We’re at the start of an AI revolution in the travel and tourism industry. Smart agents will reshape how holidaymakers plan, book, and interact with their holiday destination — and how businesses respond.
If you manage a holiday park, visitor centre, or local attraction, read on to find out how AI agents might boost engagement, improve service, and reduce overhead.
AI is changing industries in different ways. How is the tourism sector, for regional British travel and tourism, going to change? Specifically, if you’re in the regional holiday industry, what are some of the advantages of using AI Agent to communicate with your visitors?
Advantages of AI Tourism Agents For Visitors
How AI Is Transforming Holiday Planning
One of the ways in which AI will fundamentally change the relationship between holiday makers and tourism providers is in the research and planning stage. Rather than the holiday maker having to do multiple individual searches, with many tabs open, to try and combine different sets of data into a meaningful whole – an AI agent can do this for them.
As a recent article on the impact of AI in the tourism industry by CNN puts it, this move is “replacing traditional sequential search with a conversational interface to plan and book relevant business trips” (CNN).
So for example, rather than having to correlate separate searches for: travel distance, weather forecast, tide times, and restaurant recommendations into a coherent plan – by means of a single query to a Chatbot all of that information can be presented together as a meaningful whole. In doing this “AI agents for travel intelligent systems [can] help travelers make smarter decisions, respond faster to changes, and enjoy highly curated experiences” (Tredence).
Tourism AIs’ ‘Understand’ Visitors
The strength of AI tourism agents here is that they have a very specific understanding of the context of the user (such as the places they most likely want to visit, and the issues that can arise).
A Chatbot can also react and respond to the specific interests, needs, or budget of the visitor to give personalised support and suggestion. For example, if it knows that the visitor is a single man in his twenties, who likes surfing, then the response will be very different to that given to a retired couple keen to visit stately gardens.
Advantages of AI Tourism Agents For Holiday Businesses
AI Agents for Tourist Information Efficiency
While there are obvious advantages for tourists here, there are also numerous advantages for businesses.
One of the best understood advantages of AI agents for businesses is in customer service. Allowing agents to field popular and frequently asked questions frees up staff time, which allows businesses to cut down on their customer management overhead.
As part of being customer facing, and answering enquiries, agents can also record customer sentiment and feedback – in turn feeding that back to the business providing ideas of what’s going well and where room for improvement lies.
Furthermore, by being in charge of the knowledge base on which the agent runs, businesses can direct visitors to member businesses or promote inventory that needs to be sold.
Agents can be aligned with, and serve, the wider goals of a business, as well as in theory be integrated with other business systems such as CRM platforms and Analytics.
What the Future Looks Like for AI in Travel
While not necessarily wholly replacing the personal touch of customer interaction, one of the advantages of using an agent for customer service in this regard is to build and maintain a longer-term relationship with the visitor.
Thinking about a future in which this is the case, the Digital Tourism Think Tank suggest that:
“Traditional models of brand loyalty and destination marketing may become less relevant as AI agents increasingly mediate travel decisions. We might instead see the emergence of ‘agent loyalty’ — where travellers trust particular AI systems to make good decisions on their behalf. This shift could fundamentally alter how destinations build and maintain relationships with potential visitors” (Digital Tourism Think Tank).
In the future scenario described, the tourism Chatbot isn’t just an optional extra to the brands marketing mix – but central to the customer relationship. Agents can, moreover, entertain and engage users and in doing so allow the business to differentiate from the competition.
Find Out More or Explore Our Custom AI Agent
Whether you’re ready to explore a custom AI agent, or just want to learn how this technology compares to generic platforms, take the next step.
Persuaded that an AI agent can add value to your business, then why not take a closer look at ‘How our custom tourism agent compares to generic AI platforms’?
Alternatively, you can demo our own custom tourism AI for Cornwall here.