Chatbots and the end of the travel industry as we know it

Everyone is talking about the chatbot revolution: The paradigm shift by which robots are replacing humans in hundreds of activities, both physical and intellectual.

Artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning and neural networks are allowing a next generation of robots to perform a huge number of activities that were only doable by humans until now.

And what it’s more important, for a fraction of the cost.

Robots can already carry objects flawlessly or respond to questions like if they were a person.

The AI revolution is forcing millions of humans to reinvent themselves, challenging the rules of how modern societies work in a degree we hadn’t seen since the industrial revolution.

If you want to avoid being replaced by a clever combination of bits and cables, you should take action before it’s too late.

Let’s stop for a second.

Have you read something like this before? I bet you have.

The message works. It’s scary, makes you unconsciously think about things you’ve probably seen in movies and it’s based in some degree of reality.

But how much reality? Is it really true that your job is about to be taken by a robot?

Let’s say your job is based on carrying objects around…

Or that you work on customer service, answering questions via phone, email or chat…

Maybe you are a bit less scared now.

The artificial intelligence revolution is real but probably nowhere as imminent and impactful as we all have been hearing lately.

And the reason is simple: humans are incredibly complex to emulate, especially when the job to be done requires empathy, creativity, or improvisation… all of them common skills required by a great number of the travel industry related jobs.

This is why a huge majority of travel related products which are exclusively powered by AI haven’t been able to delight users yet. Quite the contrary.

Here are the good news. There is a much more compelling alternative scenario, maybe not so shiny but equally exciting, valuable and which is already changing the travel industry.

Instead of obsessing with the idea of robots substituting humans, we can embrace the idea of robots supercharging humans.

In other words, we can think about robots like we’ve done thought about all technology since the concept of simple machines (levers, pullers, screws…) was mentioned by Archimedes around the 3rd century before Christ.

The best experiences based on artificial intelligence that we are seeing today in the travel industry focus on this philosophy: combining the power of AI with the unique qualities of real people.

From Lola, which uses AI to empower travel consultants so they can offer the perfect trip, to Mezi, in which AI is trained and improved by travel experts, or Sam, a chatbot that leverages the expertise of travel consultants and soon, also the knowledge of travelers themselves: you can request early access here, by the way :]

Nobody knows what will happen in the upcoming decades, but what reality is telling us for now is that robots will become our helpers, assistants and collaborators, not our substitutes.

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