【Summit Review】Digital Technology Reshapes Cultural Tourism Landscape，Cultural Innovation Lights up Journey Ahead

During the WTCF Beijing Fragrant Hills Tourism Summit 2026, a special forum on cultural innovation themed "Future Travel, Powered by Culture" was held. Representatives from tourist cities across multiple countries and guests of multinational cultural tourism and tech enterprises gathered together. They held in-depth discussions on the innovation of cultural tourism formats driven by cutting-edge digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, jointly explored feasible approaches for cultural innovation to fuel the transformation and upgrading of global tourism and foster new driving forces for tourism in the future, and built international consensus on integrated innovation of cultural tourism industries worldwide.

Anne Zhao, Chair of the Board & Executive Director, Puy du Fou Asia, shared the core concepts of cultural tourism innovation at the forum. She put forward that the core vitality of high-quality cultural tourism projects originates from authentic cultural heritage and emotional resonance, rather than stage special effects and overstacked technologies. She believes that the secret to Puy du Fou’s long-term development lies in rooting in national memories, conveying sincere humanistic value and abandoning empty grand narratives. She stressed that localized cultural tourism innovation in Asia should not simply copy overseas models or mechanically paste local cultural elements; it is necessary to dig deep into the core of local culture and revitalize traditional culture in line with contemporary audiences’ aesthetics. Meanwhile, she advocated that artificial intelligence and immersive technologies should implicitly serve content creation, and flashy tech-for-tech’s-sake productions should be avoided. Reviewing practical cases including Immersive Angkor and large-scale domestic performance projects, she pointed out that domestic audiences have increasingly mature aesthetic tastes, and cultural tourism creations must balance four dimensions: technology, art, culture and emotion. This fully proves that cultural tourism innovation in the new era must adhere to cultural authenticity, pursue localized expression and rationally apply technologies to achieve the sustainable inheritance of cultural heritage.

Adnan Khalaf Hamed Alsawair, Chairman, Petra Region Tourism Development Authority Jordan, shared profound proven experience of technology-enabled heritage conservation and cultural tourism innovation of the ancient city of Petra at the forum. He insisted that the core of cultural tourism digitalization lies in service instead of replacement. All cutting-edge technologies are applied to help visitors understand the cultural context of historical sites and enrich travel experiences, without cutting off the profound bond between humans and history. Petra has built a complete digital service system. By adopting augmented reality, big data, intelligent audio guides and other technologies, the appearance of ancient civilizations is restored, passenger flow is scientifically managed and scenic operation & maintenance are optimized, revitalizing culture while fully preserving the authenticity of historical relics. Taking the "Petra Night" program as an example, the scenic spot adopts light and shadow projection technology to spread thousand-year-old civilizations to young audiences through immersive narratives without any physical damage to the relics. Its practice fully verifies that the high-quality development of heritage tourism hinges on balancing technological innovation and cultural authenticity, letting technologies stay behind the scenes and civilization take center stage, so as to realize win-win outcomes of living heritage inheritance and sustainable development.

Fei Wu, Founder and CEO, LLVision, drew on the company’s 12 years of technical accumulation in augmented reality to share innovative ideas on how AR glasses resolve pain points in cultural tourism scenarios and boost the upgrading of smart tourism. He pointed out that scenic spots generally face problems such as cross-linguistic communication barriers, massive tourist consultations and insufficient service staff. AR glasses equipped with real-time translation and AI Q&A systems can efficiently break cross-border communication barriers, ease the service burden of scenic spots, guide visitors to deeply learn about the cultural context of attractions, and put an end to superficial check-in tourism. He said that modern cultural tourism consumption pays growing attention to immersive local experiences, and information barriers are a core bottleneck restricting high-quality cultural tourism development. The enterprise keeps upgrading proactive AI smart glasses to deliver accompanying, scenario-based smart cultural tourism services. He emphasized that technology always serves people and improves experiences rather than replacing humanistic warmth. This confirms the essence of smart cultural tourism: conducting lightweight innovation based on real scenarios, revitalizing cultural communication via digital technologies, and advancing quality and efficiency improvement of the cultural tourism industry.

Patrick Bontinck, CEO of Visit Brussels, shared innovative practices for addressing overtourism in certain areas and optimizing urban cultural tourism ecology centering on smart urban cultural tourism governance at the forum. He introduced that the Brussels Smart City Card is jointly developed by multiple government and market stakeholders. Supported by public funds, it builds an inclusive smart cultural tourism system aiming to optimize the allocation of urban cultural tourism resources, rather than merely boost tourist arrivals. He stated that the core difficulty in the smart upgrading of cultural tourism does not lie in technology implementation, but in coordinating resources from all sides and uniting consensus on development. To tackle the unbalanced tourism development featuring crowded popular scenic spots and underutilized niche resources, he proposed abandoning the extensive traditional tourist attraction model, and adopting smart systems to realize time-sharing, targeted and flexible passenger flow guidance, so as to ease pressure on core areas and activate underrated urban cultural tourism resources. His viewpoints prove that future urban cultural tourism development shall shift to refined governance, balance passenger flow distribution and coordinate city-tourism relations with smart technologies, and achieve multi-win results for the cultural tourism industry, urban communities and tourist experiences.

Weng Kei (Catarina) Lio, Senior Vice President, Brand Marketing, MGM China, elaborated on innovative approaches for the living inheritance of intangible cultural heritage under a multicultural backdrop at the forum. She said that Macau’s open and inclusive urban temperament cultivated over more than 400 years has formed a one-of-a-kind diverse cultural heritage, which meets the experience demands of tourists of all ages and nationalities, and is suitable for developing inclusive, barrier-free cultural experiences that resonate with all audiences. She stressed that the vitality of cultural heritage lies in human participation, and static preservation cannot achieve sustainable development. Relying on the "Macau 2049" platform, the project breaks the rigid model of traditional performances, gathers global creators and local intangible cultural heritage inheritors for joint creation, empowers the presentation of intangible heritage with technologies, and builds an open and symbiotic cultural ecosystem. High-quality cultural tourism works feature dynamic evolution, and can be continuously upgraded to fit contemporary aesthetic trends. This fully demonstrates that modern cultural heritage inheritance must break inherent frameworks, activate cultural vitality through mass co-creation, and endow traditional culture with brand-new vitality via technological innovation.