Artificial Intelligence Revolutionizes Tourism by Enhancing Personalized Services for Agencies

Sometimes, when we are in new and unknown places, we have difficulty finding or choosing interesting attractions, restaurants, and activities to do. After all, our leisure time has to be well spent, and so it is important to choose our destinations wisely. Even though we can see some interesting options on online maps and other apps, when we check reviews and see comments about the places, it is common that, despite being well-rated, some experiences do not meet our personal tastes and end up frustrating our expectations.

In the early stages of a trip, many questions may arise: What to do? Where to go? How to get there? Which route to take? One solution to this and other questions that is increasingly gaining ground is the use of artificial intelligence. Among the functions that can be performed by AI, Alexandre Panosso Netto, professor of the Postgraduate Program in Tourism at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH) at USP, cites: “More accurate weather forecasts; transport routes redesigned based on the flow of people and busiest times; scheduling visits to tourist attractions according to the route chosen by the tourist; issuing travel documents according to the journey; personalizing itineraries that are even more personal than those already possible”.

New trends

According to the Travel & Hospitality AI Market Overview report by data firm IndustryArc, the artificial intelligence market in the travel sector is expected to surpass US$1.2 billion by 2026. This market turmoil illustrates the growing use of these tools and the impact they are generating.  

The current trend is for travelers to seek personalized, automated experiences with minimized human administrative contact. One symptom that illustrates this situation is the automation of customer service through chatbots and virtual assistants. Today, according to a survey by Oracle Research, 92% of respondents say they are interested in using the tool to request service on future trips. In addition, 83% of Brazilian travelers want hotels to offer technologies that minimize contact with staff and other guests. 

The machine learning component of artificial intelligence engines creates an opportunity in the area of ​​“personalized experience”. With this tool, AIs are able to get to know the customer based on their search patterns and available data, creating recommendations for hotels, destinations and travel itineraries that correspond to the data collected. In addition to personalization, the application can also make the travel experience easier. Finding the best opportunities for airfare prices, predicting demand for certain destinations, indicating the best time and the lowest price to travel are tasks that can be given to this new technology, which solves everything based on the analysis of historical search and price data. 

Humans and machines

Currently, academic efforts have focused on understanding how the job market will absorb this new technology. Despite some pessimistic projections, which point to the replacement of humans by machines and a situation of widespread unemployment in the tourism sector, due to its own dynamism, the market has proven resilient to the major impacts of this tool. In the early 2000s, the widespread use of the Internet generated a similar fear. At the time, the fear was that the profession of travel agent would disappear in the face of technological advances. Since it would be possible to search and buy everything directly, without the need for intermediaries, people assumed that the role of the agent would be extinguished from the market, which did not happen. On the contrary, the Internet has made the work of these professionals easier, and today it is an essential element in the sector. 

Similarly, the job market is expected to embrace the potential of new tools as assistants to professionals, not as substitutes. Mechanical and bureaucratic work tends to be assimilated by AIs, but functions involving value judgment, assessments, sensitivity and other more subjective skills will continue to require a human touch for the service to be provided satisfactorily.