The Future of Tourism–How AI has Changed Travel Forever

The tourism industry is no stranger to artificial intelligence (AI). Whether you look at the impact of Google becoming an AI-first company–think Google Maps or Flights–or the general use of AI in trip booking platforms, AI has been present in the tourism industry since long before 2017.

Yet AI’s presence is becoming even more pronounced. Consumers are becoming accustomed to getting full trip plans prepared for them through voice prompts on chatbots like Gemini and ChatGPT or highly specialized accommodation and flight results based upon their search history. AI has changed the game and increased expectations consumers have of convenience.

Here are several examples from the tourism industry where AI tools have been adopted to great benefit.

Tailored Travel Recommendations and Intuitive Customer Service

Generative AI and AI travel assistants are curating options, smoothing the trip planning process, speeding up price comparisons and more on almost every platform. Whether using a website, apps like WhatsApp or text (SMS) services, AI is at work to streamline the results. Here are some tourism businesses that are using customer-facing AI tools to enhance their offerings.

1. GuideGeek. Travel Manitoba is the first Provincial Marketing Organization (PMO) in Canada to deploy the AI travel companion from Matador. Found on the consumer and Hunt Fish websites and also available through WhatsApp, GuideGeek is like a chatbot that can help visitors plan their trips, get ideas on things to do and answer travel-related questions any time of day or night in more than 40 languages.
   
   
2. KLM BlueBot (BB) Chatbot. Available on Facebook Messenger, the personable BB helps KLM’s customers to book flights and change itineraries in multiple languages. Using Google Home, the voice-driven BB can even help travellers decide on what to pack for their trip based on the location and expected weather. The tool has been around since 2017 and answers tens of thousands of online queries each week.
   
   
3. Expedia. Launched this past May, Roamie is an AI travel assistant that can join your text group chat to help plan the next family or friends trip. Roamie can summarize your top needs based upon the group discussion and build your itinerary with booking details. Roamie can even pop into the chat to alert you about potential weather or trip disruptions. Roamie was just one part of Expedia’s 2024 Spring Product Release. Other tools can create a personalized itinerary based upon AI-generated recommendations or price compare using GenAI, which is now available on Hotels.com, Expedia and Vrbo
   

With roughly 1,300 AI apps launching every day, tourism is just one of many sectors experiencing a major shake up. The very way we search for information is fundamentally changing. Instead of “Googling” and being directed to a website for details, more people are using LLMs like ChatGPT and social media apps which skim data from sites. This disrupts how we measure hits and traffic on our websites and it's also changing how content is getting created, with a focus now to answer questions instead of telling full stories.

Enhanced Marketing, Dynamic Pricing and Ease of Data Driven Decision Making

AI is a wonderful tool to better understand audiences, improve marketing spend, protect against fraud and to help drive better decision making. AI can comb through piles of data in seconds, which allows tourism businesses and Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) to make even smarter choices. Here are some organizations tapping the power of AI to fuel their business decisions.

1. Destination Canada's Canadian Tourism Data Collective. DC’s award-winning platform uses AI to create custom dashboards drawing on tourism performance indicators. Partners like DMOs and tourism industry members can log in to get customized charts and graphs with detailed segmented visitor profiles to improve targeting and marketing return on investment.
   
   
2. VisitBritain. The DMO joined forces with Infillion to create a unique campaign to boost awareness, engagement and consideration of Britain as a destination. Users could skip ads on digital, mobile or connected TV by trying to imitate a slang phrase from a region in Britain with nothing but the phrase, definition and region of origin. Users were graded by AI using Truex and Uplift technologies. The campaign was a success with users spending a total of 244 days interacting with the ad. The UpLift brand measurement tool saw a 7 per cent increase in awareness, 6 per cent in familiarity and 7 per cent lift in trip consideration.
   
   
3. Airbnb. Among several different purposes, Airbnb uses AI in a predictive search function to help match details like a user’s trip date, duration and price for the greatest likelihood of a successful host booking. AI is also used to suggest optimal price points for hosts using data like past booking trends, upcoming local events and competitor pricing.

No matter how complex or basic, AI is informing all aspects of travel from awareness through the booking stages and during the trip. AI will continue to change and improve the way we work. While the potential uses are nearly limitless, one thing is certain: AI is here to stay.