By Ashish Sidhra, co-founder at Alike.io
Over the years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has spread its wings in almost all sectors, and travel is no longer an exception. In fact, it was one of the first industries to incorporate AI into the travel booking system, but you may have heard about the latest online celebrity known as ChatGPT.AI needed a moniker like ChatGPT to go mainstream. And mainstream it has gone, and quickly. ChatGPT reached (and crossed) 10 million daily active users in 40 days.
Even a mass-market service like Instagram took 355 days to accomplish this feat!
ChatGPT comes from a family of AI software called Generative AI, that uses machine learning algorithms to generate new content, such as images, text, video, code, and music, by analysing large amounts of data. It has the potential to revolutionise many industries, including the tourism sector.
ChatGPT Risk in Tourism
Tourism is a key area where it will surely have limited impact for the time being. For example, if you are getting ready to book your next travel based completely on ChatGPT’s recommended itinerary, you may have to wait a while. Well, unless you are a risk-taking kind. That’s because, generative AI algorithms are only as good as the data they are trained on, and if the data contains bias, the recommendations generated by them will likely reflect that bias. As a simple example, algorithms that are trained on data from predominantly wealthy travelers may neglect budget-friendly options for cost conscious travelers.
Only a few brands have access to the breadth and depth of global traveler data required to build a customer-capable recommendation engine. And it is these very brands that will be most careful to mass launch such AI based itinerary services to prevent any brand damage resulting from flawed or plain silly recommendations.
In view of these inherent risks, we will see generative AI initially ushering in an era of “Supervised AI” travel services, a scenario in which AI works under human supervision, assisting travel workers to do their jobs better and faster.
Advantages of ChatGPT for travel
The biggest area where ChatGPT can help is travel content generation. More than 80% of travel decisions are based on what we read or see in online travel content. Technologies like ChatGPT will go a long way in helping Travel Content Creators create more engaging content, faster. Content creators will indeed have to learn new ways of working to get the most out of these new technologies. But once past that initial hoop, the system can learn from the creator’s existing travel content and generate new content that is consistent with their existing style and tone.
ChatGPT can also be used to a great effect to provide conversational customer service in the travel industry by answering questions from travellers, such as information on flight schedules, visa requirements, and local attractions.
While the Generative AI will not find immediate access to customer facing travel recommendation services, it does have a strong use case in helping travel agents recommend the most suitable travel itinerary to a customer by shortlisting a few options.
ChatGPT can also support multiple languages, making it a useful tool for the travel industry, especially in context of a multilingual country like India. The system can be used to generate or translate travel content in different languages, making it accessible to a wider audience. Again, having human supervision will be critical in such translation work.
The bottom line
We are entering a fascinating new era of democratised access to the power of AI thanks to tech like ChatGPT. It has indeed the potential to revolutionise the travel industry in many ways. But to begin with, most of the impact for a traveller will be “under the hood”. Let us cherish these very first baby steps before we strive to fly with AI.