81% say their company already has established or implemented policies/strategies around generative AI or are currently in the process of doing so

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81% say their company already has established or implemented policies/strategies around generative AI or are currently in the process of doing so.

This was the figure discovered by a recent Harris Poll commissioned by Insight Enterprises (NASDAQ: NSIT). The poll surveyed C-Suite executives at companies with more than 1000 employees. It is not known how many of those companies may have been tourism related but other key findings included that the main areas of focus were to “make employees more productive (72%) and enhance customer service (66%)”.

Insight’s Chief Technology Officer Matt Jackson said in the report “People are sitting in meeting rooms or virtual rooms discussing how generative AI can help them achieve near-term business goals while trying to stave off being disrupted by somebody else who is a faster, more efficient adopter.”

The report also discusses some of the not insignificant concerns executive’s have about the rising AI phenonemon but Jackson quells this with his assertion that “the power of generative AI is its ability to augment, not replace, human intelligence”

Suggestion: If you are a CEO or member of a leadership group and you know you don’t yet have a strategy, I’d strongly recommend forwarding this email to the rest of the leadership group and asking “What is our strategy”? Your board will be asking you soon I’d expect and it would be good to have the discussion underway internally.

(Hat tip to reader Matt Carracher for putting me onto the report. If you’ve got a tip - tag me in or DM me)

Meanwhile back here in tourism specifically, CEO’s are calling out AI as part of their future on earnings calls, but not in official findings

This reprint of a Financial Times piece found in the Financial Post (no paywall) says both “Marriott International Inc. and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. said they are working on AI-powered systems to make processes such as reservation booking more efficient and personalized.”

This was prefaced in the article by the statement “The trends have sparked discussion even in industries not known for technological innovation.” Is that us?! 😅 

The other quote in the article that grabbed our attention was from Bryant VanCronkhite, a senior portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC who said “You’re actually talking to a computer that sounds like a person. But the benefit is that ‘person’ is never crabby or late to work and is really good at cross-selling.” Whilst he was talking specifically about ordering burgers & fires rather than more complex travel - it does give some pause for thought.

Will your AI powered customer service chatbot give your guests the recipe to napalm, if they ask nicely?

Ben Hanley from Three&Six decided to find out by having a chat with bot from a European Tour service provider. The result was disturbing and somewhat inevitable given the nascent nature of LLM’s and how they have (or haven’t) been trained. They just want to be helpful! The potential brand damage however is one of the risks you should look to mitigate when building, especially if just putting a new UI over the top of GPT.

Generative AI basic, starting with a “tear down” of Trip Advisor’s new AI powered feature by Christian Watts

Some great feedback from a few early readers of Edition one of this newsletter was that they want to know more about the basics of AI.

I highly recommend to those who are in that boat to take some time to go and look back through some of video posts you can find on Christian Watts’ Linked In page. Christian did some of the best early analysis and demonstration of the new tech that I saw (from any industry). He gets bonus points for often showing up in Collingwood Football Club apparel (an Australian Football Team, the team I follow) despite being an Englishman in San Francisco.

A good place to start is in this “roast” of Trip Advisor’s new AI powered feature in which Christian was extremely fair and measured TBH. If looking to get a really solid grounding in the basics then maybe better to start at this “How does this work” post from 5 months ago and work your way forward

What bets specifically is the Booking Group Making?

Last week we reported Glen Fogel as saying the Booking Group were spreading their bets around when it came to GAI, to see what sticks. In this analysis of the Q3 earnings call, we get a little deeper into the specifics of those bets.

The TL;DR is Priceline is going bottom of funnel with with it’s AI assistant Penny; Booking is going top of funnel with Trip Planning assistence and Kayak is using mainly internally for process improvement.

What bets are you making? Reply to this email if you have something to share.

What do you think? You can vote here. 

The winning answer from last weeks poll was no-one cared enough to vote! 😅 Seems Humans vs Robots is not a winning idea for community building.

I’ll can this idea piece if its not a section people are interested in (so please vote if you are!)

Got an idea you want to share? Hit reply to this NL and let me know.

Enjoying the content so far and know someone else who might benefit from it? Forward it on to them and they can click this button below to join.

ChatGPT-powered AVA hotel AI concierge is now live in 10,000 rooms!

Maybe the answers to some of the conundrems mentioned above can be found in Asia. In this post on their company site, Aiello talk about how they take a blended approach with their Aiello Voice Assistant (AVA) product ocillating between their own homegrown LLM based spefically on the use case of their hotel clients’ guest’s needs (what is the wifi password? What time does breakfast start in the morning etc) and ChatGPT where the information is missing from their dataset.

The example they use to demonstrate is “if a traveler asks, “Do I need to wear a swimming cap in the pool?” and the information was missing in the database, previous language models may have struggled with the answer. However, with the integration of GPT, the device understands the question, and responds accurately right away.”

The other benefit is that it saves them on cost by using their own LLM for most of the queries. They’ve been at it since 2019 which seems like a big advantage at this point.

Using GAI for SEO?

This post from my new Linked In conection Grzegorz Kowalski, founder of TripOffice.com caught my eye. Creating content is one of the simplest use cases for GAI usage. LLM’s will pump out as much content as you want. They are indefatigable. And content is King when it comes to SEO, right? Grzegorz has decided no…..

I’m open to new connections on my Linked In (had 68 since last week!) and happy to follow your news also if AI related. You might find it ends up here in front of the community.

Introducing TripGenie: A Ground-Breaking AI Travel Assistant by Trip.com for Unrivalled, Personalised and Intuitive Travel Planning and Booking

According to this post in the newsroom of their own site, Trip.com have cracked the trip planning code using the latest AI. At last!!

I downloaded the App from the Apple app store eager to give it my Borneo test (which no-one has passed).

Unfortunately TripGenie failed to appear when I first downloaded that App but after turning it off and back on again, it was there! It actually didn’t do too badly on it’s initial itinerary response. Day 2 had a needless 9 hour drive which could’ve been done in sections to cover the suggested places to visit (or just flown) and there was small mismatches on other geographical points but it didn’t have me in Brunei in the morning and the top of Borneo for dinner which I’ve seen with others. A couple of suggestions later it was formed into a pretty suitable itinerary (note: the cutomer needs to know what suggestions make sense - the GPT will just do whatever you tell it to).

The bigger problem specifically for Trip.com itself is when I asked Trip Genie if I could book the trip we’d just planned together, it said unfortunately no - we couldn’t but then recommended me all of Trip.com’s competitors to do those bookings! Whoops!

There are now (at least) 52 AI powered Trip Planning tools for Travel itineraries build by indie hackers around the world. I couldn’t go past that number - its 1 a week for a year! I’m going throw myself on the hand grenade here and to try one each week, every week and put what I find in here - starting next week.

I’ll also try to track down the makers and get a bit more context behind each build. If you are building an AI powered travel planning tool as a startup - reply to this email or DM me on Linked In. I’d love to chat. If you know someone who is building one - forward them this newsletter.

Tip! The best way to embed knowledge is to talk about what you’ve learned with someone else. Share this email with a curious friend with whom you can brainstorm the ideas.

Most clicked last week was the headline story about Sabre intergrating AI into its system to improve attachment rates.

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focussing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think