Tourism sector urged to embrace AI and digital transformation

The grow­ing role of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor was among the key is­sues dis­cussed dur­ing a meet­ing be­tween YTEPP Lim­it­ed and the Tourism In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TIATT) on Tues­day at The Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel in Port of Spain.

Act­ing Di­rec­tor of En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment and Sup­port Ser­vices at YTEPP, Mont­gomery Guy, said TIATT pres­i­dent Lisa Shandilya stressed the im­por­tance of the tourism sec­tor em­brac­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, cus­tomer ser­vice, and com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est dur­ing the meet­ing was the po­ten­tial in­te­gra­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies in­to tourism op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing cus­tomer en­gage­ment sys­tems, busi­ness man­age­ment process­es, and hos­pi­tal­i­ty ser­vices,” Guy said.

He not­ed that work­force de­vel­op­ment and spe­cialised train­ing would be crit­i­cal as the tourism in­dus­try in­creas­ing­ly adopts new tech­nolo­gies.

Guy said YTEPP is pre­pared to col­lab­o­rate with TIATT to de­vel­op in­dus­try-spe­cif­ic train­ing pro­grammes aimed at equip­ping work­ers with the skills need­ed for a more tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven tourism sec­tor.

“The pro­posed col­lab­o­ra­tion could al­so in­clude ap­pren­tice­ship pro­grammes and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for cer­ti­fied grad­u­ates with­in tourism-re­lat­ed busi­ness­es,” he said.

Guy added that part­ner­ships be­tween ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions and in­dus­try stake­hold­ers are es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing train­ing pro­grammes re­main aligned with evolv­ing in­dus­try de­mands and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties.

Both or­gan­i­sa­tions al­so dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of for­mal­is­ing their re­la­tion­ship through a Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion fo­cused on in­no­va­tion, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and work­force readi­ness with­in the tourism in­dus­try.