Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a buzzword for recent years and it has impacted many business sectors including banking, agriculture, manufacturing and retail, many sectors have benefited by Artificial Intelligence. AI, Machine Learning and Data Science are already defining the way we travel now and how we will travel in the future. All depends on us to understand the power of this genie and use it in more innovative ways to give optimum customer experience, efficient service delivery and increased profits and revenues!

1. Using Artificial Intelligence in Travel,
Tourism and Hospitality Industry

2. Using Artificial Intelligence in Travel, Tourism and
Hospitality Industry
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a buzzword for recent years and it has
impacted many business sectors including banking, agriculture,
manufacturing and retail, many sectors have benefitted by Artificial
Intelligence.
• The concept of artificial intelligence has existed earlier, evolved over
the years and has no straightforward definition. We invented
computers to execute tasks and programming languages to define
tasks. AI is an evolved technique to train a machine to take certain
decisions and execute tasks. Basically AI refers to a mechanism
performing tasks on behalf of human beings that would normally
require human intelligence to carry out. The tasks could be learning
instructions, processing data, taking decisions, or listening and
interpreting communication.

3. Understanding AI with real life examples
• When we talk about AI, we talk about automation, where
processes are executed with little or no human involvement.
And the application of AI can be found in simple everyday
examples like a face reorganization based screen lock on a
mobile device to a automatically dimming room light
sensing the surroundings or a app suggesting a particular
product based on your product search trail in the past and
purchase history.
• With growth of search engines, ecommerce and social
platforms, companies started collecting, storing and
processing huge size of useful data. The data in form of
text, audio and video is further used to enable AI which
perform tasks like query analysis, giving personalized
solutions, resulting in a seamless customer journey.

4. AI, a genie for all
• AI can be used by manufacturing sector to fine-tune and
automate subtasks involved in processes like procurement,
production and distribution. Marketing & Sales function can
use AI powered intelligent dashboards to rollout fine tuned
campaigns, get deeper market, consumer persona, trends
related insights.
• Imagine a AI powered sales PitchBot which readies itself
based on a data set related to the prospect available on
internet and pitches appropriate product and fine tune
recommendations on the fly, just like an expert salesperson.
• AI can handle post sales and service function effectively by
managing customer expectations, responding to queries,
giving solutions resulting in reduction of ticket size and
increased customer satisfaction and retention.

5. AI & Travel Industry
• Travel industry is one of the industries leveraging the
transformational benefits of AI at a larger extent and there are
many areas in a customer journey it can be implemented.
• As per a report by Deloitte, the size of Travel, Tourism &
Hospitality industry is 1.6 trillion USD in 2017 and the industry
contributes 10.4% to the world’s GDP. Looking at the size and
growth of this segment, it is logical to experiment a newer
technology like Artificial Intelligence across the consumer journey
and touch points in this segment to enhance overall experience
and revenues.
• But if we look at the use of AI in travel sites and apps, apart from
chatbots and online helpdesks, it is evident that the use of AI in
travel and tourism industry has to see a long way.

6. Few AI implementation use cases in Travel industry

7. TravelAgentBot
• As per web trends and statistics, a large
set of user journeys may start on a laptop,
but the purchase is being completed on
smartphones. The multiple device use
gives large datasets to AI bot to analyze
and recommend personalized packages
to the targeted audience.
• We can look at AI implementation to help
in making travel experience targeted to
niche groups of travelers. A
TravelAgentBot can scan a traveler’s
profile with data related to their
preferences, budget, location, eating
habits etc gathered from internet and
suggest a customized personalized travel
package.

8. CustomerServiceBot
• A customer service AI infused
bot can even guide a customer
to choose his next destination
to travel to with assistance to
mode of travel, choice of rooms
and overall cost estimates or
even apologize for a service
deficiency and take steps for
service recovery and issue a
ticket for internal audit or even
accept payments related to
membership.

9. Inroom Alexa
• With increasing popularity of AI and IOT
powered technologies, by now Alexa has
become a household name. With Alexa
Amazon’s developer community provides a set
of built-in capabilities, referred to as skills. For
example, Alexa's capabilities consist of playing
music of choice from various sources,
answering queries and giving weather
information etc. These skills can be further
customized to build application specific
skillsets.
• A customized Alexa dot can be placed in each
hotel room which can be used by guests to
plan a day, a spa session, dine and outdoor
activities with live consultation and updates
from Alexa. The guest doesn’t need to ring the
reception at all.

10. A marketer’s Genie
• Artificial Intelligence helps a marketer to
define pricing strategies, destination
specific package rates etc by analyzing
wide-ranging datasets. AI enables such
revenue sensitive decision making process
easy. By predicting well, AI allows
businesses to fine tune promotional
campaigns, boost conversions and make
better revenues.
• By implementing AI system, the
marketing team can easily churn
thousands of online customer reviews to
find out choices of the customers. With
AI, the marketing team can make strategic
decisions about guest behavior and
automate various processes for increasing
business performance.

11. A Reputation Genie
• In today’s social world, managing brand ORM,
reputation is a key responsibility of every
business. It is easy for a customer to go on
social platforms and share his/her opinion
about a brand based on experience which
instantly reaches a sizable audience and
prospective customers. So it is important to
keep a check on what customers say about
your business. A single negative review by a
customer can cause serious damage to the
online reputation of your brand.
• Using artificial intelligence, the brands can
monitor customer sentiments in real time. A
customized AI bot can enable a brand to parse
through unstructured data like social media
comments, comments on products/services,
and other mentions about the brand by using
natural language processing take relevant
action related to service recovery.
AI
Take care of
ORM!

12. A pricing bot
• In travel and tourism industry, a
dynamic pricing plays a major role in
understanding market trends and
update room rates, package and
ticket prices to optimize revenues.
• AI based pricing bot can use
predictive analytics of variables like
data on competitive prices, weather,
user’s booking pattern, occupation
data, room types, daily rates and
other variables. Such bots can be
defined to operate automatically and
revenue managers can also refer the
dashboards and fine tune the rates
manually if required.

13. Personalization of the CX (Customer experience)
• Many large ecommerce companies have built
their websites and apps using AI infused online
marketing cloud technology solutions provided
by companies like Adobe, Salesforce, Oracle
and IBM.
• With a marketing cloud, the platform enables a
marketer to build a website, integrate analytical
tools, social media listening tools, tools
building a persona based profiling of
customers to enable a personalized customer
experience.
• With such platforms, a brand can track
customer behavior, collecting, including
individual data like earlier purchases, searched
destinations and other historical data. This data
is further used in detailed segmentation of the
customer to serve appropriate user experience
in real time, as per the category a user belongs
to. Such dynamic personalization of CX has
already resulted in increased revenues in case
of many brands in travel segment.

14. Enhancing a stay with AI
• Apart from planning a
holiday, dine and outdoor
activity with an in room with
help of a Alexa dot, guests
can set room temperature,
adjust the light or turn the TV
on and off. Facial recognition
can be used to speed up
registrations and make the
check-in and check-out
process more easy and safe.

15. That is all for now!
• AI, Machine Learning and Data Science are already defining
the way we travel now and how we will travel in the future.
• All depends on us to understand the power of this genie
and use it in more innovative ways to give optimum
customer experience, efficient service delivery and
increased profits and revenues!

16. About the author
Atalbihari Baddar
The author is a Digital Strategy Expert and has 20 years of experience across Travel &
Hospitality, e-Commerce, e-Learning domains.
https://in.linkedin.com/in/atalbihari
https://digitalpercept.blogspot.com/2020/09/using-artificial-intelligence-in-travel.html