AI in travel and tourism? We need to play — Panel with OpenAI, Hoxton Hotels + Stripe at London Travel Massive

It was great to attend the Travel Massive event hosted by Stripe last week, with a panel of AI evangelists — not surprising as we were lucky to have Hilary Platt of OpenAI as well as first-hand experiences from Carlo Del Mistro of Ennismore (a lifestyle hospitality company managing 160+ luxury hotels including The Hoxton).

And of course, casually curated by James Lemon from Stripe to ensure the important questions were covered.

Travel Massive AI in travel and tourism panel at Stripe London

My biggest take-home messages on AI for travel and tourism brands?

• We need to democratise AI. That looks different for each organisation but it means we need to make it easy for people to embrace it and ask questions before we launch into automating everything.

• We need to let everyone play, experiment, and explore. That’s fun! And I think we can easily forget that this is a tool that is epically smart but can also open up our own creative brains in fun ways.

• We need to stop pushing AI tools just because we can. There are myriad insane uses and it is already changing how we run our businesses, but adding an AI chatbot because you can is silliness.

• We need to solve real problems. The customer remains at the heart of everything we do. We need to remember what excites and entertains them and not shoehorn in smart solutions that don’t serve them.

• And we need to inspire our customers with better choices. Making more brilliant experiences accessible is the key. And making guests feel like AI is a beneficial addition to the research, planning and booking process is a huge opportunity, as long as they don’t feel shut down to real human contact.

The bottom line? The ultimate AI solution is one that helps us to make experiences even more special.
We can’t forget that.

If that is easier because everything running behind the scenes is automated, intelligent, and accessible, then great.

Don’t get me wrong — the level of innovation that is already transforming our sector is absolutely mind-blowing. I guess because my job is to connect brands with people in meaningful ways, I’m always looking for the solutions that retain a real-world touch point. And I was pleasantly surprised by the take of the panellists.

Because over the past year, AI has gone from something we associated with sci-fi movies and maybe the robot assistants we imagined having in our homes in 25 years, to something we are pretty much all dabbling in to varying degrees. My own personal usage is daily but I’d say pretty basic. I love it as a problem solving and research tool. As a sounding board for my own creative ideas, logic and also comparing approaches.

And in the attractions and experiences space? There’s still a gap between what’s possible and what’s practical. And while some of the conversations in the industry are charging ahead (hello, dynamic pricing and predictive trend analytics), a lot of the real magic still feels out of reach for smaller, independent brands.

As someone working closely with those brands — attractions, experience providers, and the platforms that support them — I think our focus needs to shift. Less “how do we build an AI-powered chatbot?” and more “how can we use AI to finally get a grip on the 97 reviews we haven’t read?”

And that really is about playing with the tools and seeing what is of benefit to your business. Carlo really summed this up when he talked about how they are freeing up time in the team to use the tools to their advantage and offer a far superior level of humanised customer support.

Because for most businesses in this space, the goal isn’t automation for the sake of it. It’s about making smarter decisions faster, freeing up teams to do what they do best, and better understanding what guests and customers are really feeling.

Post panel networking with travel and hospitality professionals at Stripe’s London office

My view on the value of AI for attractions and experiences

AI isn’t just about building clever tech — it’s about building better experiences. And for attractions, that can mean:

• Spotting patterns in guest reviews across Tripadvisor, Google, and social — without manually reading ALL of the comments and then running out of steam to reply to any of them.

• Understanding true customer sentiment in real time, not just star ratings - as well as what might impact changes over time.

• Knowing which parts of your experience spark joy, and which parts cause friction — from booking to post-visit feedback

• Making informed content and campaign decisions based on what people are actually saying online rather than a glowing review from one person.

• Making the boring bits (sorry James) super easy - payments, booking confirmations, changes to itineraries, reminders and helpful FAQ type information, pre, during and post visit.

• Encouraging advocacy - keeping in touch with customers and all stages of the purchase journey which, when done well, drives far more social sharing.

We’re finally getting to a point where tools like OpenAI, and others building on top of it, can take raw, messy, unstructured data and make it useful. That’s a massive shift - especially for small teams as I say, who just don’t have that type of expertise in their small teams.

In fact, one of my personal wants right now is the ability to pull in live data from all the platforms that matter — Tripadvisor, Instagram, Google Reviews, TikTok comments — and have it summarised and categorised by theme and sentiment. Not in a dashboard that takes six clicks to interpret. But in plain English, with insight that’s actually usable. Is that worth $100 a month for the pro version of ChatGPT to my business? Absolutely - I think it is - I will report back!

That’s where I believe AI is going to create a real leap forward for the attractions space — by making insights not just possible, but accessible to the teams that need them most. And that curiosity has been further fuelled by Hilary, Carlo and James with my biggest takeaway - let’s play.

Where it’s helping me (right now)

As a brand strategist working closely with travel and tourism clients, AI is already quietly transforming how I work. Importantly, it’s allowing me to give clients more insight, faster, without them needing to invest in expensive research tools or hours of analysis.

I’m not trying to replace humans with AI. I’m trying to give human teams better tools to do more of what they’re brilliant at — connecting, storytelling, and delivering unbelievable experiences.

That’s why I’m not obsessed with building AI agents or bots - yet. I may well be when I have my own AI assistant who really does take care of all the things in my professional and personal life that I really hate doing.

But for now, I’d much rather see attraction teams using AI to:

• Scan their own content for clarity and consistency
• Understand what their customers are actually saying
• Automate the boring stuff, like data categorisation or email segmentation
• Get inspired — with smarter suggestions for social content, blog ideas, or campaign angles based on analysis of what’s working

Let them play

One of the most frustrating things I hear that could be deemed as an excuse not to have a play is - not ‘getting’ it, time, or being a small team. These are THE three reasons to play and explore.

The tools are here. Yes they’re evolving at lightning speed which is slightly overwhelming but dip a toe in. Many tools are free or affordable and they are pretty accessible in terms of usage, prompts and language.

I’ll end with this - we’re still trying to solve the same problems, not brand new ones that never existed before. We now have new ways to solve them more easily - so why would we not grab hold of that and give it a try?

Thanks to Travel Massive, Stripe, Hilary and Carlo for a really thought-provoking evening. It’s certainly given me renewed interest in what else I could be doing to benefit from AI tools.

This article originally published by Catherine Warrilow on theplotthickens.co.uk