AI Enabling WTO to Facilitate Lucrative Travel Experiences

WTO is using AI to impart knowledge about tourism and promote small tourism businesses

The World Tourism Organization is a United Nations agency that is responsible for the promotion of sustainable and accessible tourism. As a leading global organization, UNWTO promotes inclusive development and environmental sustainability provides leadership and support in advancing knowledge and tourism policies and also serves as a source of knowledge for regulating tourism directives. For UNWTO, artificial intelligence forms an integral part of operations to promote sustainable and globally accessible tourism.

UNWTO uses AI to fulfill several sustainable development goals, which focus on eradicating hunger, poverty, inequalities and aims on providing good health, quality education, clean water and sanitation, decent work environment and economic growth, affordable clean energy, and most importantly sustainability. With the help of AI, the organization fosters market knowledge, promotes competitive and sustainable tourism policies and platforms, and also provides education and training in tourism.

New technologies are emerging every day and disrupting daily business processes. Tourism was one of the first industries to digitalize business processes on a global scale. This digitalized tourism sector aims to innovate and generate new business opportunities to ensure competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development of the sector. UNWTO envisions new opportunities and visions for innovation and digital transformation using AI and other disruptive technologies. The use of IoT, location-based services, artificial intelligence, AR and VR, blockchain has resulted in offering more attractive, inclusive, and environmentally sustainable tourism.

UNWTO's Travel and Tourism Tech Investment Landscape portfolio include investment during Covid-19, emphasizing investments by top travel and tourism companies, including community lifestyle, commerce and shopping, and transportation among the others. Furthermore, it also uses artificial intelligence initiatives to encourage the inception of travel tech startups, that could guide the traditional tourism landscape towards a more advanced digital direction.

Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, UNWTO made partnerships with other global institutions and organizations to create a marketplace that can connect workers affected by the pandemic to available jobs in various sectors. Using advanced deep-learning AI, the platform matches the users to the right jobs with companies that are hiring, thus, creating a link between those who are looking for jobs and various companies that need workers. This initiative was aimed to benefit all the 159 UNWTO member states, along with more than 500 affiliate members of the organization.

Also, the World Tourism Organization partnered with another professional network especially designed for the hospitality industry to create UNWTO's Jobs Factory. With the help of machine learning algorithms, the platform can match individuals with suitable job opportunities. It can also monitor current and future skills requiring, facilitating intelligent labor market data collection, insights, and forecasting.

UNWTO realizes that small and medium-sized enterprises are the driving factors of the technologically-driven tourism industry. Several transformations like smart destination, smart travel facilitation, and job creation are the primary focus areas of the organization.