As technology continues to rapidly advance, travellers are increasingly demanding seamless, personalised and digitally enhanced experiences.
As technology continues to rapidly advance, travellers are increasingly demanding seamless, personalised and digitally enhanced experiences. By embracing digital innovation, the tourism industry can improve its operational efficiency, enhance visitor satisfaction and unlock new opportunities for growth.
Despite this drive for a technology-enabled future for tourism, integration and compatibility between different solutions pose significant challenges in digitalising business operations. Similarly, building strong connections between SMEs and DMOs remains a difficult, but not insurmountable challenge.
As technology continues to rapidly advance, travellers are increasingly demanding seamless, personalised and digitally enhanced experiences. By embracing digital innovation, the tourism industry can improve its operational efficiency, enhance visitor satisfaction and unlock new opportunities for growth.
Despite this drive for a technology-enabled future for tourism, integration and compatibility between different solutions pose significant challenges in digitalising business operations. Similarly, building strong connections between SMEs and DMOs remains a difficult, but not insurmountable challenge.
As technology continues to rapidly advance, travellers are increasingly demanding seamless, personalised and digitally enhanced experiences. By embracing digital innovation, the tourism industry can improve its operational efficiency, enhance visitor satisfaction and unlock new opportunities for growth.
Despite this drive for a technology-enabled future for tourism, integration and compatibility between different solutions pose significant challenges in digitalising business operations. Similarly, building strong connections between SMEs and DMOs remains a difficult, but not insurmountable challenge.
The tourism industry is grappling with the pace of digital transformation. Discussions touched upon the potential of digital twins and XR, but acknowledged that these technologies are still in their early stages of adoption within the tourism industry. Digital twins, while offering intriguing possibilities for simulating tourism's future, are currently considered too expensive to develop and implement. Their potential use in visitor management and A/B testing different management approaches is undisputed and may become more prominent as demands for a more sustainable and resilient industry become stronger and DMOs are increasingly challenged to ensure tourism provides tangible benefits to all residents.
Similarly, XR, encompassing virtual and augmented reality, is recognised as a significant opportunity for creating immersive and engaging experiences. Spatial computing is identified as a key driver of XR adoption, opening up possibilities for mixed reality experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. Early adoption of XR could provide a competitive advantage for destinations in the next 5-10 years. Such a long-term outlook is essential for creating a framework for tourism to gradually become more familiar with these emerging technologies and be ready to adopt them as they reach maturity. Notably, many organisations are still struggling with the implementation of less advanced technologies. A strong foundation in digital literacy through training and education is therefore a clear priority before embracing more complex technologies.
Generative AI is emerging as a significant force, reshaping both internal processes and visitor-facing marketing. Efficiency is a major driver for AI adoption. DMOs are already using subscriptions that incorporate AI tools, for content scheduling, enhancing segmentation and analysing reports. AI is in a constant state of evolution, and its capabilities will dramatically increase over time.
While current limitations may cause some hesitation, especially among digital and technology specialists who are responsible for ensuring high-level technical accuracy, the long-term potential of AI is undeniable. Marketers have a crucial role to play in advocating for AI adoption within their organisations, encouraging experimentation and fostering digital literacy among their teams. This involves embracing a "test and learn" mentality, acknowledging that initial implementations may not be perfect, but the learning process will be invaluable in the long run.
Today's AI is just a glimpse of what is to come, and those who embrace its potential will be best positioned to thrive in the future of tourism. Though, without clear protocols, there are substantial risks to implementing generative AI, with DMOs currently prioritising the transformation of workplace practices before investing heavily in technological solutions. Such an outlook ensures that the use of AI always aligns with brand values.
With lots of different information sources, DMOs need to strategically play a role in amalgamating them for visitors. Travellers are increasingly turning to AI for inspiration, highlighting the need for destinations to adapt their content strategies to cater to this new way of searching. Destinations must ensure their content is easily discoverable and digestible by AI systems, which rely on clear and structured information. This includes tagging and labelling content appropriately to ensure AI platforms deliver relevant results.
Content creation teams are the most skilled when it comes to prompting generative AI into creating tangible outputs. Nevertheless, key concerns are achieving a balance between technological innovation and retaining authenticity, inevitable discrepancies around speed and quality and a perceived lack of personal connection with local tourism ecosystem. However, it is not to be forgotten that there is a role for using AI for co-creation and brainstorming ideas to enhance creativity in marketing. Such an approach enables DMOs to maintain their joint roles of inspiration and information.
Content localisation is crucial for destinations to effectively engage with international audiences. While AI can play a role in this process, particularly with translation, careful consideration is needed. With many external agencies also transitioning to the use of AI, there is a growing risk of the duplication of subscriptions for AI tools. Marketers need to be critical of AI translations, ensuring they do not contain significant errors, reflect the right tone of voice and integrate cultural nuances to refine and adapt content for specific markets. On the other hand, AI opens the door for destinations to produce content in languages they wouldn't usually support. Using English or German as input languages for translation is an effective technique, with these languages being the most commonly used for training large language models.
The long-term impact of AI-generated content on SEO remains uncertain. While there is a concern that AI-generated content will be de-ranked by search engine algorithms, some SEO agencies use AI tools to evaluate SEO keywords to improve the visibility of their content. Crucially, content needs to be engaging. While AI can be used to create baseline text, human expertise can rephrase this into something much more personable and detailed.
The rise of voice assistants also necessitates a shift towards a voice-first approach. Alongside text and visuals, destinations will soon need to develop a distinct 'voice identity', encompassing tone, style and personality. Enabling consistency is key for DMOs to fully embrace the new digital era brought about by AI.
An output generated by AI is never completely artificial. It is a different perception of reality based on the data the modelling was trained on. Advance prompting is very time consuming and requires a high level of sophistication. Nevertheless, transparency is paramount when using AI. The level of transparency required will vary depending on the use case. For basic applications, including automated translation, users are more tolerant of errors as they understand that the new version of the text is fully derived from a technological process. However, for advanced applications, a higher degree of transparency is necessary.
While remaining cautious, having a clear business case is crucial to determining whether investments are worthwhile. If AI can result in clear outcomes for the front-end or back-end, then the technology should be utilised as people are continually pushed to become more tech savvy. Openly communicating about the use of AI can create positive narratives by demonstrating a clear understanding of people's needs and supporting them in receiving the desired information.
Understanding the expectations of visitors around AI usage is essential. The potential for AI-content to be manually or automatically tagged on platforms also opens up new barriers or opportunities when platforms evolve alongside AI to enable users to filter out AI content. With growing concerns around misinformation, such a situation would enable users to decide whether they wish to remain exposed to all content or to only see authentic content. In this scenario, the decisions taken now about the extent of AI usage will have a clear long-term effect on the visibility of destination content.
Clear policies on labelling AI-generated content are essential to maintain trust with visitors. Some destinations have adopted policies to explicitly label AI content, particularly when it is used for creative purposes. While some destinations have opted to avoid AI-generated visuals due to cost and authenticity concerns, the potential for using AI visuals as part of a larger narrative is also acknowledged. For example, the obvious use of AI can create a playful, humorous and engaging interaction. Beyond outright generation of visuals, AI can also be used to enhance storytelling by manipulating existing graphics to create variations, add effects or stylise them in a specific way.
Concerns about digital colonialism are to be anticipated, with the dominance of anglo-centric AI models presenting concerns about potential biases. In fact, it is this market that is the most sceptical about AI. Such a situation is likely the result of becoming accustomed to the ease of communicating in English. Yet, for other nationalities, particularly in Asia, AI is seen as an exciting development that is opening up opportunities. Similarly, age differences are clearly observed in the levels of acceptability for AI use in communications. Destinations need to be mindful of these contrasting viewpoints to ensure that their AI solutions are targeted and aligned with the needs of their audiences.
With regionality and seasonality key goals for most destinations, AI trip planning tools offer a vitally important dual role in trip planning:
Balancing these two often competing roles is a key challenge. Ultimately, the future of AI trip planning hinges on its ability to understand and respond to evolving traveller needs and their core desires. To truly add value, recommendations need to appear as if they have come from a trusted friend and create a strong connection with a traveller based on extensive knowledge of personal preferences. Being knowledgeable at both the surface level and with enhanced granularity, without appearing commercialised, are the keys to success in this field.
The design of an AI interface is a central consideration that will determine the degree of success in creating positive user interactions. Understanding the complex specificities of prompts and asking for clarification from visitors will result in AI learning in the way we want it to develop to ensure its effectiveness for all users. As such, rushing to create multi-lingual tools from the outset is a dangerous approach that risks long-term brand damage. Such enhancements should only be made after studying user behaviour and going through iterative feedback loops to identify the next step in the evolution of AI tools. Maintaining such platforms are, therefore, very resource intensive and needs consistent web traffic to remain viable in the long-run.
As users rely on trusted sources for travel recommendations, ensuring only recent and reputable content is scraped for AI-generated itineraries is paramount. Such an ambition necessitates the integration of all stakeholders within a destination, requiring DMOs to provide support for them to digitise and have a strong web presence. By keeping visitors in mind at all times, DMOs can use AI trip planning tools to enable close relationships with guests for bookable experiences and support small businesses with necessary exposure to international audiences.
Understanding the visitor journey and identifying the most relevant touchpoints is crucial for determining the optimal approach. Otherwise, a disjoined approach may arise where the investment in technological advancements will not deliver the intended impact. On occasion, DMOs need to let go of certain aspects and accept that they are outside the limits of their control. Using the media to push certain pieces of information can create an environment where the entire tourism ecosystem works to its strengths in sharing different content types, providing a more strategic approach to convincing and converting visitors into having the best travel experience.
While some destinations may benefit from developing their own AI solutions, others may find it more effective to collaborate with third-party platforms. Developing AI systems that can facilitate sharable collective experiences will represent the future of AI trip planning, where the diverse needs of a travel group are taken into consideration from the start of the trip planning process.
Created for destinations around the world, this programme will provide the insight to help you become a sustainability leader within your organisation.
Designed to teach you how to master must-have tools and acquire essential skills to succeed in managing your destination or organisation, be ready to challenge all of your assumptions.
Designed to teach you how to master must-have tools and acquire essential skills to succeed in managing your destination or organisation, be ready to challenge all of your assumptions.
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