Tourist AI: better manage visitors and destinations

Imagine a tourism school wanting to create a mini-assistant based on artificial intelligence (AI) to help foreign students discover Libreville, Lambaréné, or Loango. The idea seems simple: each person indicates their dates, budget, and preferences, then receives a personalized itinerary.

Quickly, questions arise. Who checks the schedules of boats or guides? What happens to personal data? How do we avoid sending everyone to the same natural sites? The news from Queenstown, New Zealand, shows that tourism AI is not just about selling more trips. It can also help better manage a destination.

What is it, concretely?

An AI tourism planning assistant is a tool that helps a visitor build their stay according to several criteria: duration, budget, interests, mobility, season, available transport, and environmental impact. It does not simply answer the question 'what to do in three days?'. It can also provide tourist offices, hotels, guides, and site managers with a better understanding of demands. The mechanism is simple: the tool gathers reliable information, proposes options, and then adjusts them according to the traveler's profile. The key point remains human control. When well-framed, this technology becomes a decision aid, not an autopilot.

Concrete case: what to do and what not to do

Let's take AGATOUR (Gabonese Agency for the Development and Promotion of Tourism and Hospitality), a public actor responsible for promoting the Gabon destination and supporting tourism and hotel development. Its website highlights responsible and sustainable tourism, a central topic for Gabon's ecotourism.

The business problem is very concrete: an international visitor may lack simple information about seasons, transport, accommodations, local rules, or responsible experiences. The temptation would be to quickly launch an assistant 'Visit Gabon' that generates itineraries. But without proper data, editorial rules, human validation, consent on personal data, and integration of local operators, the tool may misguide travelers or render certain actors invisible.

What can be done

Start with two or three pilot routes, for example, Libreville, Lambaréné, and Loango.
Have the content validated by guides, hoteliers, parks, restaurateurs, and local communities.
Display the recommendation criteria: budget, distance, season, accessibility, availability.
Maintain human control for sensitive itineraries or information that changes quickly.
Monitor the effects: satisfaction, local bookings, complaints, errors, and flow distribution.

What not to do

Allow the tool to invent places, prices, contacts, or unverified schedules.
Systematically send visitors to the same sites, risking their fragility.
Collect too much personal data without a clear objective or visitor information.
Replace local guides, whereas the tool should rather enhance their visibility.
Copy a foreign model without adapting it to Gabon's languages, roads, seasons, and realities.

Questions to Ask Before Acting

Are our information reliable and up to date: schedules, prices, roads, contacts, seasons, difficulty levels?
Who validates the recommendations: an agent, an editorial committee, guides, or hoteliers?
What personal data do we collect: name, location, budget, health, mobility, preferences?
Does the tool highlight local actors or only the most visible ones on the Internet?
Can we explain why a particular hotel, restaurant, or itinerary is recommended?
What happens if the AI makes a mistake: correction, human contact, responsibility?
Is the goal to better distribute visitors or just to increase the volume?

UNIVGA Viewpoint

For Gabon and, more broadly, for Francophone Africa, tourism AI must be considered as a tool of sovereignty. If itineraries, reviews, and visitor data are controlled from external platforms, a destination may lose control over its narratives, priorities, and the promotion of its operators. The Gabonese law on personal data protection, updated by law n°025/2023, reminds us that these issues are not secondary.

Sustainable tourism is not just about beautiful images. The example of Queenstown, which aims for regenerative tourism and a carbon zero visitor economy by 2030, shows another way: using digital tools to understand flows, accessibility, preferences, and impacts. For Gabon, this can help promote ecotourism without concentrating all visitors on a few fragile sites.

At the School of Tourism & Hospitality, UNIVGA sees a management challenge. Future professionals will need to know how to engage with these tools, read dashboards, reject dubious recommendations, protect data, and involve local communities. The profession is not disappearing. It requires more method.

Tourism: managing visitors with artificial intelligence

What is it, concretely?

Concrete case: what to do and what not to do

Questions to Ask Before Acting

UNIVGA Viewpoint

Sources

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Foreign Robots: how to buy without diplomatic risk?

When believers seek advice from AI, what should be done?

Smart weeders: how to avoid the gadget?

How can AI manage logistics without risk?

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Tourism: managing visitors with artificial intelligence

What is it, concretely?

Concrete case: what to do and what not to do

Questions to Ask Before Acting

UNIVGA Viewpoint

Sources

How can AI manage logistics without risk?

Smart weeders: how to avoid the gadget?

Foreign Robots: how to buy without diplomatic risk?

When believers seek advice from AI, what should be done?

Smart weeders: how to avoid the gadget?

How can AI manage logistics without risk?

Leave a reply Cancel reply

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