing on August 23, 2026.
• The initiative targets younger travellers, families and seniors with personalized AI-assisted travel discovery.
• Mafengwo's AI XiaoMa generated more than 15,000 personalized Singapore itineraries after its 2024 launch.
• Singapore welcomed 16.9 million international visitors and generated S$32.8 billion in tourism receipts in 2025.
• Mainland China contributed approximately 3.1 million Singapore visitor arrivals in 2025.
• STB and Mafengwo have also tested AI-powered multilingual robot guides at Sentosa and Mandai.
• STB is developing broader AI capabilities and guidance for tourism businesses.

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