Robots, AI and ‘smart tourism’ will change how we travel

Mengni Fu checks in to her hotel room using her mobile phone from the backseat of a taxi. When she arrives at the hotel, she drops her luggage to one of the porter robots who delivers it to her room. She unlocks her room with a digital key on her mobile phone. Then she sits on the bed and asks the AI assistant to turn on the light, close the curtains and recommend a restaurant nearby.

So far, Fu hasn’t interacted with a single human in the hotel. This is not the script from a sci-fi film; this is travel in China in 2025. Fu, a PhD candidate at Griffith University, is describing a recent trip to Shanghai. 

And according to consulting firm McKinsey and Co it’s the future of travel: where technology erases “typical travel pain points such as queues, misunderstandings, or misinformation” and the human interactions that do occur are “authentic and meaningful”.

Robotics, AI and service automation are disrupting the hospitality and tourism industry — as they are many aspects of our lives. More people are turning to AI chatbots built on large language models, like ChatGPT or Trip Advisor’s “my trips”, to plan their holidays.

Popular destinations are using “smart tourism” to manage the flow of tourists, and companies selling earbuds offering simultaneous translation are heralding the end of the language barrier.

The question is, will new technology simply lead to streamlined service and stress-free travel, or will it fundamentally change tourism and tourist destinations?

‘Killing our business’

The Instagram account of Guide to Lofoten is usually filled with breathtaking photographs of colourful fishing villages framed by rugged mountains. The Norwegian tour company posts spectacular, but rarely viral, content. In October, a different type of post hit a nerve: “This is how ChatGPT is killing our small local business.”

The owners claim they’re losing income and visibility as fewer people visit their website, instead getting their information from ChatGPT which doesn’t recommend local companies like theirs. “We know we’ll have to adapt — but it still hurts to watch something you’ve been building for years collapse like a house of cards in less than a year,” the owners said on Instagram.

Dr Marianna Sigala says there’s no question people are turning to generative AI to plan their holidays — everything from choosing a destination, comparing prices, to planning a daily itinerary. “The impact is huge. It affects consumers and when consumers are affected immediately you realise companies will have to readapt because they cannot continue doing and selling what they used to,” says the professor of marketing and director of the International Hotel School at the University of Newcastle.

Sigala likens it to the disruptive power of the steam engine or the impact Booking.com had on online travel in the early 2000s — where average consumers gained access to the Internet and began to book their own travel.

Travel planning using generative AI is being described as the “hyper-personalisation” of travel. Sigala says the creation of highly individualised itineraries will change how tourists travel — but its impact will depend how the tool is used. “The power of AI depends first of all on the quality and the quantity of the data that it has been trained on, and it’s being trained continuously … and secondly it depends on what you ask it,” she says. “If we ask stupid questions we get stupid answers.”

The road less travelled

From 19^th century railway expansion to cheap air travel to colour TV, professor Adrien Palmer argues in The Conversation that technology has long fuelled over-tourism. Palmer believes it’s too early to tell what the impact of AI will be on travel. But he says generative AI-planned itineraries could potentially nudge tourists away from over-tourism hotspots or AI-enhanced virtual reality could vanquish the need to travel in the first place.

Like the “digital twin” of St Peter’s Basilica – one of the most visited places in Europe – that the Vatican unveiled last year. Created with the help of AI technology which analysed and pieced together vast amounts of photographs and video, the digital twin gives anyone with internet access the chance to “visit”.

As Sigala suggests, the ability to find a road less travelled in the future may depend on your ability to prompt an AI assistant.

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Marketing researcher Joseph Mellors says his analysis of ChatGPT “found that it gravitates towards the most visited destinations by default”. 

“By asking sharper questions, shifting their timing, checking footprints and seeking local voices, travellers can use AI as a tool for discovery rather than congestion,” Mellors writes in The Conversation. “Every prompt is a signal to the system about what matters.”

AI-inspired travellers will need to be wary of hallucinations — where generative-AI chatbots produce misleading content because they create plausible statements based on patterns, which aren’t necessarily correct or real. The BBC recently reported the case of two tourists who were about to hike into the Peruvian mountains in search of a non-existent canyon served to them by AI before they were stopped by a local guide.

‘Something is lost, something is won’

At popular tourist destinations, AI technology is also changing how tourist flows are managed.

“Smart cities” use big data collected from “traffic control systems, public transport ticketing, mobile phone signals, museum ticket sales, overnight stays in hotels, even credit card companies” to understand people flow, Sigala says. “AI helps them to analyse mass amounts of data faster and in real time,” she says. “Smart cities” are turning to “smart tourism” by using destination apps to communicate back to tourists suggesting different routes, attractions and visit times to help manage hordes of visitors.

How these and other technological advances — like live translation earbuds — change the tourist experience remains to be seen. By removing the misunderstandings, the queues, the chance to get lost, will we inadvertently remove the surprises that make tourism unique? Sigala is optimistic.

“When I was first travelling Google Maps didn’t exist … if I reflect back, I say, ‘Bloody hell, how did I find my way with this paper map?'” she says. These days she’s not afraid of getting lost, she doesn’t lose time because she took a wrong turn, and she sees things she might once have missed. “Something is lost, but something is won.”

Mengni Fu says despite the rapid integration of AI, robotics and automation in hospitality and tourism, service with a (human) smile will still be important.

Her PhD is exploring how gen Z consumers and workers in China and Australia feel about the rapid technological innovation transforming the sector. Fu surveyed more than 1,000 people and says overwhelmingly people would prefer that new technologies replace certain tasks in the industry, not workers. But respondents, especially in Australia, feared for their job security.

And while Chinese respondents were more likely to embrace new technologies — given they’re more accustomed to them — they still opted for places and services where humans collaborated with technology. “Sometimes we still need that human warmness, we still need to talk with humans,” Fu says.