TOURIST INVASION
CONCLUSION Tanks to advances in trending technologies, the tools to deal with rapid travel industry expansion exist. But there are chal- lenges. Te complexity of technology options has ironically driven more people back to using old-fashioned travel agents, increas- ing agents in the U.S. by 6% over the last five years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.Te quest for simplicity is one reason. Another is something Rich Harril, a professor at the University of South Carolina (USC) called “soft intelligence.” Harrill is director of USC’s International Tourism Research Insti- tute. He noted that agents learn things about destinations because they have their ear to the market. He advised not to rely on tech- nology alone but also on soft communications from the field. “AI can be a double-edged sword. Decisions can be made faster but AI can also replicate false data,” he added.
INNOVATIONS TAKE FLIGHT
The travel industry has turned to software, hardware and innovation to deal with billions of travelers each year. (Photo by Tom Barrett, Unsplash)
Ingersoll also pointed out that generative AI can assist with deciphering analytics. “Large amounts of data can be analyzed quickly and put into digestible formats for leaders, again without specialized training. AI can offer first-pass insight or warnings and be the front line of scanning to help on the preparedness front,” she said.
Te travel industry is leaning into AI to make sense of unstruc- tured data in particular, elaborated Blackwell. He gave the example of text information, which is very hard to analyze and quantify because it lacks automatic numeric value. AI can consis- tently identify overall intent and sentiment from the text, and it does so consistently without bias or boredom. It can understand that a “badass” evaluation is good, not bad, which a traditional word search would not be able to do, according to him. AI enables deep data analysis, organizes it into spreadsheets and assigns numeric values. It can then suggest solutions to problems.
“Tis is not a question of generating new data,” Blackwell insisted. “Tere is plenty of data out there. It’s a matter of under- standing and using the data you already have.”
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Industry and DOD alike need to concentrate on mantras of efficiency, optimization and agility if they are to maximize technology’s potential. Tey need to balance their customers’ desires for customization with data privacy concerns and secu- rity considerations; incorporate the human touch into automated systems; and train their people and their generative AI systems continuously.
“Simplify, simplify, simplify,” Skinner said in the DISA Next strategy. “We need to simplify our processes, we need to simplify the infrastructure, we need to simplify the configurations and we need to simplify how we do business with each other.”
Tomas Cook wouldn’t understand the 21st century technology but he would undoubtedly approve of the people-centric focus.
For more information, email
armyalt@army.mil.
CLAUDIA FLISI provides contract support to the U.S. Army Acquisitions Center as a contributing writer and editor for Army AL&T and JANSON. Her writing has appeared in the International New York Times, Newsweek, Fortune and other publications, websites and books from four countries in three languages. She has an M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in international relations with distinction from Mount Holyoke College.
Army AL&T Magazine
Spring 2025
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