Tourism has always been an important factor in the economic development of regions, in people's quality of life and as a way of spreading cultures and customs.
Travel always transforms lives, it helps us to disconnect from everyday life, to get to know places, people and stories.
Improving the performance of tourism as a system that is interrelated with the economy, well-being and leisure is fundamental to the development of places and societies.
The use of technology can help in various ways and sectors, bringing greater agility to decision-making, whether by public or private authorities or in directing investments and offers to tourists.
Artificial intelligence is at the center of attention in all sectors and countries, and is still a mystery to many and a desire for others. But what is AI? Artificial Intelligence refers to systems or machines that mimic human intelligence to perform tasks and can iteratively improve themselves based on the information they collect (Big data). The great advantage is that AI can analyze large volumes of data and make decisions more accurately and quickly, where it could take us days, it does so in seconds.
"...when it comes to understanding our future with AI, we are all children in kindergarten. We're full of unanswered questions, trying to analyze the future with a mixture of childlike wonder and adult concerns." Kai-Fu Lee.
An important warning is that AI is not necessarily an information system that responds accurately to everything; it needs to be fed large volumes of data, go through a processing process and then generate information for decision-making.
This whole process starts with asking the right question; knowing what you're trying to find out is the first step towards AI guidance. And tourism managers need to know how to ask the right question, find out how to get the important data to help the process and then use machine learning algorithms to guide the answers.
In a world where everything happens very quickly, changes are visible and we all need to adapt, somehow having to use AI to make better decisions, whether economic or social, thus reducing errors and boosting results.
In tourism, it's no different. Some of the questions that swirl around the sector: how to attract more tourists, how to make them stay longer, how to serve them in a way that doesn't harm the place, how and where to invest better, which policies work best, among others, AI can help answer the vast majority of them quickly and assertively.
The creation of tourism intelligence systems can be a major driver of this development, where access to information will benefit tourists and the trade.
One example is understanding the flow of tourists, seasonality, tastes, where you can offer better services, urban planning, service capacity and innovations.
In fact, AI is constantly evolving and tourism can and should benefit from this, seek out partnerships with startups that focus on the sector, get to know how it works and the possibilities, whether through consultancies, workshops, benchmarking, being curious and, above all, being open to innovation. This is a new world, and it's going to change the way we work, relate to each other and decide the next steps for our businesses, cities and tourists.
EduardoPezzi (@edupezzi)
Master's degree and specialist in Tourism and Marketing, specialist in Data Science and Marketing Analytics, exponential thinker from Singularity University.
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