Empowering Inbound Tourism Facilitation in Chengdu through University-Based AI Foreign-Language Services—Intrinsic Mechanisms and Realization Pathways

Abstract

Against the backdrop of China's stepwise expansion of visa-free transit policies and the intensifying competition among destinations for inbound tourists, language services have become a critical bottleneck—and a strategic lever—for inbound tourism facilitation. This paper investigates how university-based AI foreign-language services can empower inbound tourism facilitation in Chengdu, a representative inland hub city in western China. Drawing on language service theory, the triple-helix model of collaborative innovation, prosumption theory, and the emerging emotion-economy perspective, the paper constructs a "supply chain–scenario chain–value chain" coupling framework to explain the intrinsic mechanism through which university AI foreign-language services translate linguistic resources into tourism facilitation productivity. The framework identifies three sequential mechanisms—barrier removal through information accessibility, scene co-creation through prosumption, and cultural translation through emotional resonance—embedded in the full tourist journey from pre-arrival to post-departure. On this basis, the paper proposes four realization pathways: full-chain scenario embedding, the construction of Chengdu-oriented multilingual corpora and vertical large language models, the cultivation of "foreign language + AI" composite talent and volunteer networks, and collaborative governance with human-in-the-loop quality assurance. The study extends the triple-helix model into the public-service domain of inbound tourism, enriches the theory of language service empowerment, and offers actionable implications for Chengdu's bid to become an international consumption center city and a world-class tourist destination. The proposed framework and pathways are also transferable, with contextual adaptation, to other inland hub cities seeking to convert visa-free policy traffic into sustainable tourism consumption.