This article first appeared in the June 2023 print edition of Business Monthly.
Integrating Egypt’s thriving tourism and hospitality sector with artificial intelligence (AI) is part of the government’s long-term strategy to improve tourists’ experience. “The application of [AI] in the Egyptian tourism and hospitality sector is in line with … Egypt’s Vision 2030,” said a 2022 research paper from the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels at Helwan University.
The integration should be seamless. The “tourism and hospitality industry [in general] is considered one of the first industries to adopt new technologies, such as robotics and AI,” the paper said. It noted every aspect of those two sub-sectors would benefit, including agencies, airports and airlines, hotels, restaurants and even destinations like museums.
Accelerating such integration is crucial to remaining competitive domestically and internationally. “The travel industry is unquestionably going to be significantly disrupted by AI,” said a November report by McKinsey. “It’s quite clear that if you work through the customer journey … AI significantly eases the process of travel discovery.”
However, while the benefit would be significant and undeniable for local operators, the report noted, “AI in tourism and hospitality services in Egypt faces many challenges.”
Survey details
Researchers’ questions covered both the tourism and hospitality sub-sectors. The former includes “travel agencies and tourist companies.” These companies “mainly depend on the internet to provide their [AI] services as tourists prefer to check websites” to access relevant services.
The report’s tourism sub-sector also includes airports and airlines, where travelers can access AI services via the web, mobile phones, and self-service check-in kiosks. The surveyed sample also said AI could be used to check in travelers and their bags and strengthen security checks.
The hospitality sub-sector includes hotels, where AI is used to register visitors, manage check-in and check-out, choose rooms and read the hotel’s policy and rules. The report noted that such solutions gained popularity during COVID-19.
Restaurants can also benefit from AI. A local case in point is McDonald’s, whose branches feature large vertical touchscreens for customers to order, modify, and pay for their food. The report also said, “Chatbots [can] be very useful [in] booking, buying food or answering questions.”
The report bundled “tourist destinations” under hospitality. These include museums, tour guides, car rental offices and satellite kiosks where visitors interact with dedicated AI-powered devices to answer specific questions or execute transactions on the spot.
AI in tourism
The research paper said two types of AI systems are used in tourism and hospitality. The first is “pure digital hybrids that can only carry out the cognitive process.” They include “online check-in systems and mobile boarding passes.” The other is “digital physical hybrid [systems], which can perform both manual and cognitive operations (robots).”
Those models can be used in “chatbots, self-service, virtual reality, digital assistants, robots, and self-check-in and self-checkout kiosks, … enabling customers to obtain services independently without … human help.”
In Egypt, AI applications in the tourism and hospitality sector are still limited, with only a few tourist companies, airlines, restaurants, and hotels using them, the report said. “QR codes are the commonly used form by tourists in tourism and hospitality services (63.2% and 61.6%, respectively),” it added.
The second most popular tools are “AI search platforms and websites for tourism services (40.6%) and booking engines (50%) for hospitality services.” The third most popular use of AI in local facilities is “digital voice assistance” (38.7% of tourism companies and 47.5% of hospitality facilities).
The report said the slow adoption and limited use of AI systems locally starts with reluctance to change, as following existing best practices noticeably stalls the transition. “Hotels and airports in Egypt are [among] the best areas to apply AI due to their infrastructure and design, but they still depend on traditional systems.”
Another reason is that “most Egyptian tourism companies are small and medium-sized [firms] that use simple forms of [AI] such as bookings, emails, text messages, chatbots, digital kiosks, virtual reality and ticket machines.”
Value for AI
Surveyed tourists see significant advantages to hospitality and tourism companies offering AI systems. For the latter, the sample said the “fun” and “entertainment” elements when interacting with AI systems are “the most important advantages.” The second aspect surveyed tourists enjoy is that AI “devices are faster than human employees.”
The “faster than human” reply is the top benefit when dealing with the local hospitality sub-sector. The second perk is that “services provided by AI devices are more accurate with [fewer] human errors.” The third benefit is the “fun” factor.
Other benefits for both sub-sectors include “AI devices are always patient, no matter how many questions you ask or tasks you require.” The second is “AI devices are more polite than human employees [and provide] more consistent service [and] information, … are more dependable, [and] predictable.”
Surveyed tourists also cite AI’s ability to “provide information in more languages than human employees [and] avoiding inefficient personal contacts” when dealing with AI.
However, surveyed tourists highlight noticeable “disadvantages” for local tourism and hospitality companies. They primarily relate to a lack of AI awareness and skill. That means “using AI devices takes too much … time [as they are] so difficult to understand and use. [Accordingly,] learning how to interact with AI devices takes too long.”
Other local factors preventing AI systems from completely replacing humans include a preference for human contact in service transactions, AI’s inability to understand emotions, and AI devices misunderstanding an order or a question.
Feelings matter
Research from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a U.S. federal body, in 2021 noted, “Technology acceptance is a key variable reflecting whether AI virtual assistants are accepted by users … Trust can reduce human users’ negative emotions about and affect their tendency to accept new technologies.”
In local tourism and hospitality sub-sectors, the Helwan University report said “the sample feels satisfied while interacting with AI devices.” Other positive emotions from the sample include “feeling pleased, hopeful, relaxed and contented.”
Meanwhile, negative feelings about using AI-powered devices included boredom, melancholy, despair and annoyance.”
In the long term, surveyed tourists are optimistic about the proliferation of increasingly advanced AI systems. The sample’s top response was: “Given the opportunity, I will use AI devices.” The second most popular response was that they would “recommend that others use AI devices.”
The report said those replies indicate the local trend is that “interaction in tourism and hospitality will shift” from human-to-human to human-to-machine.”
However, that doesn’t mean local tourism and hospitality companies should focus solely on advancing their AI systems and relegating human employees. The report stressed the sector is still a “humane industry and cannot be separated from human interactions.”