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Can AI really have an impact on sustainable travel? 

A couple of good examples this week on how AI can play a role in some of the issues that sit broadly under the sustainable travel banner this week.

Firstly in an article from ATTA we see that AI is playing a key role in elephant protection efforts.

“The AI solution, leveraging IBM Maximo Visual Inspection software, will analyse images from camera traps, focusing on head and tusk recognition. This technology not only aids wildlife conservation in the Congo region but also helps assess the financial value of nature's contributions, such as carbon sequestration services provided by these elephants.”

That last bit caught me a bit off guard, but I found more evidence of what this means in this article from the IMF. Firstly, we are talking about forest elephants here - not the ones we generally think of who are roaming the savannah. The TL:DR is that these elephants trample and eat the small tress leaving behind the larger ones who create the canopy which promotes the best conditions for carbon capture! Who knew!

Next up was a story about Amsterdam & Copenhagen who have jointly joined a trial of an AI travel guide entitled “Travel with Zoey”. Zoey recommends more esoteric sites than the usual tourist fare.

After a successful trial in the Dutch province of Overijssel, “found that both sets of tourists enjoyed their trip equally no matter which way they had planned their trip, with results suggesting that a site’s renown is less important to tourists than its perceived accessibility and entertainment value.” The other “set” were given the usual tourist type map to follow.

Rajneesh Badal, Zoey’s chief executive officer said “it will pave the way for the university team to “make this part of the toolkit for policymakers and destination management organizations,” The project is being run by Breda University.

And over at TravelHorst they’ve developed a heap of training modules to upskill people in what they need to know on sustainability subjects as part of a Sustainable Travel Academy. The AI twist? All the courses are taught by AI avatars. With this tech being built into mainstream workplace training platforms such as Articulate 360, it is only a matter of time before you have your first AI trainer encounter.

I will be on a panel at the upcoming WeTravel, Travel Innovation Summit on this specific topic of the intersection of AI & sustainability. Tickets are FREE. Hope to see you there!

Meanwhile in Zanzibar….

Staying in Africa, an article this week coming out of Tanzania talked about how AI was changing the way the country looked at visitor sentiment from their visits. UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) Tanzania’s Accelerator Lab has teamed up with the Zanzibar Commission for Tourism and ICPSD’s SDG AI Lab. This collaboration aims to revolutionise Zanzibar’s tourism through data-driven approaches and advanced digital technologies.

Tourism makes up 17% of Tanzania’s GDP and that rises to 50% in Zanzibar “yet, the industry’s potential remains untapped due to challenges like inadequate infrastructure, limited access to finance, and environmental concerns.”

“Through social listening, this project monitors online conversations to gain real-time feedback, helping service providers enhance their offerings. One of the project’s innovative features is Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA), which delves into tourist reviews to reveal specific sentiments about aspects like comfort, location, or service. This granular analysis allows the team to identify strengths and weaknesses in Zanzibar’s tourism offerings.”

Part of the role of AI here is in “keyword extraction helps summarise large volumes of text, making it easier to spot popular topics and emerging trends.”

Previously Tanzania relied on an exit survey.

AI now takes you right around the world

A fantastic practical use case in AI emerged this week with OneWorld announcing they have used AI to work with their “Around the World” fares to help users navigate what previously was a pretty tricky product.

I’ve tortured many a poor travel agent in my younger days mashing me up fares that could get me to friends in the UK, a trip to Egypt before a long sojourn down in South America before ultimately ending up in Barbados for the cricket. I tried piecing it together myself on this and other occasions, but it basically just didn’t work with the old online tool.

The solution was built by “Elemental Cognition and its use of advanced AI capabilities in the EC AI Platform, powered by Google Cloud.”

This is a great example of where AI can work really well. Structured data set and millions of different permutations getting broken down into the route you want.

If you aren’t aware of Round-the-World fares, you normally need to fly in a clockwise (or anticlockwise) direction bouncing from continent to continent without backtracking. They are AMAZING at getting you to really hard and otherwise expensive places. My trip above cost 2/3 of the cost of just a return ticket to Barbados for example. All you need is a good chunk of time off!

Also don’t just skip a leg and don’t tell anyone or you may find yourself desperately searching for the QANTAS office in Sao Paulo because the entire ticket has been cancelled. Or that could just be a me thing.

AI Highlights from LinkedIn

There was a load of great stuff on LinkedIn this week.

Kevin Fumai brought us in formation about the AI proficiency report. The report found “users can be grouped into four categories: ▶ AI Skeptics: never use AI (11%) ▶ AI Newcomers: occasional users (57%) ▶ AI Experimenters: weekly users (25%) ▶ AI Class: power users who apply it to everything (7%).” From my own work, I’d say this is bang on. We reported in a very early edition here about the workshop that Tom McGarry did at arrival and how they developed a specific plan for each of these groups at Holiday Extras, showing just how far ahead of the curve they were there.

Recent podcast guest Janette Roush shared that you should not block Google crawlers. “"Google uses a separate crawler for some AI products, such as its chatbot Gemini. But its main crawler, the Googlebot, serves both AI Overviews and Google search. A company spokesperson said Googlebot governs AI Overviews because AI and the company’s search engine are deeply entwined.” Blocking the AI crawler could have drastic consequences!

Simon Kriss laid out a fairy tale narrative of how to get AI juuuust right.

“The “just right” approach to Generative AI adoption is starting with a single, internal use case.

This approach tends to be low risk, high reward. You’re not putting customer relationships on the line, but you’re still reaping the benefits of Generative AI. A great example is putting a bot in front of the mountain of HR or IT policies almost every organisation on the planet has. New staff onboarding becomes a whole lot easier.”

A great example indeed! (HandbookFM.com cough cough)

And Tahnee Perry got together with Moz to talk about what some of the right use cases might be in marketing. The graphic in this post really nails those best use cases (they are the words around the outside).

Everything AI in Travel makes the news!

A nice little surprise this week to see this little publication not just presenting the news - but making it, with this article in PhocusWire. Hello also to all the new subscribers who found us through there! 👋 

The article explores the relationship between Destination Marketing Organisations and the suppliers in their region. It picks up on a previous piece you will have no doubt already read here (right, right 😅 ) about the way that AI might be a big unlock to get suppliers new direct business via AI first channels. It is based on research done by EY who first proposed this as a theory. The suppliers need some point of coordination, a hub through which the AI can travel to find them. Without that piece, they are likely to remain mostly hidden except for the most detailed prompts where they might be the only match. the EY research and workshop determined the DMO could be this hub.

My suggestion was this will still require a little bit of technology to make it work. I certainly am not suggesting destinations needs to be building or fine-tuning their own LLM’s or anything near that - in fact I think that the solution could be found in tools that both allow for better marketing (like video for example) which can act as the bridge for the data capture and structure to make this level of personalisation required for the AI to find the right matches.

The PhocusWire article proposes it more of an either/or argument around investing in tech or marketing - but I’d suggest the answer is to invest in a tool that can do both!

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Preparing for the era of AI agents

In this article on Web in Travel, Arvindh Yuvaraj, breaks it down for us on what AI agents are and why we should care. It is a great starting point if you knowledge right now is not much.

Yuvaraj uses a recent report from McKinsey as the basis for the explanation and does a great job of making it simple to understand.

The TL:DR is what we have now with AI can do a lot of things for us but the next evolution is AI that can take an action or works with other agents on a series of actions to really create incredible automations.

If you think about all the things you love and hate about online shopping. You can continue to do the things you love. Maybe that is the researching videos for ideas and inspiration. When it comes to the thing you probably don’t like - like comparison price shopping or reading 70 reviews or filling out the form on the checkout and delivery page - the AI will do all that and just drop back as needs with the highlights you need to be in the loop.

Airline revenue management systems are “quite a mess”

Forbes this week caught up with Fetcherr CEO Roy Cohen and he didn’t hold back.

“When you go to a legacy world like airlines, their infrastructure is ancient,” Fetcherr CEO Roy Cohen said in an interview. “the current array of revenue management systems is “quite a mess” with “no consistency.”

Cohen explains how “typical revenue management has fare levels in buckets. When one bucket is sold out, it moves to the next. “AI supercharges your ability to make decisions” on pricing, rather than just moving to a higher fare when one is sold out.”

This gets everyone closer to their imagined Holy Grail of offering the price you think the customer is willing to pay - that also maximises your margin.

Slack Group!

How to work with Tony

The calendar is now very full I’m afraid.

The marketplace is now launched - please just jump on the site to grab your listing if you have an AI tool or service that you want the industry to know about. We are extending the grandfathering forever the lowest listing price for just one more week before moving to normal pricing. Jump in now if cost is a core issue.

Between existing consulting work and joining Videreo as co-founder, there isn’t really a lot of time for new consulting work I’m afraid. Still please reach out if you have something non urgent and is a decent piece of work and let’s discuss what might be possible.

At Videreo, we still have a couple places left in proof-of-concept group. If you are an organisation looking to really bring the power of video and personalization to your business and partners - please get in touch. In return we are offering a full-service approach, the opportunity to shape the product to suit your business and heavy discounting as our way of saying thanks in advance!

Most clicked last week was the link to the story about Pathfndr and the work they’ve been doing with Thomas Cook in India. 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