Last week I had the opportunity to be part of a conference on tourism and its various technical and AI aspects. In Croatia, tourism is an important industry, so it made sense to analyze some data and propose some conclusions.
In general, research from 2017 onwards shows that tourism is not one of the biggest adopters of AI. Along with health care (which I wrote little about in my article on AI and diabetes) and education, tourism is in the category of low adopters. If we look at companies in a certain industry, it is obvious that, although there are some changes compared to others, the tourism / travel industry is lagging behind.
This is not surprisingly related to the level of investment and future investment plans for different industries. Leading industries in acceptance and level of investment are high technology and telecommunications, automotive and financial services. What is interesting is that if we look at the potential value that AI can bring compared to other analytical techniques, tourism / travel comes first (according to a McKinsey study).
They are followed by transport and logistics, retail and the automotive industry. In addition, when looking at cross-sectoral potential, to create added value, tourism is again among the leaders.
Researchers have identified different areas of application, such as:
- Face recognition for fast and documented free registrations and passes
- Virtualna stvarnost - Assess the ambience and surroundings of the hotel
- Chatbots - apply in Marriott hotels, Hyatt hotels, GRT hotels…
- Robots - Turn on the lights in the bedroom, turn off the television, handling systems to ensure that luggage is automatically checked in and receive guests at the hotel
- Language translators - allow travelers to speak to local people in their language. Google Translate provides audio speech services when a traveler clicks on "Conversation mode"
Of course, we should not forget that AI is a resource that adds value or destroys value in its role in encountering human experience within service ecosystems. Recent research on artificial intelligence highlights potential negative aspects. These aspects range from job loss to concerns about privacy, machine ethics, security issues, and negative developments in potential superintelligence.
Some research identifies 3 main areas of focus:
- Catering and gastronomy (with check-ins and check-outs, smart rooms, back office management, etc.)
- Destination management organization (robots, chatbots, decision support, etc.)
- Airports, theme parks and more (automation of services, analysis of tourist flows, autonomous carts, etc.)
Big data is of course a significant part of these projects. Travel companies use artificial intelligence and big data to creatively connect guests and meet their expectations with a personalized service. They also allow tourism professionals to learn more about their clients, and the more they know the better experience they can offer customers.
It also has some drawbacks. Because of personalization, it might be difficult to appreciate services if only perfectly personalized ones are delivered. There is also the fear of losing authenticity and missing general offers. It is not impossible that at the end of the cycle, in response, we could have destinations without artificial intelligence.