16th July marked Artificial Intelligence (AI) Appreciation Day, which acknowledges the advancements and positive impacts AI has had on society. With every passing day, AI continues to develop and increase the ways it affects our daily lives.
This is particularly true in the travel industry, where 40% of travellers have admitted to already using AI to plan their trips. However, the real impact comes from travel companies embracing the technology. The challenge ahead is to ensure that AI is used where it makes sense and that real benefits for the customer.
Paula Felstead, chief information officer at HBX Group offers the following comments on how travel companies can best approach AI to deliver the potential benefits:
“There is huge potential that AI models can enhance and improve the customer experience in the travel industry, which is just one of numerous common use cases. The challenge for many organisations is connecting and utilising AI solutions at scale across other parts of their organisations, with the accuracy and reliability that customers expect and demand.
“Companies should approach AI from a human-first perspective, seeing it as an enabler. The real benefit of AI is in using it to help employees, instead of replacing them. AI can help increase efficiency with a lot of repetitive, well defined intelligence tasks and assess customer sentiment to cater directly to what they want.
“This is an exciting element as it will help enhance the work of professionals and create more time for them to focus on innovative new ideas, whilst delivering the experiences that holidaymakers really want.
“AI has the potential to change many parts of the organisation’s capabilities and for many, embracing it will be a competitive advantage. However, it’s not a cure-all or magic solution. Its impact will largely depend on how well companies understand, curate and manage their data as a foundation.
“It will also depend on how well thought through the design and implementation of the specific AI model for the problem to be solved. We’re at a truly fascinating pivot point. If we can leverage AI to solve real customer problems and to give them choice and be better informed, then everyone will benefit, and customers will be delighted.
“If they are not, then we will have collectively failed in Travel to fully leverage this amazing capability.”
