Application of AI in Tourism & Hospitality

Xuelin Feng, Pamela De Vera, Jesemer Cabus

Application of AI in Tourism & Hospitality Sectors

On 18^th November, members of P+A Projects attended an expert panel discussion to see how Artificial Intelligence will affect the hospitality and tourism industry.  Here are their impressions from the event:

By Xuelin Feng, Technical Designer:

The event is to discuss application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it has influenced the hospitality and tourism industry. The event was organized by the Singapore Tourism Accelerator (STA) and most of the participants were from the related industry to discuss the future possibilities.

First, the speaker introduced the basic information about AI and explained that AI is not working as a high-tech thing, it is made to help people solve problems in a faster and simple way. It can collect and categorize the information immediately for the people who need but not know the problem they are facing. With this technology, people will get more involvement in the facility and get familiarity with the program faster. In tourism sector, especially in theme park industry, one of the issues is to let a tourist quickly understand the strange environment and attract them to join in. AI can shorten the ice-breaking period. Also, people can explore the game by their self-driven rather than guiding by staff.

During the project processing, Al can assist to prepare meeting, self-service, shipping the multi-media message like voice, more directly. It makes senses for certain data as adopting changes. When it detects the required information, it will spread the information in a more effective way. In our theme park design industry, it is very important to have the reflection from the customer, but in the whole designing period we do not have too much customer involvement or feedback. This technology will collect more info from past experience to more the designer be closer to the client. Maybe combining with VR test, the theme park can also make a pre-test game online to let the handicapped people enjoy.

In fact, a lot of Internet-related company already start applying this tech to detect the customer’s feedback and adjust their product, e.g. Netflix. AI has been a powerful communication tool which break the obstacles between producer and user.

In a way, AI is able to optimize the whole working progress. People are sharing, learning and deciding information much faster than that in past days. I believe in this technology will be an important role in our future work and living.

Finally, I am looking forward the more and more application of AI in this industry and thanks to STA for sharing.

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By Pamela De Vera, Technical Designer:

As we all know, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems and operated by humans. These processes include learning (the acquisition of information and rules for using the information), reasoning (using rules to reach approximate or definite conclusions) and self-correction. Various tools (application platforms) are programmed into a certain process of collecting information, assigned sub-disciplined rules and scripts, and supply analysis on contextual based findings. In addition, these simulations can also detect language, speech and sound recognition, facial detection enabling computers to communicate ideas with faster response and provide various suggestions thru online platforms.

Technology has gone up its limits and impacted from banking to agriculture and now in tourism. Travelling has become a fad, and tourism sectors take a step on how to solve numerous passengers that goes in and out of every country with the use of AI. Everyone can afford to travel with just a click away and AI made it more convenient to book and reserve hotels, purchase tickets and tour packages and even food to order, can be delivered right into your doorstep. Skip the long queues, sit back and relax as they may say, but what are the glitches when everyone uses these applications at the same time? Do all people who use it were satisfied with the results?

The panel speakers from the Singapore Tourism Board shared their challenges, the pros and cons in this age of AI and technology in line with the businesses they cater. Truly, convenience and time are the main advantages of AI, they all receive a lot of customer’s positive feedbacks and are very satisfied with the efficiency of this kind.

I was delighted that one of the speakers, delivered his experience from his heart. As he shared, he was thankful that AI managed well in his business, and of course, you cannot avoid mishaps in business, he encountered a lot of concerned customers, which AI can’t provide, this time, he confesses that it is good to balance the use of AI and human intervention. We cannot always depend on AI, to balance it is more essential, it will give you a more in-depth experience.

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By Jesemer Cabus, Technical Designer:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is among the greatest innovative solutions of growing demands of today. But of course, there are pros and cons of using AI. Still, it has shown a clearly positive and significant result over the past years. AI increased efficiency in every industrial sector (hotels, restaurants, airports, museums, travel agencies, amusement and theme parks and others). We see its great benefits for businesses and even for the costumers. It can fasten and make one’s work easier like gathering info and data or in terms of sales and reservations online in hotels, airlines, restaurants, travel agency or even purchasing of amusement or themed park tickets. It also gives the company competitiveness in terms of their service quality, operations, product output, logistics and processing speed which can boost their revenues in returns and gives a customer a great sense of satisfaction. It can also be a great a help for user or customer in expanding their options and gather feedback by using google, social media like Facebook or Instagram. But still AI has limits.  It can’t provide and do all the work, of course, and may also add cost for businesses as they need to hire people that have knowledge, invest in high tech machines, computer, software and even discovering and upgrading for advancement in the future. Truly, we can’t deny the big impact of AI and how it changed our lives into a fast-paced society and economically.