It’s tempting to rush ahead and invest in artificial intelligence, lest your competitors leave you behind. But taking a steadier, more strategic approach might be the fastest route to business growth, especially for companies operating in the travel and tourism sector.
As early as 2023, TripAdvisor launched its itinerary builder, and since then the solutions have only become more sophisticated. By the end of 2023, it was predicted that genAI alone would unlock $2 trillion to $4 trillion in incremental value — and travel and tourism companies are set to take a healthy slice of that pie.
AI’s proven ability to improve areas like holiday personalization is what suppliers, travel advisors and consumers are banking on, but greater consideration is needed before layering existing business models with complicated technology that requires hefty investment.
Experience is the destination, not AI
As travel advisors, you’re essentially selling an experience, and your business growth relies on the quality of that experience. Yet the definition of “quality” is subjective and entirely dependent on whether your products and services meet a customer’s unique needs, all the more so in the travel and tourism industry, where customers want to buy the kind of experiences that make memories.
A family with three children of varying ages, for example, will have very different preferences than a couple looking for an adults-only vacation. This means that any investment you make in AI-based technology should not only enhance the experiences you’re selling but also have the ability to be tailored to each customer’s needs. Better still, if AI can design options that clients didn’t even know they wanted until they saw them, the whole experience becomes so much more valuable and exciting.
AI as the ultimate concierge
We explored the vast potential that AI has to transform the travel and tourism industry in our recent work with the Austrian National Tourist Board, including the ways it can eliminate the stress of booking a holiday. Planning a trip can be a chore, but AI could do it, seemingly in a flash. Though it still requires the time to fact-check the results, it is still a substantial time saver.
Airbnb recently purchased GamePlanner.AI to create a more personalized experience for its users. The company spoke of creating the “ultimate concierge”: an app that feels like it knows you, which somewhat relieves the pressure on a traveler to worry whether they’re making the right choice.
AI is a fantastic tool that enables travel advisors to deliver a personalized experience, but it falls flat without the human touch. To get it really right, companies need to maintain a human dialogue with customers – especially when things go wrong.
AI is one part of a human-first strategy
When Delta Air Lines announced in December 2023 that it was investing in AI to support reservation agents and pricing, it failed to invest sufficiently in the backup IT infrastructure needed in the event of an outage. Cue the recent CrowdStrike outages, which saw Delta Airways suffer disruption at a greater scale than any other airline.
To use AI without the human aspect is to make an error. In the travel sector, a breakdown in customer service of the CrowdStrike scale can plague brands in ways that customers do not forget. AI is a crucial part of your growth strategy, but it is only one part of it, especially as there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Some vacationers will welcome the streamlined booking process but want to see a human face on arrival. Others may crave seamless self-check-in after long travels. So suppliers will need to provide optionality, which requires both technology and a team of empowered humans to support continuity of guest experience from arrival through to departure.
Technology is the enabler, it’s not the story
Don’t let technology take over. Focus first on the experience that your brand story promises, then use AI to create the ultimate guest experience in support of that story. If you know your customers, and you know their specific challenges, go out and talk to tech companies. Ask them to show you what solutions are possible. That’s how you create a groundbreaking offering that truly enhances your unique customer promise and supports long-term business growth.
Dougie Hastings is strategy director at Yonder Consulting.
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