The best AI opportunities appear when you shift your perspective about what the technology can deliver, especially if you’re a travel and tourism brand.

By now, you’ve probably heard stories about the plateau of AI capabilities, or about AI becoming less reliable. Some high-profile AI start-ups are looking wobbly too. We’ve seen the departure of the Stability AI CEO, Emad Mostaque, one of the most promising of the original GenAI start-ups, shake-ups at OpenAI, and even people calling for the resignation of Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, after Gemini was shown to generate racially inaccurate historical figures.

Is this the beginning of the end for GenAI?

Well, no. But it’s symbolic of a new era for GenAI, one where the initial wonder that GenAI inspired has likely worn off. No technological advancement is ever perfect, and AI has a long way to go before we can rely on it without high-touch human intervention.

But it’s also possible that GenAI is a victim of misunderstanding. Because while it may not have all its original shine, many businesses are seeing a significant amount of utility from it. They’re just realizing that the real value of GenAI, for right now at least, often lies behind the scenes.

A Different Perspective on GenAI

We’ve been touting the value of behind-the-scenes GenAI to our clients for some time.

Essentially, we help them shift their perspective (and expectations) a bit—away from viewing GenAI as a fully autonomous entity that’s ready for primetime, and toward the image of an assistant capable of superhuman feats.

When seen that way, it can be a jumping off point to get to better, more differentiated work. It helps us find opportunity by freeing up time for more valuable work, and then does things that aren’t possible (or would take too much time to accomplish by humans alone). In that sense, it invites more, not less, human imagination.

A Timely Departure from Traditional Travel Thinking

A perfect application for GenAI is within the world of travel and travel bookings. In fact, many people who don’t follow the industry closely would be surprised to learn that, as Travel Age West noted in its analysis of an IBS Software report, “38% of millennials and Gen Z are opting to use traditional travel agents (as opposed to booking digitally).” Stranger still, those younger generations are using travel agents more than their older counterparts. Sound backwards?

Juxtapose this with a study from Gartner that showed that out of the 6,138 customers surveyed in December 2022, “38% of Gen Z and millennial customers say they’re likely to give up on resolving a customer service issue if it can’t be resolved in self-service.”

So, while Gen Z and Millennials clearly want to be able to serve themselves, there’s something they aren’t currently able to get through digital self-booking channels. Clearly, this isn’t just about human touch given that it seems human touch isn’t what younger generations are looking for. This is about getting human-style competence, especially when encountering territory that can be hard to navigate.

Enter the Opportunity for GenAI

Imagine if you were able to get deeply personalized travel recommendations tailored to your specific taste preferences. What if you were interested in a complex travel itinerary with various flights and destinations? How would you know how to find the best deals and the most efficient ways to get to various stops along your journey in a foreign country?

Right now, the only way to do this effectively is to engage someone with significant expertise in your travel destination(s), or to spend inordinate amounts of time researching trip details with no guarantee that you’ll find the best deals, locales, or packages. With the appropriate application of GenAI, those mountainous barriers can crumble.

GenAI will be able to provide true personalization at scale through natural language interfaces that will make the travel booking experience so much more palatable. By asking a series of questions and illustrating desired trip details, GenAI can behave much like a human travel agent, your AI-gent, helping you navigate the best options. The good news is that implementing these AI strategies won’t require creating new consumer behaviors. In fact, AI has already been widely adopted within the category—at least by travelers. Two-thirds of travelers have used AI (or are planning to) at some point in their journey. So, brands should already be thinking about how to seamlessly connect a more AI-enabled traveler experience. And quickly.

Where to begin? Behind the scenes, opportunities abound. For example, the more that a travel brand can build out and connect its data infrastructure, the more it can train and tailor its AI-gent to provide a better experience through versatility, precision, and the capacity to learn—even delivering new insights back to the brand itself.

As the AI-gent learns, it can move beyond the booking phase and become a presence throughout the journey. Something not right at the hotel or on the cruise? Your AI-gent can make a modification that is instantly incorporated into your itinerary—gathering feedback along the way to continuously improve service. The brand itself will get more information about these pain points and can likewise analyze traveler feedback about the AI-gent’s solution.

AI-gents can further delight travelers by catering to preferred communication styles, unique preferences, stay requirements, companion needs, and more to proactively present travelers with solutions and options that demonstrate deep, individualized care for customers.

The possibilities go on and on and on and on. Shift your perspective and bring your imagination—it's a journey worth taking.