Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the destination marketing landscape, offering opportunities to enhance efficiency, personalise visitor experiences and optimise content creation. However, the implementation of AI requires careful planning and a strategic approach to ensure that it aligns with the achievement of business objectives. Aleksandra Jerebic Topolovec (Slovenian Tourist Board), Valentina Cappio (Trentino Marketing), Claire Cadogan (Fáilte Ireland) and Insuk Kim (Visit Greenland) discuss numerous ways this technology can be applied across content management and branding.

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Strategic Planning

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Marketing automation is a major area of focus for DMOs, with regular monitoring of website users' behaviour. This helps to plan personalised campaigns that provide relevant content to users based on their interests and previous interactions, ultimately improving their digital experience and directing them to the topics that are more likely to result in a conversion. This is where the continuous advancement of generative AI is likely to play a highly supportive role for DMO marketing teams, in combination with ongoing efforts to improve digital accessibility. In fact, this technology will enable DMOs to close content gaps themselves through focused and well-educated internal teams. Producing more content in-house, at the expense of the traditional reliance on external specialised agencies, offers the potential for greater control over content, as well as being more cost-effective.

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To reach this objective, data management is an essential consideration that underpins the automation journey. Many DMOs are overwhelmed by vast amounts of data, making it difficult to extract meaningful insights. To overcome this, AI can help speed up the filtering and synthesis of data, leading to better-informed decisions and increased agility. However, DMOs should also be aware of the potential risks of relying on AI, such as the potential for repetitive content or the loss of authority or authenticity. With AI becoming even more prominent in organisational strategies, there is a critical need for establishing guidelines to ensure GDPR compliance. This involves handling personal data transparently and securely, respecting user privacy and their rights to control their data.

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Effective AI implementation also begins with a clear strategy, requiring the identification of specific challenges and the definition of clear outcomes before the creative deployment of AI tools and customised modelling. This involves ensuring an in-depth understanding of destination performance, including barriers and opportunities, and reviewing marketing technology stacks to tailor content accordingly. As such, DMOs shouldn't rush into AI developments or just attempt to replicate what others have done. Instead, a much more targeted approach is needed to determine the role AI will play in supporting destination management and marketing based on their unique structures and responsibilities. This involves designing a highly structured approach to contextualising the potential applications of this technology, questioning its potential in streamlining performance and ensuring that it is fit for purpose before making significant investments in building the necessary infrastructure to optimise and scale up the integration of AI.

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AI in Action

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When implementing new technologies, DMOs often start with pilot projects to test and assess the feasibility of a new approach. These pilot initiatives are often undertaken with limited budgets, requiring resourcefulness and innovative approaches. While AI can be used for optimising daily tasks, such as improved analysis and scheduling of content, many DMOs are going a step further and actively pioneering specific applications of generative AI across their visitor-facing digital channels:

• The Slovenian Tourist Board has implemented a virtual assistant called Alma, based on the explorer and writer, Alma Karlin, which uses a ChatGPT 4.0 integration to provide up-to-date, inspirational and detailed information when answering user queries. Combining data from over 60 local DMO websites enriches the content generated. Alma's incorporation into the website's search engine also provides a more conversational interaction. The ability for visitors to rate answers helps with ongoing training of the assistant and continuous refinement of the tool. This has not only improved accessibility to information, but has also generated positive user experiences, with over 12,000 questions answered and 39,000 page views on the DMO's website between May and November 2024. The addition of multiple filters helps visitors narrow down their search to only the most relevant content.

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• As part of Visit Greenland's website redevelopment, the DMO is actively exploring the use of AI for machine learning translation to expand its reach beyond English, Danish and German, using a tool called Weglot. While Google Translate and ChatGPT offer Greenlandic translations, these are not yet perfect, requiring human proofreading to confirm accuracy. The DMO's approach aims to balance technological efficiency with the need for authenticity and local knowledge. They are also exploring how AI can support their other communication channels.
• Fáilte Ireland is using AI to improve business listings by automatically enhancing content and converting it into a better structure. This is scored against SEO value, tone of voice and the balance of factual information with inspiration. Using AI in this manner helps ensure that businesses are presented in the best light, transforming often incomplete listings written by industry partners, many of whom have limited time for optimising copywriting, into a consistent information portal that balances conciseness with detail. This not only saves time, between 30-50%, but also enhances the quality of information available to potential visitors. With referrals a key metric for monitoring performance, this becomes a crucial area for achieving Fáilte Ireland's strategic ambitions. Moving from a testing phase in 2024, this will be scaled up in 2025, linking to a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform to also optimise the visuals and intuitively integrate the spiderweb of content at the DMO's disposal.

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• From an internal perspective, recognising that 92% of people have no brand loyalty, Trentino Marketing uses AI to strengthen their brand. This is achieved by exploring how AI can enable platform marketing by streamlining content management and ensuring brand consistency and focus across all digital assets, including its website, destination app and DAM platform. Aligning content outputs with brand values and creating a system where brand guidelines, content and other assets can be shared and applied consistently between Trentino Marketing, as the regional DMO, and all the local DMOs will help to avoid fragmentation and ensure a coherent message. This creates the basis of a structured framework for data management, ultimately enabling the profiling of visitors to create personalised itineraries through a single sign-on to improve user experiences. Following extensive testing, this AI-optimised approach for text and visuals is due to launch in February 2025, with an audio identity to be developed afterwards.
• Generative AI also plays a role in capturing attention through experimental content and fun stories. For example, Visit Greenland launched an AI-generated April Fool's campaign about the introduction of Greenlandic sea salt potato chips, produced using locally sourced ingredients from the region's pristine wilderness. This campaign not only highlighted Greenland's natural beauty and tapped into the desire for local produce, but also created a unique narrative that got people talking.

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The Future of AI in Destination Marketing

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The key to successfully embracing AI as a strategic asset lies in undergoing a holistic process. In the case of Trentino Marketing, they considered long-term resiliency from the outset through the creation of an AI board, comprising representatives from different parts of the organisation, to determine the best approach for the systematic integration of AI in solving core business needs. Structured ethical assessments also ensure that the responsible use of technology is at the heart of strategic AI integrations. To do so, the DMO is investing in training AI champions, a building block for developing sufficient internal knowledge for a step-by-step approach to the effective implementation of this technology. Such an approach helps to determine where AI will have the strongest impact in standardising content refinement and how this can be transparently communicated, both internally and externally.

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As AI continues to evolve, it will increasingly become central to destination marketing strategies, with important decisions to be made about who should have access to software licences. DMOs should, however, remain mindful of AI's limitations though enacting clear guardrails and governance, with support from digital specialists in establishing the necessary policies and guidelines. This lays the groundwork for continuous experimentation in the development of coherent prompting systems. As new tools and models emerge, and visitor behaviour and expectations evolve, DMOs must be prepared to adapt their strategies. This iterative process means that organisations will often find themselves revisiting initial implementation steps, constantly going back to the start as they integrate new features, address emerging challenges and improve existing systems. This constant cycle of experimentation, evaluation and adjustment is necessary to ensure that the technology is being used effectively and that it continues to meet the needs of the destination and its visitors. Therefore, DMOs need to be open to trying new things, learning from mistakes and be ready to refine their strategies, as this is how skills and knowledge develop.

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Crucially, pragmatism is key to understanding the best approach for systematically implementing AI. For example, identifying the languages which deliver the best quality translations can help to optimise the way machine learning is used for less common languages. Instead of only focusing on direct translations between two languages, a two-step approach may be more effective. Translating content into a language such as German can then become the basis for translation into every other language. At the same time, establishing long-term partnerships with AI developers will enable foresight as to future advancements to enable increased agility and preparedness for change. Nevertheless, this shouldn't prevent an ongoing interest in identifying new startups that are building innovative and customisable tools.

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However, an openness and awareness of other technological solutions, such as data hubs, digital twins and spacial computing, will be key to ensuring DMOs don't get caught in the wave of an AI buzz and miss out on other opportunities to digitise the tourism ecosystem. As an example of the potential of these technologies in driving positive change, the Slovenian Tourist Board's tourism recovery and resilience plan prioritises investing in the development of a comprehensive information portal that will empower local DMOs with the power to benchmark tourism flows, economic contributions and social and environmental indicators. At the same time, the launch of the Apple Vision Pro in 2024 has opened the door for high-quality immersive experiences, with first-mover advantages for those destinations that quickly adopt this technology. This shows the importance of not only having a clear digitalisation strategy, but also linking it to business plans to support practical use cases.