On World Tourism Day, the UN Secretary-General warned that AI, left unchecked, can funnel tourists to the same few places and platforms. For a travel agency, that warning is a job description: on one desk I ran, nearly seven in ten bookings went to hotels outside the hundred most-booked, in a long tail no ranking measures.
Key facts
- Nearly seven in ten bookings on one desk went to hotels outside the hundred most-booked — the author's operations archive.
- Most properties in that long tail were booked only a handful of times — the same archive.
- Left unchecked, AI “can funnel tourists to the same few places and platforms” — UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The news. World Tourism Day fell on 27 September, hosted this year by El Salvador, under the theme "Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Redesign Tourism". In his message for the day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said AI "can strengthen small businesses, improve services and create new opportunities". Then he added the warning: "Yet left unchecked, it can funnel tourists to the same few places and platforms, leaving many worthwhile destinations behind."
Why do recommendations funnel travellers by default?
A system that learns from what people booked will recommend what people booked. Nobody has to design it that way. Popular places collect more reviews, more photos and more data, and the next traveller is pointed at them again.
That is why the warning deserves more than a nod. It is not about bad actors. It is about averages, and averages are what most recommendation systems are built to find. AI does not invent that pull, but it can make it stronger: every answer that repeats the same names makes the next answer more likely to repeat them too.
Does the trade live at the top of the list?
On one desk I ran, the hundred most-booked hotels were not where most of the business went. Nearly seven in ten bookings went to hotels outside that hundred, spread across a long tail of properties, most of them booked only a handful of times.
That tail is made of reasons no ranking measures: the hotel next to the hospital a family needs, the one a client asks for by name, the one across the road from the wedding. None of them wins a list. All of them get booked.
Why does it matter for the agency?
If AI narrows what travellers see, the agency's value moves to what sits outside the narrow view. Keep a record of the properties beyond the obvious list that you have booked, had confirmed and would book again. That record is inventory a funnel cannot see. The Secretary-General's line about small businesses holds on one condition: that they point the new tools at what they know, not at what everyone already sees.
Source: United Nations — Harness Artificial Intelligence to Build Inclusive, Sustainable Tourism, Secretary-General Says in World Day Message. Theme and host: UN Tourism — World Tourism Day.