The potential of applying AI to rural tourism increases visits

03-12-23

• Villages with less visibility increase their visits by 36 percent.

The use of AI in rural environments fosters knowledge and feedback from the traveler about a territory usually devoid of assessment and interaction platforms. Intelligence systems are able to collect responses, reactions, impressions and feedback from tourists. In 2022, the MyStreetBook platform collected a total of 55,764 visits from travelers to rural territories. 

And, it is as important to take advantage of AI to boost rural tourism and its technological development, as it is for the establishment of tourist flows, that is, to create initiatives such as the distribution of travelers to less known areas, recommending tourists less consolidated environments or tractors to distribute the economy and reduce the carbon footprint, as well as the carrying capacity of the infrastructures of the most saturated places. 

According to the distribution numbers in different counties obtained through MyStreetBook AI, thanks to the application of this type of technology in the rural sector, the size of the population as an indicator of tourist attraction capacity has lost relevance. 

With the application of AI it is intended that very small municipalities can increase their visibility and thus become driving forces for rural tourism. In fact, with its use, visits were distributed between the best known municipalities of the territory and the smallest, with an increase of 188%. In other words, the less visible municipalities of these regions increased their visits by 36% each thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

The Technological Innovation Day at the service of the Revitalization of Inland Tourism, which took place in the Monumental Enclave of the Castle of Velez-Blanco, welcomed representatives of the World Tourism Organization, the Andalusian Government, the University of Almeria, the Association of the Most Beautiful Villages of Spain, or Escapada Rural, among others, to address the importance of applying technologies such as AI to rural tourism to revive it.

he event was organized by the technology and tourism innovation company MyStreetBook together with the Delegation of Tourism, Culture and Sport of Almeria. MyStreetBook, is a tourism startup that, in the words of Natalia Bayona, executive director of the World Tourism Organization: "It has won the UNWTO Rural Tourism Competition 2020.  By integrating Artificial Intelligence and sustainable tourism, it has demonstrated that technology is an accelerator of economic development and social impact in destinations. Proof of its scalability is that its model has reached more than 200,000 users by 2022 and has been implemented in 180 municipalities in Spain." 

The conference was sponsored by Empresa Pública para la Gestión del Turismo y del Deporte de Andalucía, S.A. and by the Consejería de Turismo, Cultura y Deporte de la Junta de Andalucía, with FEDER funds from the European Union. In addition, it has had the collaboration of the City Council of Velez-Blanco.

This is the first event carried out at national level with this theme, where the focus is set on innovative solutions and technologies related or applicable to inland tourism, rural and empty Spain. 

In this scenario of rural environments, tools such as MyStreetBook's artificial intelligence recommendation system increase the visibility, attraction and loyalty of travelers through the discovery of places that are not so well known, but very similar to the tourist to whom they are recommended. 

Smart Rural' for inland destinations

During the morning, there was information and debate on the present and future of a branch with so much potential in Spanish tourism. In the words of José Ángel Vélez-Delegado, territorial of Tourism, Culture and Sport of Almeria: "Inland tourism is one of the tourist modalities with the greatest growth potential in Almeria. It has a great natural, cultural and heritage wealth, and has encouraged industry professionals to take advantage of the opportunities offered by technological innovation for travelers, being a priority for the Junta de Andalucía to promote and encourage it". 

In addition, it has been presented the implementation of the AI system of tourist recommendation and creation of intelligent routes in the regions of Los Vélez and the Almanzora Valley. Something that would not be possible without an incentive in the use of data that helps to improve the supply and tourism management, both based on the knowledge of the visitor. 

On the other hand, a catalog of innovative solutions focused on boosting tourism for inland destinations has been created, presented at the conference, which will continue to be edited with more companies in order to establish a common roadmap, focused on a 'Smart Rural' interior as a driving force for diversification and distribution, and the fight against the seasonality of the main engine of our economy.

Some of the tourism innovation initiatives present are Rural Delivery, Ideas for Change, IN2destination, Orion Madrid Astrotourism or Almeria Trending, among others. 

The sector's support for the application of AI is in the majority. According to the studies of the Guide to Use Cases of Artificial Intelligence and Ethics, 75% of Spanish tourism companies use some form of AI in their processes and 65% of rural tourism companies consider that this type of technology helps to improve the customer experience. 

Therefore, and based on a parallel research by the University of Alicante, 8 out of 10 local agents consider that AI is useful to achieve the development of smart tourism in empty Spain and similar percentages state that they would use the aforementioned advances in order to plan their trip and receive personalized recommendations during their stay.