This text is part of the special Business Tourism section
Still in its infancy, artificial intelligence (AI) is already taking its first steps in business tourism, both among travelers and institutions. While this technology offers solutions to improve productivity and personalization of stays, it also has several challenges. Overview.
For companies operating in business tourism, AI tools will improve the visitor experience. Currently, for conference attendees, applications are often limited to programming and some basic information. “We could be a little more intelligent in our approach. With new technologies, we will be able to offer a journey that could interest the user,” believes Frédéric Gonzalo, consultant and speaker in digital marketing. He will also host a conference on the issue of AI in business events during the first NOVAT conference in November.
For Sébastien Félix, founder of the French company Influence Society which specializes in marketing the hotel sector, AI will intervene even before booking a stay. “It’s gradually changing the way we look for places,” he notes. So, instead of a query on Google with keywords, “we will go to ChatGPT and write: “I am 40 years old, I am coming for 4 days for a business trip, I need to be in such and such a neighborhood” before seeing the tool provide an answer, he illustrates.
Business… And leisure
A delegate who comes to Montreal for a few days could also take advantage of AI to visit the city’s must-see attractions. One way for companies to improve the customer experience is to create tailor-made itineraries, believes Mr. Gonzalo.
Mr. Félix agrees. “We spend two days for business and we stay longer for leisure. It’s very hard, currently, to find a site that offers us all the information in the same place,” he notes. For him, a tool like ChatGPT allows you to search, for example, for hotel ideas that suit both purposes. “This is something that traditional sites cannot do today,” he observes.
Artificial intelligence platforms will also be used to speed up business travel planning, he believes. He gives an example of a query that can be generated as a table by ChatGPT, counting information such as hotel name, neighborhood, nearby services, etc. “And if I need to have the budget validated by my superior, I can create a mini-presentation and ask ChatGPT to give me three arguments for each establishment,” he illustrates. In traditional sites, there are only filters and a map. ChatGPT can go a step further. »
New jobs and others that disappear
The rise of AI will inevitably lead to the disappearance of certain types of positions, particularly those with repetitive tasks, believes Mr. Félix. “There are some who will be replaced and there is nothing we can do about it,” he said. We are going to have to put humans back into a model of well-being with customers,” he believes.
AI will also lead to the creation of jobs that do not yet exist, says Mr. Gonzalo. “When TV arrived, we thought it was going to kill radio,” he recalls. New technologies will also improve the productivity of people on the job and combat the labor shortage. “Instead of taking three hours, it will only take one,” he estimates.
He believes that employees will therefore focus more on improving the experience of business travelers. “The human resources that are there will work on real added values,” he says.
A technology with multiple challenges
Companies that use artificial intelligence will need to pay particular attention to the sensitivity of the information, both for the consumer and for themselves. “If you enter your customers’ data into ChatGPT, you don’t necessarily want another competing hotel to be able to retrieve this list to contact all the companies with which you already do business,” explains Mr. Félix.
Privacy protection is also a challenge about which there is a lack of knowledge at present, he adds. “A real question [à laquelle], today, we still don’t really have an answer, that’s all we do with AI. Where does the data go? ” he asks.
For Mr. Gonzalo, the challenges related to AI mainly consist of copyright and the reliability of sources. “There is always this sword of Damocles that remains. But, ultimately, it becomes a tool. We need to validate the information we can use,” he advises.
While he observes some resistance to AI in a few areas, he believes the opportunity is real for business tourism. “As people become more familiar with it, see the potential, and as we frame the regulations, I think these tools will be adopted. »
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.