“GT” Insight Bites: What’s AI doing for you?

In what way is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) chan­ging the way you work, hire, learn, or teach?

With per­spect­ives from seni­or people in travel & tour­is­m’s busi­ness, aca­dem­ic, act­iv­ist, air­line, and NGO worlds — and even from Iran — there is more depth in this com­pil­a­tion of “GT” Insight Bites than you might ini­tially pre­sume; des­pite AI being “the hot­test (and maybe the most bor­ing) sub­ject of the moment”, as one respond­ent described it.

As a non-tech­nic­al per­son try­ing to live in the moment, I agree. While AI is indeed bor­ing to the likes of me — tech­nic­ally minded futur­ists would dis­agree — I know it can­not be ignored. And, as evid­enced by “GT’s” trans­par­ent use of AI, I find it quite helpful.

Have a thought to share? 

Respond in the com­ments at any time. Or write a Bite of your own. 

[Click/touch an item on the Bites menu to go straight to it.]

AI is ‘amplifying’ expertise for climate action

Olly Wheatcroft, Programme Manager, SUNx Malta, UK

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is fun­da­ment­ally reshap­ing how we work, learn, and deliv­er impact, par­tic­u­larly in know­ledge-intens­ive fields like cli­mate action in travel & tourism.

At Cli­mate Friendly Travel Ser­vices (part of the SUNx Group), AI is chan­ging our work by trans­form­ing what has tra­di­tion­ally been a slow con­sultancy pro­cess into a scal­able, access­ible digit­al solution.

We are devel­op­ing an AI-enabled frame­work that uses advanced lan­guage mod­els, such as Chat­G­PT, to sup­port the rap­id cre­ation of tailored Cli­mate Friendly Travel Action Plans (CAPs) for tour­ism busi­nesses and destinations.

Through a struc­tured, con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­face, the tool assesses a user’s cur­rent cli­mate actions, data read­i­ness, and emis­sions context.

It then gen­er­ates a prac­tic­al, per­son­al­ised CAP aligned with Nation­ally Determ­ined Con­tri­bu­tions, the Par­is Agree­ment 1.5°C goal, the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), and the Glob­al Biod­iversity Frame­work.

This changes how we work by allow­ing us to focus less on repet­it­ive plan devel­op­ment and more on stra­tegic over­sight, qual­ity assur­ance, and stake­hold­er engagement.

It also changes how we learn and teach.

AI enables us to codi­fy expert know­ledge into smart prompt frame­works, mak­ing best-prac­tice cli­mate plan­ning avail­able on demand to small- and medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs), des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment organ­isa­tions (DMOs), and loc­al author­it­ies that may lack in-house expertise.

From a growth per­spect­ive, AI allows us to move from bespoke advis­ory ser­vices to tech-sup­por­ted capa­city build­ing at scale.

It opens new oppor­tun­it­ies for part­ner­ships with com­pan­ies, DMOs, cer­ti­fic­a­tion bod­ies, and industry asso­ci­ations seek­ing prac­tic­al, cost-effect­ive cli­mate solutions.

In short, AI is not repla­cing expert­ise; it is amp­li­fy­ing it.

By lower­ing bar­ri­ers to action, it enables more tour­ism stake­hold­ers to move from aware­ness to imple­ment­a­tion, faster and more effect­ively, at a time when cli­mate action can­not wait.

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AI is an antidote to the blank page

Willem Niemeijer, CEO, YAANA Ventures, Thailand

For me, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) has replaced star­ing at a blink­ing cursor.

Like many people, I don’t struggle most with doing the work, but with start­ing it. Wheth­er it is a strategy paper, a web­site, a board memo, or one of the many half-formed ideas scribbled in my note­book, the first step is often the hard­est; and slightly intimidating.

I use AI as a brain­storm­ing part­ner. Chat­G­PT is still my go-to, though I occa­sion­ally use Grok as well. I ask a simple ques­tion, throw in a rough brief, and with­in seconds I have an out­line, a set of steps, or a pro­posed structure.

Is it per­fect? Rarely. Is it nuanced? Often not. But it does some­thing power­ful: it turns fog into shape. Once there is some­thing on the page, my own think­ing can kick in; refin­ing, reject­ing, re-order­ing, and inject­ing exper­i­ence and opin­ion. Writer’s block dis­solves because the work has begun. It is a pro­ductiv­ity tool if there ever was one.

The same applies to tasks I frankly find a chore, such as writ­ing job descrip­tions. AI is remark­ably good at pro­du­cing a sol­id first draft: respons­ib­il­it­ies, com­pet­en­cies, struc­ture, even tone. From there, I can focus on what really mat­ters: cul­tur­al fit, expect­a­tions, and the unspoken real­it­ies of the role. The human bits.

That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters. I don’t see AI as a replace­ment for judge­ment, cre­ativ­ity, or lead­er­ship. It lacks con­text, lived exper­i­ence, and intu­ition. It may under­stand the company’s stated pur­pose, but it doesn’t know the lived his­tory of a team, intern­al dynam­ics, or the subtle dif­fer­ence between what sounds right and what will actu­ally work.

But as an assist­ant? Tire­less, fast, and sur­pris­ingly helpful.

AI doesn’t replace the craft; it lowers the fric­tion to prac­tise it. In itself, that is quietly chan­ging the way we work, learn, and create.

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AI can be a ‘constructive force’ for ‘meaningful tourism’

Wolfgang Georg Arlt, Executive Director, Meaningful Tourism Centre, Nepal

A group of authors from the Mean­ing­ful Tour­ism Centre has just fin­ished a book chapter on the rela­tion­ship between arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), trans­form­a­tion, and ‘Mean­ing­ful Tour­ism’. It is sched­uled to be pub­lished in a few months in a book about AI and transformation.

In the con­clu­sion, the authors state that digit­isa­tion, AI, and auto­ma­tion are reshap­ing tour­ism more rap­idly and com­pre­hens­ively than earli­er tech­no­lo­gic­al waves such as the inter­net or mobile platforms.

AI is no longer a peri­pher­al effi­ciency tool but a sys­tem-level infra­struc­ture that medi­ates demand, alloc­ates resources, shapes vis­ib­il­ity, and defines performance.

If tour­ism con­tin­ues to rely on quant­it­at­ive, growth-centred busi­ness mod­els, AI risks becom­ing an accel­er­ant of exist­ing struc­tur­al prob­lems. These include eco­lo­gic­al degrad­a­tion, cul­tur­al com­modi­fic­a­tion, exclu­sion of host com­munit­ies, con­cen­tra­tion of eco­nom­ic bene­fits, and reduced trans­par­ency through asym­met­ric data ownership.

A dec­ade ago, the Par­is Agree­ment and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) reflec­ted optim­ism that glob­al devel­op­ment tra­ject­or­ies could be redir­ec­ted toward sus­tain­ab­il­ity and equity. 

The grow­ing emphas­is on resi­li­ence instead sig­nals a more sober recog­ni­tion that tour­ism and soci­ety are now engaged in an uphill struggle to adapt, absorb shocks, and achieve a slower deteri­or­a­tion rather than restore past con­di­tions. With­in this real­ity, incre­ment­al optim­isa­tion and vol­un­tary sus­tain­ab­il­ity com­mit­ments are insufficient.

The estab­lish­ment of a ‘Mean­ing­ful Tour­ism Eco­nomy’ there­fore emerges not as a norm­at­ive aspir­a­tion, but as a stra­tegic neces­sity. Mean­ing­ful Tour­ism provides a sys­tem­ic response to inev­it­able trans­form­a­tion by refram­ing suc­cess around stake­hold­er well-being, eco­lo­gic­al stew­ard­ship, exper­i­en­tial depth, and long-term value creation.

With­in such a frame­work, AI can func­tion as a con­struct­ive force — sup­port­ing learn­ing, coordin­a­tion, trans­par­ency, and adapt­ive gov­ernance — rather than as a driver of extract­ive optimisation.

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AI is ‘a means to an end, not an end in itself’

C Michael Hall, Dean’s Chair in Marketing, Sustainability and Society, Massey University, New Zealand

Wheth­er we like it or not, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is affect­ing the way we and our col­leagues and stu­dents work. Humans are close adher­ents of the ‘law of least effort’, which means that they will take the easi­est path.

How­ever, this does not neces­sar­ily mean that it will be the best path, espe­cially when con­sid­er­ing the qual­ity of res­ult and the nature of the learn­ing pro­cess, if that is a goal.

I have no doubt that AI is a valu­able tool. But to max­im­ise its value requires con­sid­er­able skills. The old adage from inform­a­tion sci­ences — GIGO (‘garbage in, garbage out’) — cer­tainly holds true with con­tem­por­ary AI. The qual­ity of res­ults depends on the qual­ity of the ques­tions asked and the tool’s use.

So many stu­dents and col­leagues (and busi­nesses and con­sumers) do not frame ques­tions in a way to gen­er­ate the best res­ults. Instead, their strategy is one of ‘sat­is­ficing’, but often with a low threshold of acceptability.

Fur­ther­more, they often have too much faith in the res­ults they gen­er­ate and do not go back and check the accur­acy of what they have been provided with. This situ­ation is likely to get worse giv­en the amount of ‘AI slop’ that is being gen­er­ated by con­sumers, busi­nesses, and, yes, by aca­dem­ics as well.

The above is crit­ic­al to work­ing, hir­ing, learn­ing, and teach­ing pro­cesses. AI is a poten­tially invalu­able tool, but it is just that. It needs to be under­stood, used, and played with. 

It is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

That is how we must approach hir­ing: find­ing people with AI skills who can also see the big­ger pic­ture. This makes them more flex­ible and advant­age­ous employees

This also applies to the learn­ing pro­cesses; pre­par­ing people to be AI-ready; famil­i­ar with, but not depend­ent on, AI. One still needs to be able to think for one­self if one is to adapt and thrive in a world groun­ded in change.

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AI enhances the human touch in community-based tourism

Pham Phi Anh, Deputy Head of Project Development — Fundraising Unit, Anh Duong Center, Vietnam

In the non-gov­ern­ment­al organ­isa­tion (NGO) and com­munity-based tour­ism sec­tor, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is often viewed with scep­ti­cism. How­ever, when util­ised through a lens of social respons­ib­il­ity and trans­par­ency, it becomes a power­ful bridge.

At our organ­isa­tion, we lever­age AI not to replace the human touch, but to enhance it in three spe­cif­ic ways.

1. Clar­ity in com­mu­nic­a­tion. AI helps us refine com­plex tech­nic­al reports into access­ible lan­guage that res­on­ates with loc­al com­munit­ies and donors alike.
2. Break­ing lan­guage bar­ri­ers. It allows for the rap­id trans­la­tion of pro­ject goals, ensur­ing that grass­roots stake­hold­ers are nev­er ‘lost in trans­la­tion’ and can par­ti­cip­ate fully in decision-making.
3. Data-driv­en account­ab­il­ity. By stream­lin­ing data ana­lys­is, we can provide more fre­quent and accur­ate reports on pro­ject pro­gress, such as the impact of clean water sys­tems on loc­al health.

For us, AI is an admin­is­trat­ive engine that frees up our team to do what mat­ters most: spend time in the field, listen to the com­munity, and build sin­cere, trust-based relationships.

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We published an AI-produced magazine to be read at 30,000 feet

Zohreh Khosravi, Content Manager, flysepehran.com, Iran

When the use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) in con­tent & digit­al mar­ket­ing was first dis­cussed among our team, some of us feared that this tech­no­logy would replace human employ­ees. This fear was exacer­bated by the fact that early AI ver­sions pro­duced unre­li­able Per­sian and Arab­ic con­tent, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for us to trust or ref­er­ence their outputs.

This situ­ation led us to a dif­fer­ent idea: We decided to pub­lish a trust­worthy travel magazine whose pro­duc­tion pro­cess would be based on AI. We had two main goals:

First, we wished to demon­strate that AI would not replace our col­leagues. Instead, it would encour­age them to learn new skills such as prompt writ­ing, con­tent cre­ation, edit­ing, image cre­ation, and magazine layout.

Second — and more import­antly — we wanted our pas­sen­gers to be the very first to read a fully AI-pro­duced magazine at 30,000 feet. 

As a res­ult, issue No. 24 of the Sepehran Air­lines magazine was pub­lished in Septem­ber 2023 as a bilin­gual edi­tion. AI was used in select­ing top­ics, writ­ing art­icles, design­ing pages, and cre­at­ing images. One of issue 24’s appeal­ing fea­tures was the com­par­is­on between real pho­to­graphs of des­tin­a­tions and AI-gen­er­ated images.

The pro­ject took about three months to com­plete and required care­ful plan­ning, team­work, and learn­ing new skills; espe­cially prompt writ­ing. At the begin­ning, we faced many chal­lenges due to lim­ited data and the dif­fi­culty of gen­er­at­ing Per­sian content.

Based on what we learned pub­lish­ing the AI edi­tion of the magazine, we con­tin­ue to integ­rate AI into our work­flow. We still use AI for image and video pro­duc­tion, text edit­ing, head­line selec­tion, con­tent SEO optim­isa­tion, nar­ra­tion pro­duc­tion, and oth­er processes.

Our exper­i­ence has shown that, con­trary to ini­tial fears, AI did not elim­in­ate jobs. Instead, it helped our team acquire new skills, expand pro­fes­sion­al cap­ab­il­it­ies, and ulti­mately pro­duce more cre­at­ive content.

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What do you think? 

Share your own thoughts in a com­ment below about how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) is chan­ging the way you work, hire, learn, or teach. 

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Or write a “GT” Insight or “GT” Insight Bite of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism, because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

This is an open invit­a­tion to travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers from any back­ground to share their thoughts in plain Eng­lish with a glob­al industry audience.

“GT” doesn’t judge. “GT” pub­lishes. “GT” is where free thought travels.

If you think the tour­ism media land­scape is bet­ter with “GT” in it, then please … 

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Previous “GT” Insight Bites

• What’s the point of UN Tourism?
• Tourism’s biggest threats, oppor­tun­it­ies: five years to 2030
• Do fun and polit­ics mix? Can we ‘leave our cares behind’ when we go on holiday?
• Over­tour­ism and over­im­mig­ra­tion are the same?
• What is ‘authen­ti­city’ in travel & tourism?
• Under­tour­ism: Who’s suf­fer­ing, and why?
• Tour­ism, war, and peace
• Sig­nalling or sub­stance in tour­ism: What’s your take?
• Vis­it­or value, val­ues, volume: What’s good where you are?
• Out­bound doesn’t care about sus­tain­ab­il­ity | Well-being must include meaning
• Is a travel & tour­ism career still attract­ive? Import­ant things to under­stand in 2025
• Wish­wash­ing tourism
• Butler’s conun­drum: Air travel and ‘sus­tain­able’ tourism
• What is tourism’s biggest oppor­tun­ity and/or threat where you are in 2025?
• “GT” Insight Bites: Nostalgia
• “GT” Insight Bites: Geo­pol­it­ics and tourism
• Tour­ism stake­hold­ers: Who has an out­sized voice? Who has no voice? Who cares?
• Would you abol­ish taxes on tips?
• Three crit­ics walk into a bar …
• How are emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies trans­form­ing the travel & tour­ism industry?
• What does it mean to be crit­ic­al of tourism?
• What con­sti­tutes ‘pro­gress’ for travel & tour­ism in 2024?
• Con­sid­er­ing a career in tour­ism? Import­ant things you should know in 2024
• What did tour­ism learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?
• In 2024, what are the best oppor­tun­it­ies for tour­ism over the next five years?
• Tourism’s biggest chal­lenges & threats over the next five years to 2028
• On empower­ment, pro­mo­tion, and the power of expression
• On enrich­ment, repat­ri­ation, the double-edged blade, and war
• On tour­ism tech­no­logy, pro­gress, and loc­al benefit-sharing
• Hey, travel & tour­ism, are you ‘neo­co­lo­ni­al­ist’?
• Who’s the new boss? Asia Pacific tour­ism industry asso­ci­ation seeks leader
• ‘The hos­pit­al­ity industry offers a great career.’ Really?
• Cruise ships: Bless­ing or blight?
• Tour­ist vs trav­el­ler: What’s the difference?
• The heads of fin­ance, oper­a­tions, and PR walk into their boss’s office … 
• Yes, Tour­ism Minister
• What are tourism’s biggest chal­lenges & threats over the next five years?
• ‘Tour­ism is built on the back­bone of white suprem­acy’. What do you think?
• Really, what’s the dif­fer­ence? ‘Sus­tain­able tour­ism’ vs ‘regen­er­at­ive tourism’
• Want a career in tour­ism? Import­ant things you should know
• Diverse per­spect­ives on travel & tour­ism and a fairer world
• Diverse per­spect­ives on eco­nom­ic degrowth and tourism
• Diverse per­spect­ives on vis­it­or dispersion

Featured image (top of post)

In what way is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) chan­ging the way you work, hire, learn, or teach? A Gem­ini-gen­er­ated image. “GT” added the word “bites”.

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