Operations
Getting AI into T&T A
With the cruise sector only just getting back to pre-pandemic levels, the latest hype cycle of AI threatens to overhaul operations once more. But it also offers an unparalleled opportunity: access, better management of resources and the potential to quell kickback against the
sector. Dan Cave speaks to Professor Iis Tussyadiah, dean of Surrey Business School and lead coauthor on the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Development Index, to find out more about AI, travel and what sustainable development looks like on the open water.
rtificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to overhaul pretty much everything of importance within the digital realm. The employment landscape will be radically reshaped – displacing over 80 million jobs, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) assessment – as will medical diagnostics, military operations and executive decision-making. However, among these big-ticket issues that often drive headlines and leadership concern there’s a whole sector – worth 9% of global GDP, or circa $9trn, in its own right – expected to be upended by this technology. An area of commerce less defined, with fewer data- led boardroom decisions and one that might just start using digitised processes to help decide where cruisers next drink their daiquiri – the travel and tourism (T&T) industry.
It’s hardly surprising that the WEF is interested in the impact AI might have on T&T. Since 1971, the organisation has provided a platform to bring together public and private partners to work through structural challenges on a global scale. Half a century on, the Swiss-based body now has an entire research centre dedicated to solving issues thrown up by technological advancement. Efforts here can range from looking at how AI interacts with manufacturing in Turkey to how policy formulation in Rwanda is making space for this much-hyped technology. And attention has also turned to how this impacts decisions and opportunities in the cruise space.
Indeed, in the first sentences of The WEF’s Travel &
Tourism Development Index (TTDI) – an which tracks the performance of an individual country’s T&T sector –
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