Amap, Alibaba Group Holding’s answer to Google Maps, saw a record 360 million daily users on the first day of China’s “golden week” National Day holiday, as the company strengthens its local service offerings amid increasing competition with Meituan.
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On Wednesday, the first day of the extended eight-day break, Amap provided navigation for trips totalling over 9 billion km, also a record high, according to Alibaba, owner of the Post.
Meanwhile, Amap’s new road safety alert system, Eagle Eye Guardian, introduced on Sunday, issued over 290 million alerts for unusual driving behaviour on Wednesday, Alibaba said.
The surge in usage comes as Alibaba enhances Amap’s capabilities to compete with food delivery giant Meituan in the local services sector, which connects consumers with offline services like restaurant bookings, meal deliveries and hotel reservations.
In August, Amap launched an artificial intelligence assistant, Xiaogao, which processed more than 2.6 billion user requests on Wednesday, Alibaba said. Supported by Alibaba’s in-house AI models, Xiaogao is designed to navigate roads, plan trips and recommend places to visit based on natural language commands from users.
Last month, Alibaba unveiled a feature called Amap Street Stars, which uses AI to rank offline destinations such as restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions, integrating data such as navigation patterns and user reviews. The service directly competes with Meituan’s Dianping restaurant rating app.
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