How can artificial intelligence (AI) inspire tourists and make the experience better for residents? That was the theme for a workshop organised by Dublin City Council earlier this month in its role as European Capital of Smart Tourism for 2024.
The Irish capital invited cities from across the continent to explore how AI could improve the industry and showcased its latest initiatives – including a platform that offers bespoke experiences and itineraries to visitors through generative AI platform ChatGPT.
Speaking at Dogpatch Labs – an innovation hub in the heart of the city’s docklands – Dublin’s Smart City Lead Jamie Cudden explained how embracing collaboration could advance the industry.
“I think over the past five years Dublin [city council] has had this collaboration model – we act as an independent broker between the Dogpatches, the Googles, the OpenAIs and big tech.
“For me that’s the key – creating these safe spaces to experiment with the technology because we have so many challenges we need to solve. And I think this is exactly what we’re doing in the tourism space.
“Seeing what the risks are, where the opportunities are, and then thinking about how we actually bring people together to grab that opportunity.”
The event also featured ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, who showcased the latest developments in their text-to-video generative AI model Sora and how it could be applied to city tourism.
“It’s important that people have hands on the technology, and think very carefully about what the deployment [of the technology] looks like,” said Lane Dilg, Head of Strategic Partnerships, OpenAI.
Digital postcards
Last year, the city council issued its first large-scale survey to gauge the public’s opinion towards tourism in Dublin, and explore what constituted “a real tourism experience”.
The survey attracted responses from almost 1,100 respondents across the region, with 92 percent of Dubliners saying that overall international tourism was good for the city.
As part of efforts to bring the results to life in an engaging manner, the council worked with tech start-up Data & Design to create a series of digital postcards.
These included the top five reasons given by locals as to why tourists should visit Dublin – its pub scene, history, culture, heritage/events, and the Irish people themselves.
The project was inspired by conversations with the Wonderful Copenhagen tourism team and their work in building a local sentiment platform called 10XCopenhagen.
While analysing the benefits tourism can bring to Dublin, the project also asked residents about its associated problems.
Fifty-four percent of respondents reported no problems, 36 percent indicated problems at certain times of the year – primarily July and August, while 11 percent reported problems most of the year.
The cost of living crisis, housing prices, and problems with cleanliness were the most common grievances caused by tourism.
A day in Dublin
In an effort to give tourists a better experience, the city council has partnered with Data & Design to create an itinerary generator powered by the latest version of ChatGPT.
“When it comes to tourism, AI models tend to recommend things you would find in typical top 10 lists,” said Rudi O’Reilly Meehan, Founder of Data & Design.
“What we’re doing is taking locations, finding freely available information on the internet using Google APIs, Google reviews, and summarising that into a database.”
Dubbed ‘A day in Dublin”, the project also incorporates the national tourism body Fáilte Ireland’s open data on over 2,000 activities, restaurants, bars and events in the Irish capital to create hyperlocal, bespoke itineraries.
The platform builds a unique profile of the user based on questions asked, and then gives recommendations which can be altered based on the evolution of the conversation.
“How we interact with AI and get information has changed phenomenally,” said Cudden.
“But overtourism is another big issue, so it’s important to see can we use these destination builders to avoid that.”
While still a work in progress, O’Reilly Meehan believes the technology has the potential to be replicated in other cities, and also adapted to meet local circumstances.
“We’re also trying to introduce some randomness into this [system] as well, because we don’t want to always suggest the same places.
“So looking at how we get people away from the most typical tourist attractions to areas where they’re staying, making it more local.
“It’s still a prototype – we’re trying to create the art of the possible.”
Image: Dogpatch Labs
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