That was the warning from digital expert Peter Syme to delegates at the Adventure Travel Networking conference this week. 

Syme, a director at consultancy Disrupt Travel, said there are already AI tools on the market that mean one person can do the work of ten, citing a client who runs a £20 million business with a team of just four people. 

“It is not a panic situation, but it’s not an ignore situation,” he insisted. “You have got time. But younger operators are already becoming super-efficient [by deploying AI] because they were born with this stuff.”

However Syme warned companies not to focus AI adoption on efficiency but “effectiveness”. 

“About 95% of AI tools are to boost efficiency. Every other business can use them too, they’ll all catch up. The real value of AI is in effectiveness - finding the areas in which it can make a real difference in your business.”

The technology poses a particular threat to travel operators who sell guided tours, he warned, since an AI tool could offer more knowledge and information than a human guide. 

Yet a certain portion of the market will ultimately kickback against such technology and want to get away from it.
“They’ll seek a very human experience, and the sort of transformational experiences that you sell, so then you can price it higher,” he suggested. 

Syme recommended futurepedia.io as a source of more than a thousand AI tools, many of which are free to use.