AI could decide whether and how travellers vacation in Jamaica

WESTERN BUREAU:

Jamaica is moving to make its tourism industry ready for a future in which artificial intelligence could help determine not only whether a traveller visits the island, but where that visitor stays, eats, explores, and spends.

The Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) has begun examining the country’s tourism information infrastructure as AI-powered assistants increasingly move beyond answering travellers’ questions towards recommending destinations, building itineraries, and, eventually, completing bookings.

Kristopher DaCosta, global travel marketing leader with the JTB, says that that shift is already taking place at the research stage, with consumers asking AI tools questions they once directed to traditional search engines.

“Where should I go? What’s a good Caribbean destination? Build me an itinerary,” DaCosta said, giving examples of the questions travellers are now putting to AI systems.

While the JTB cannot yet quantify how much business AI is driving to Jamaica, DaCosta said changing consumer behaviour is already evident, making it necessary for the destination to prepare before AI becomes a major booking channel.

The implications could be particularly significant for smaller Jamaican-owned hotels, attractions, restaurants, craft businesses, and community tourism operators, which risk becoming less visible if their digital information cannot be easily understood by AI systems.

“If we do nothing, there is a real possibility that AI disproportionately recommends the businesses that are easiest for machines to understand,” DaCosta warned.

NO STRUCTURED DIGITAL INFORMATION

Some of the experiences that make Jamaica distinctive, he said, do not currently have the structured digital information needed to make them readily discoverable by these emerging systems.

Against that background, the JTB has begun what DaCosta describes as the process of getting Jamaica’s “digital house in order”.

The organisation is auditing what tourism information exists, where it is located, who owns it, and whether it is structured in a way that machines can understand.

DaCosta does not regard the initiative simply as an AI strategy but as “the next evolution of destination marketing infrastructure”.

At the heart of that work is what he calls “machine-readable trust”.

For a hotel, restaurant, attraction, or tour operator, he said, the concept is less complicated than it sounds.

“Can a machine determine who you are, where you’re located, what you offer, whether the information is current, and how someone books with you?”

DaCosta believes that having that information clearly and consistently available could become as important to tourism businesses over the next decade as having a website became 20 years ago.

Jamaica, he acknowledged, still has significant work to do.

The problem is not a shortage of information about the destination. Instead, much of that information is fragmented across different websites, platforms, and other sources.

Incorrect or outdated information presents another problem.

DaCosta warned that AI can amplify inaccurate or inconsistent information rather than correct it, creating a need for what he described as an “authoritative digital truth for Jamaica tourism”.

He said responsibility must be shared, with tourism businesses keeping their product information current while the JTB establishes a reliable reference point for the destination.

TRANSFORMATIVE

The changes could eventually transform the way a Jamaican vacation is purchased.

DaCosta envisages a traveller giving an AI assistant a budget, interests, and travel dates and having the technology assemble an entire itinerary, including flights, accommodation, attractions, restaurants, and experiences.

“Absolutely,” he said when asked whether that future could involve planning and booking an entire Jamaican holiday through an AI assistant.

“Our job is to make sure the full and authentic Jamaica experience is visible in that process.”

That presents another challenge for the JTB: protecting the authenticity of Brand Jamaica when an artificial intelligence system increasingly sits between the destination and the traveller.

DaCosta acknowledged the risk but said the objective could not be to control what AI says about Jamaica.

Visitors, residents, journalists, creators, musicians, and tourism businesses already contribute to the international perception of the island. AI, he said, would synthesise far more of that information - and do so rapidly.

The JTB’s responsibility, therefore, is to ensure that there is a strong and authentic body of information from which those systems can draw.

There is no price tag yet for the transformation, and DaCosta said it would be premature to attach one before the JTB completes its discovery work.

Neither is he promising a single major launch date. Instead, he expects the changes to be incremental, better information, improved standards and visibility, and increasing numbers of tourism businesses becoming digitally and eventually “agent-ready”.

His description of the evolution perhaps best captures what is at stake for Jamaica:

“Twenty years ago, we had to make Jamaica searchable. Then we had to make Jamaica social and mobile. Now we have to make Jamaica understandable and actionable by intelligent systems.”

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com