Episode 7 – AI innovations and expert directory

Untangling Tourism Tech Episode 7, with Fabienne Wintle and Liz Ward. Times match the video. We removed filler words and fixed mis-heard names.

[00:01] Welcome to episode seven of Untangling Tourism Tech. Where are we today, Fab? We are at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre for the Tourism Innovation Forum. So Queensland Government is hosting a Tourism Innovation Forum. It’s been really good, actually. And I don’t, I mean that respectfully, actually. You go to quite a few conferences and they don’t always get into a specific area and topic, and today’s been really good because it has been very innovation and tech focused.

[00:35] And so we wanted to just share a little bit about that today, but mostly what we want to share is that we’re both really excited. We may sound and look a little tired because over the last week, we have launched the Expert Directory, and we’ll tell you about that as well. So it’s all good stuff. But I think today, for me, listening to the speakers and all of the great tech tools that are here who are innovating, they’ve got amazing apps. It’s… everything is AI. I don’t think there has been one innovation that we’ve seen that hasn’t been AI-driven or had AI as a component of it.

[01:18] Or called AI when it’s not really AI. I think I’ve noticed quite a few of those as well. It’s the buzzword, but it’s machine learning or ready for AI, but maybe not ready. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. All the foundations are there, its structure is there. So some of the things that we’ve seen and, well, the types of products that we’ve seen have been about generating itineraries that are created through video. So the destination marketing organisation using their video or providing a AI-driven itinerary to a visitor, and the app is designed to turn you into quite a professional video maker for your journey. And so then all this content, it gets kept as an amazing memento by the traveller, but it’s also a fantastic resource for others where you’re just building this amazing semi-professional library of destination footage. That was really impressive. Have you got a pick of something that you saw today?

[02:23] I actually, I was listening to all the AI and I have to say I was quite overwhelmed. And I mean, I’m a tech person. I was reading about all the different people that would be presenting, and I was like, wow, this is really, really complex tech. But then I was listening to some of the people presenting, and the MC was asking them questions, you know, what’s the thing that you use the most? And they’re like, well, ChatGPT for content creation or for programming, we’re saving so many hours. So whilst there was a lot about innovation in tech and AI, I think it was really a platform for people to realise that they don’t have to be complex AI. They can just be, you know, learning how to use prompts smartly in ChatGPT or Claude. They’re mentioning apparently lots of people that used to work for OpenAI have moved to Claude, so you should test it out.

[03:13] But yeah, it was a lot of… what I liked is basically what we are doing and what operators are doing with AI. Doesn’t have to be so crazy complex and developing new system, but just getting to know these tools really well and saving a lot of time. There was even a speaker that was saying, oh, it’ll be great, you know, we’ll only have to work four days out of five, but I don’t really agree with that, Liz. I think I’ll just end up doing more work with AI.

[03:40] And I think, to be fair, I think people are taking more control over their lifestyles and making that happen if they can afford to anyway. I think that social shift has occurred, but then if you’re having a great time and you’re really driven and you’re really enjoying what you’re doing, then you work the hours. So I think there is a bit of a shift, but that’s another topic.

[04:03] My pick is Daniel Blickling’s product, TRVLR.AI, TRVLR.AI. That is something to watch. And I know that you’re really interested in it too, Fab, because this app that he’s got, which is genuinely structured to use AI, is about the planning phase, and it can work in the dream phase as well, of a traveller being able to put together a whole range of activities and tours that they could do over their specified time, based very much on their interests. And that all sounds a bit like, oh, but can I do that on a website? That this planning tool is so suggestive, and it also has the magic capability for completing the booking, which is incredible, in one transaction, which… I’ve been around for a while, I’ve been waiting for somebody to do this that allows you to book multiple suppliers, but it’s just in one transaction. So that’s quite incredible.

[05:07] I mean, I got really excited about this app as well, Liz, because I’m going, let’s say I’m going somewhere for three days on holidays. I don’t want to go to every attraction and add it to the cart and go, oh my goodness, what time was this one starting? Oh, now I’ve got to go another one, find that I’m already booked between 11 and 1. And that’s what TRVLR.AI does. It actually allows me, in the same time that I would need to book one attraction, to actually book five or six for the whole family and pay all in one go. So that’s a time saver and something totally new that I’ve never seen before. And I know we’ve always wished to happen. So definitely AI here has enabled that to be driven and available to operators.

[05:55] No, it’s very cool. So keep an eye out for that one. We’ll bring you more about TRVLR.AI because we think it’s one, a really hot game changer in the industry. But talking about the industry, very excited today because we achieved it today. We launched it. We started talking about this years ago, but we had some serious conversations in May, and we asked tourism operators at Australian Tourism Exchange in Melbourne what they thought of the idea of putting together a qualified list of great consultants and solution providers and experts so that the industry could access them. And we had a really positive response to the idea.

[06:36] Then working further on the idea, we just decided, let’s just test this again. So only a week and a half ago, Fab wrote to our contacts at Tourism Tribe, and a lot of those, mostly all tourism operators, and said, if we had this, who would you recommend? Was that a week and a half ago, or was it five days ago? That was Friday. Oh, time flies when you’re having fun, and it feels like it’s a lot longer. I don’t think you left me a week and a half, Liz. No, that’s it. And that came… we got a great response to that with lots of recommendations. And so we, well, she built it. I was throwing bombs in the side of requirements.

[07:14] Now, let’s rephrase that. ChatGPT was really helpful. He’s a really good example of AI. So I’ve got a web development background, but it’s been many years since I had to write code. So it would take me quite a while if I did, but I’ve run out of prompts every three hours on ChatGPT because I’m like, okay, what do I need to do to code this? So you’ve filled the memory. Absolutely. And then our team’s like, in the morning, why is there no more… you know what? We’ve broken ChatGPT. And I had to explain, no, it was me trying to code and get this thing ready at night for launch, but it has launched. It has. Awesome success so far. So many listings keep coming through.

[07:54] That’s right. So what this is is the Tourism Tribe Expert Directory. And if you go to directory.tourismtribe.com, as a tourism operator, you can start to see that list of suppliers being built. They’ve all taken a pledge to say that they are going to, or that they commit to, this is what they do, is to service the industry to a really high standard. And they have been recommended by somebody in the industry.

[08:25] This is really important. We don’t want people that are not, that have not worked with the tourism industry before, because that costs a lot of time and money to educate them about the aspects of the industry. So we’ve created this directory to be peer-to-peer reviewed. And it’s not just Fabi and Liz say, these guys are great. This is not about us. We just provide the technology. It’s about operators recommending other businesses to one another.

[08:51] Yeah, we get asked this all the time. That was the first reason why we did it, is because every week somebody will say, do you know somebody who’s a great web developer, or terrific at SEO, or knows how to write grants really well, or good insurance provider? So this provides the solution by going out to the industry and asking them to tell us whether these people should be on there. As Fab said, the infrastructure is there now. It’s free to use. For us, it’s a service. And let’s see where this will lead. It could end up connecting people in all sorts of ways. And it’s all about the growth of business and the growth of the industry. And I think if we’ve got the right people getting together, then that should happen.

[09:40] And then what we’ve also done to create a community forum around that is we’ve set up a LinkedIn group, which has the same name, Tourism Tribe Expert Directory Community, and go and join that. That’s a great place to be because that’s where we’ll get the exchange of good, sort of, free ideas, examples of solutions, new research, things that relate to providing those sorts of services and keeping us all on the front foot. So it sort of scales things. It’s not up to… we can’t sort of meet all of these needs, but it provides that sort of peer-to-peer environment so that you guys can make it happen.

[10:22] Great. I think that’s it. We’ll try to get some sleep on the coming days and you guys can populate the directory. And if anything, it’s a great starting point. I’m sure it will evolve and it’ll probably need some more bells and whistles or functionality down the track, but it’s a really great, clean web product that Fabi has built and very quickly, and now she can have a rest. Yes, thank you. Well done, well done. All right. Bye, see you next time. Bye.