Artificial intelligence is already all around us and it is essential to view AI, not as a threat but as a powerful tool. The sooner businesses recognize its potential to enhance strategies and profitability, the greater the positive outcomes they can achieve. Embracing AI as a strategic ally enables businesses to adapt swiftly, anticipate trends, and position themselves for sustained success in the ever-evolving landscape.
Mabrian – Big Data Pro Travel Intelligence, a Spanish company specialising in providing Big Data solutions within the travel and tourism industry, is driven by this motivation.
In 2013, Santi Camps in Menorca founded SocialVane an active listening platform on social networks intended to extract information about interests and sentiments from spontaneous online conversations with the use of AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Three years later, in 2016, the company transformed and remerged as Mabrian, a company focused almost exclusively on the tourism sector. The Barcelona-based company focuses specifically on data analysis to provide intelligent recommendations for travel and business travel. To do so, Mabrian collects data related to tourism, tourist interests, reviews, bookings, social networks, and prices, among other things. From the information analysed, it provides options to its customers about hotels, travel agencies, tourist and/or business destinations, the information provided is considered valuable, since thanks to it, customers will be able to make intelligent and strategic decisions.
In a simplified way, Mabrian provides a complete service within the travel cycle, anticipating tourism trends with the objective of providing a holistic perspective so that the visitor can make the best decision on the trip. It is considered a strategy that is sustainable and marketable since it recognizes existing and emerging market needs, tailors the communication to effectively engage the audience and lastly, it transforms the data into actionable insights.
The sectors analysed by Mabrian are:
- Google trends
- Social Listening
- Flight search
- Air capacity
- Flight prices
- Flight reservations
- Lodging
- Average expenses
- Interest and perception
- Mobile data
- Travel reviews
In the event of a crisis, Mabrian helps destinations and companies adapt and respond to changing conditions, such as Covid 19. This resource allows for the development of mitigation strategies. A hotel is a great business that can benefit from the use of Mabrian. Here is why:
1.Targeted Communication: Mabrian will give you useful insights to understand who your audience is, which will allow the business to personalize its message and marketing strategy based on visitor preferences and behaviour.
2.Market Analysis: Mabrian gives access to the current as well as future demand trends. The benefit of this information is that the business will understand the dynamics and can plan the strategy based on what is trending.
3.Competitive Edge: A business can be a step forward and be more competitive due to being informed. This way it anticipates, adapts, and maintains a strong position in the field.
Therefore, for a hotel, for example, Mabrian serves as an invaluable tool for better organisation. By offering insights into audience preferences and behaviours, facilitating market analysis, and providing a competitive edge, Mabrian empowers businesses to thrive in the dynamic hospitality industry.
The versatility of AI means that its benefits extend beyond the hospitality sector, proving valuable in optimizing operations and decision-making across various industries.
As businesses across sectors harness the power of AI, it becomes evident that embracing this technology is not just advantageous but imperative for staying competitive and achieving optimal outcomes.
Using AI to help research AI
A key cornerstone of the AI4VET4AI project is undertaking research into what skills are required for adopting AI into the workplace. So what better way to explore what skills are required than embedding AI itself into the research process. The research team led by Dr. Scott Harrison and Dr. Gábor Kismihók from Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) in collaboration with Dr. Alan Berg and Dr. Stefan T. Mol from Amsterdam Business School (UvA) are using a mixed method research approach, where we explore a number of tools to help enhance the research process.
For example, one part of the research process requires us to produce a survey in 10 different languages. By using Google Sheets which has implemented Google Translate as a function, we were able to quickly generate translations for the multilingual survey. While this still required editing and proofreading by native speakers for complete correctness, by using this AI tool we were able to cut down a significant amount of work required to produce the survey.
Another AI tool that has helped quickly enhance the research process is ChatGPT and Bing chatbots, where through clever prompt engineering, we were able to get the chatbots to help create complex Scopus Queries for a systematic literature review. It did this in two key ways. The first was helping identify the keywords which would form the scope of terms for the systematic literature review. The generated list was then reviewed by experts to ensure that it met the requirements for such academic work. Secondly, the bots were then able to generate the complex code for the Scopus queries, which then further reduced the workload on us as researchers. The final result was that we have been able to start the systematic literature review process sooner.
In conclusion, we hope to further explore these tools throughout the coming months as we conduct survey work and a systematic literature review. We expect these tools to not only help us be more productive in our research but also gain a deeper understanding of how such tools can be used in other sectors and support the adoption of AI into Vocational Education and Training.
