When Google launched in 1998, it transformed how people found information. Instead of asking people, or searching through our parents' encyclopaedias, we searched the web. Smartphones then put that information in our pockets, making it available wherever we went. Today, AI is changing the way we access information once again.
Instead of searching through websites, we increasingly ask AI. Sometimes the answers are excellent. Sometimes they are incomplete. Sometimes they are wrong. The quality of every answer depends on the quality of the information behind it.
Our expectation, however, has never changed. We expect the most relevant answer to our individual situation. Today, that is about far more than finding information. AI is changing how people live, work, make decisions and move through their daily lives.
This shift reaches far beyond tourism. Tourism is simply one of the first industries where the consequences are becoming visible.
For decades, destination organisations built their digital presence around one central question:
What do we want visitors to know about our destination?
Today, the strategic starting point is different:
What does AI need to know to answer the traveller's question?
Those are fundamentally different organising principles. The first organises information around the destination. The second organises information around the traveller.
That distinction may appear subtle. It changes what destination organisations need to achieve through their digital presence.
The Behavioural Shift
AI shifts the effort from finding information to describing what we need. Instead of searching, comparing and interpreting information ourselves, we increasingly describe our situation and receive an answer tailored to it. Tasks that once required research have become conversations. What once took minutes, or even hours, now takes seconds.
That changes more than efficiency. It changes expectations. People increasingly expect information to adapt to their circumstances, rather than adapting themselves to the way information is presented.
Planning no longer begins with information. It increasingly begins with a question.
The Change
Travel planning has always been about making choices. Where to go. Where to stay. What to experience. Where to eat.
For decades, those choices were largely shaped by the traveller. We searched, compared, read reviews, explored websites and gradually built our own shortlist.
That process is beginning to change. Increasingly, AI performs much of that work before the traveller ever makes a decision. It compares information across thousands of sources. It filters options. It identifies patterns. It recommends.
The traveller still makes the final decision. But increasingly, AI influences which destinations, hotels, restaurants and experiences enter the consideration set in the first place. That distinction matters.
The easier the process becomes, the more naturally we rely on it. People naturally gravitate towards the path that requires the least effort. Travel planning is proving no different.
The Next Responsibility
The implications become visible the moment a traveller starts planning. A destination website might tell a traveller that a destination offers climbing, hiking, snorkelling, fishing or water parks. For many years, that was enough. Today, travellers increasingly need something different.
"We're a family of five. Our children are seven, nine and thirteen. Is the seven-year-old old enough for this tour? Do we need additional equipment, or is it provided? Is hotel pick-up included? Do we need to bring our own lunch? How long does the experience take? How many people normally join the tour? How many guides are there, particularly to supervise children? What is the best time of day to go?"
None of these questions are unusual. They show how quickly people adapt when technology removes friction. The easier it becomes to obtain detailed answers, the more detailed the questions become.
Those questions increasingly depend on information that has never formed part of the traditional destination marketing model. Tourism organisations were created to market destinations, not to operate the information infrastructure behind them.
The question is no longer whether destinations inspire travellers. It is whether they can answer them.
Our July Intelligence Brief ended with a simple question.
What becomes the purpose of a Destination Marketing Organisation or National Tourism Organisation?
The answer is beginning to emerge. The purpose has not changed. Their purpose remains to promote destinations, attract visitors and strengthen the tourism economy. What has changed is the capability now required to fulfil that purpose.
The Missing Capability
If travellers increasingly ask questions like these before making a decision, what does that mean for the organisations responsible for helping them choose a destination? Where would it come from? Who would collect it? Who would maintain it? How would it remain current across thousands of tourism businesses as information changes every day? What does that mean for the visitor economy that depends on them?
Or even more fundamentally:
Was that ever the job of a tourism organisation? Or has the world quietly changed around them?
The Additional Responsibility
The evidence throughout this Intelligence Brief points to a simple conclusion.
Tourism organisations are not being asked to abandon their traditional role. They are being asked to build upon it.
| Traditional Responsibility | Additional Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Promote the destination | Enable the destination to answer travellers' questions |
| Inspire travel | Enable confident travel decisions |
| Publish destination content | Develop and maintain destination knowledge |
| Build awareness | Support consideration and recommendation |
| Strengthen the visitor economy through destination marketing | Strengthen the visitor economy through information readiness |
Neither responsibility replaces the other.
The visitor economies that succeed will be those whose destinations can both inspire travellers and answer them.
Next month
Building the Capability. If the purpose of tourism organisations is expanding, what capabilities will destinations need to build to fulfil it? Who will be responsible for collecting, maintaining and validating destination knowledge? And how can an entire visitor economy remain visible, trusted and continuously current in an environment where travel decisions are increasingly shaped before a traveller ever reaches a destination website?
