Meituan has upgraded its in‑app AI assistant “问小团” for the Lunar New Year period, sharpening the platform’s frontline offer to consumers hunting for local food, drink and entertainment. The revamped assistant promises deeper reasoning, a secondary verification step for merchant and service data drawn from Meituan’s listings, and recommendations that combine real user reviews to deliver options that are not only relevant but immediately purchasable.
The company has also opened a Spring Festival zone within the tool where users can claim a bundle of holiday coupons with a single click, covering scenarios from delivery and flash sales to dine‑in. Meituan frames the upgrade as a practical fix for seasonal pain points: it aims to help users find services that match their needs, are genuinely available for transaction, and — importantly for holiday shoppers — offer better prices, thereby reducing the chance of “踩坑” (falling into traps or bad experiences).
The timing is no accident. The announcement comes amid a crowded surge of Chinese firms rolling out large language model (LLM) and generative‑AI features ahead of the busiest consumer stretch in the calendar. Competitors and startups alike have been releasing models and services to seize attention and transactions during the Spring Festival, turning holiday spending into a proving ground for user engagement and monetisation strategies.
For Meituan the upgrade represents more than a product tweak; it is a strategic attempt to convert conversational queries into on‑platform transactions. By positioning the AI as both a discovery engine and a gateway to coupons and instant ordering, Meituan is trying to lock in consumer journeys on its app rather than letting search, messaging apps or rivals capture the conversion moment.
The move draws on Meituan’s comparative advantages: dense local merchant data, vast numbers of user reviews, and an integrated logistics and payments network. Those assets enable a recommendation engine that can claim transaction readiness — a difficult promise for generic chatbots that lack access to real‑time stock, opening hours or delivery availability.
However, the upgrade also raises risks. Assertions about “secondary verification” and accuracy will be tested at scale during the holiday peak, when mismatches between recommendations and real‑world availability create fast reputational damage. The initiative intensifies pressure on merchants to keep their Meituan profiles, inventories and offers up to date, and it may increase the platform’s responsibility for inbound customer complaints if AI‑led suggestions fail.
Regulators and consumer advocates will be watching too. As AI systems become front doors to commerce, questions about transparency (how recommendations are ranked), liability (who is accountable for false or misleading suggestions) and competition (whether platforms favour their own merchants) will gain prominence. For merchants, the short term may bring higher traffic and coupon‑led volume; for Meituan, the payoff depends on conversion lift and whether the tool reduces friction without degrading trust.
More broadly, Meituan’s update is another data point in a larger shift: AI is being baked into transactional interfaces, not just search or novelty chat. The platforms that succeed will be those that marry robust, real‑time operational data with models tuned for verifiable, monetisable recommendations — and that can do so while managing regulatory and reputational risk.