The airport lounge card is getting a digital brain, and Dragonpass believes it could change how travellers use membership benefits altogether.
Speaking at the 2026 Apsara Conference’s “AI Going Global Growth Summit” in Hangzhou, Dragonpass Group co-founder and CEO Jane Zhu said artificial intelligence was helping shift the membership economy away from simple perk redemption and towards services built around the individual traveller.
It is a notable change in emphasis. Instead of opening an app, hunting through a catalogue of benefits and wondering which perk might fit the trip, Dragonpass wants conversational AI to begin with a much simpler question: what does the traveller actually want to do?
Under the model described by Zhu, travellers can share their interests and receive itinerary suggestions linked to relevant airport benefits, transfers, and local services. In other words, the perk no longer sits on the digital shelf waiting to be discovered; the service is assembled around the journey.
“AI expands the boundaries of what our services can deliver, while human expertise preserves the warmth of service,” Zhu said.
That last point matters. Travel may be becoming more automated, but few passengers have ever asked a chatbot for a warmer welcome at 5.30 am after a delayed overnight flight.
Dragonpass’s proposition is therefore not simply to remove people from the equation. Instead, AI handles more of the searching, matching, and personalisation, while human service remains part of the experience.
An AI concierge heads for the airport
At the centre of the strategy is Dragonpass’s AI Airport Concierge, developed with Alibaba Cloud and using Qwen large language model technology.
Dragonpass says the service combines its airport network and benefits ecosystem with conversational AI, allowing travellers to receive more context-aware assistance during one of travel’s most fragmented stages: navigating the airport experience. Alibaba Cloud separately identifies Qwen as part of its current Model Studio AI portfolio.
And travellers are apparently giving the concierge plenty to talk about.
According to Dragonpass’s September 29 announcement, the AI Airport Concierge had served more than 100,000 travellers within eight months of launch.
Dragonpass also says it serves more than 40 million members worldwide. Recent company announcements have cited more than 800 global clients, although current sections of the Dragonpass website use narrower corporate-client figures, suggesting different definitions across parts of the business.
Beyond the boarding gate
The bigger story is what happens next.
Dragonpass says it intends to extend its AI-powered travel and lifestyle services beyond airports, with further deployment planned across Brazil, South Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.
For travel companies, banks, loyalty operators and benefit platforms, that direction is significant.
The traditional membership model has largely been transactional: earn something, redeem something, repeat. Artificial intelligence could change that equation by identifying which benefits are relevant to a particular journey and presenting them when they are most useful.
That could turn loyalty from something passengers remember after the trip into something actively helping them during it.
Of course, cleverness comes with responsibility.
Personalisation is valuable only when it is accurate, transparent and genuinely helpful. Travellers will quickly tire of an “intelligent” concierge that recommends the wrong terminal, the wrong transfer or the perfect restaurant conveniently located three suburbs from their hotel.
In travel, smart technology still has to survive contact with the boarding gate.
Dragonpass is betting that combining AI with its established travel-service network can make membership feel less like a wallet full of coupons and more like an active travel companion.
If that promise holds, the next battle in travel loyalty may not be about who offers the longest list of perks.
It may be about who understands the traveller well enough to make those perks matter at precisely the right moment.
More information: Dragonpass official website
By: Susan Ng – © 2026.
Read Time: 3 minutes.
Author Bio:
With the polish of an international hotel professional and the instincts of a born storyteller, Susan Ng learned hospitality where it truly lives behind reception desks, in banquet halls, beside linen carts. She understands that excellence isn’t announced; it’s felt, in the small, quiet gestures that linger long after checkout.
Away from the bustle, her curiosity found a new front desk: the blank page. Her blog, candid and gently wry, drew readers who recognised truth when they saw it. She wrote about grace and imperfection with the steady eye of someone who had lived both.
Today, at EGT Media, Susan brings that same warmth and insight to her stories. Expect writing that is polished, generous, and reassuring, like the perfect welcome after a long journey.
