Towards artificial tourism, what impact will artificial intelligence have on the tourism sector?
From automated chatbots with pre-recorded responses to artificial intelligence that interacts live with you, the digitalisation of customer relations is a major turning point in the tourism sector. And this shift has become much more pronounced in recent months with the democratisation of artificial intelligence, rather than its emergence. It took ChatGPT 2 months to reach 100 million users, while it took Instagram 2 years to reach the same number. But ChatGPT is far from isolated, and is simply an artificial intelligence 2.0 showcase. It is the tree that hides the digital forest.
We’ve been hearing about it every day for the past few months: artificial intelligence is everywhere, buoyed by the emergence of OpenAI. And while some sectors have not escaped this tidal wave, the tourism and travel sectors are of course among them. What are the advantages and limitations as applied to tourism? To find out the advantages and limitations of ChatGPT in the tourism sector, the easiest way is to ask him. And the least we can say is that he (or she) has a sense of honesty. 24/7 customer service, multilingualism, personalised travel proposals, management of a large volume of requests and therefore improved customer experience, reduced costs and simple implementation on sites and applications.
So much for the positive points, which are certainly not negligible, but ChatGPT still points out that it is not a substitute for human intervention and that it is “therefore preferable to use it as a complement to a human customer service team”. But while it is advantageous in many areas, it also has a number of limitations, which it readily acknowledges.
Limited understanding, lack of empathy, lack of creativity and answers that can be too generic, need for updates as well as confidentiality, legal and ethical issues. Today, for example, ChatGPT is unable to provide information such as the current weather or train traffic in real time, even on the paid-for GPT-4 version. It recommends that users consult a weather forecasting site in such cases.
Many players in the tourism sector have embraced AI and integrated a system tailored to their needs. Expedia and Kayak, for example, have implemented a chatbot generated by OpenAI. In these cases, plugins can be used to link ChatGPT directly to chatbots, while allowing it to continue to feed off the results it finds on the Internet. ChatGPT can therefore provide the most relevant answers possible to customers and help them plan their trips. Expedia also lists a number of possible uses for AI. Providing support during and after booking or offering a personalised service to provide customers with relevant information are just some of the areas in which AI can be used.
Because the innovation sector is not limited to OpenAI, many other AI tools useful to the tourism sector have been developed in recent years. Although they are not open to the general public in the same way as ChatGPT, they will nonetheless be a tool that will be of direct use to us, without us even being aware of it. As is already the case…
Take FairGuest, for example, which we saw demonstrated live at the recent CML on the Beach conference. It’s a tool for managing responses to customer reviews that generates a relevant response and does 90% of the work for redundant tasks. Invisible AI for the end customer, but a significant tool for the company that implements it, as it saves time for its employees. Another example is Qemotion. An emotional artificial intelligence. It analyses customer responses and opinions. So far, a tool like any other, with the difference that Qemotion performs both a semantic and an emotional analysis to detect irritants and therefore measure satisfaction and anticipate weak signals. A tool that builds loyalty by improving the customer experience and satisfaction, and everyone’s happy!
Artificial intelligence is now a major issue in the world of tourism, because it enables greater customer engagement thanks to its recommendations, at a lower cost. Handling redundant tasks with relevance and without tiring is the main advantage that AIs now offer over employees. This is a major advantage in terms of saving money and time, prioritising tasks and conserving bandwidth for in-house teams.
