Travellers are using AI to plan trips; Caribbean businesses aren’t ready

The way trav­ellers plan trips is chang­ing, with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) in­creas­ing­ly be­ing used to re­search, plan and book hol­i­days. But ac­cord­ing to one ex­pert, Caribbean tourism busi­ness­es are not keep­ing pace with the rapid adop­tion of AI by con­sumers.

Speak­ing at the State of the Tourism In­dus­try Con­fer­ence, cur­rent­ly be­ing held in George­town, Guyana, glob­al con­sul­tan­cy firm Leve Glob­al’s chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, Kevon Wil­son, ex­plained that eight per cent of US trav­ellers used gen­er­a­tive AI for trip plan­ning. Fast-for­ward two years, and that fig­ure has in­creased to 24 per cent.

Though T&T, Ja­maica and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic rank among the Caribbean’s lead­ing ear­ly AI adopters, ac­cord­ing to Wil­son, on­ly 12 per cent of Caribbean busi­ness­es use AI ef­fec­tive­ly, de­spite 85 per cent of Caribbean busi­ness­es falling in­to the small and medi­um-sized en­ter­prise cat­e­go­ry.