Building open data for AI is not a luxury, it's the new ace up tourism's sleeve
Voice reading · ~3 min
We have been talking about digital transformation for years, but the real leap is not having a CRMCRMA CRM is the system where the hotel stores and works its guest relationships: history, preferences, campaigns and communications. It is used to build loyalty, win back past guests and personalize the stay. Used well i... or a crappy chatbotChatbotA chatbot is a program that converses with the guest by text or voice to solve questions or guide a booking. The old ones followed rigid scripts, today's use language models and sound natural. Done well it takes load..., it is building the open datasets that feed artificial intelligence. It sounds like tech jargon, but it is as basic as this: if destinations, hotels and airlines do not start structuring and releasing their data so an AI can understand it, they will miss the train on real personalization and operational efficiency.
I am not talking about posting a PDF with occupancyOccupancyOccupancy is the percentage of rooms sold out of those available over a period. It is one of the three basic metrics alongside ADR and RevPAR. On its own it says little, because filling the hotel by giving rooms away... stats on the city council website. I am talking about creating APIsAPIAn API is the door through which two programs talk and pass data with no human in the middle. In a hotel it is what lets the PMS, the booking engine and the channel manager share availability instantly. When a vendor... and structured repositories that allow language models like GPT or Gemini to access up-to-date information on availability, dynamic pricingDynamic pricingDynamic pricing adjusts rates in real time based on demand, competition, lead time and other factors. Instead of a fixed price, the hotel goes up when pressure is high and down when supply is loose. It is the foundati..., local events, visa regulations or verified reviews. Without that material, AI hallucinates, makes things up and fails. And the travel industry, which lives on trust, cannot afford that.
notitur.comI have seen many DMOs boast about being a "smart destination" with an app that connects to nothing. It is just showboating. The true intelligence of a destination lies in its ability to expose data to external agents (OTAsOTAAn online travel agency is a channel that sells accommodation and travel online in exchange for a commission. Booking.com and Expedia are the biggest. They bring volume and visibility, but charge commissions that eat..., startups, search engines) so they can compete and generate value. If your airline does not let an AI query its live seat inventory, do not expect a virtual assistant to recommend your flight over a competitor's.
Sure, there are fears: privacy, losing control over pricing, competitors scraping your data. But the bigger risk is not being in the ecosystem at all. AI will train on whatever is available. If your data is not there, algorithms will ignore your hotel, your route or your destination. The gap will not be between big and small players, but between those who understand that open data is the new ace up the sleeve and those who still keep it locked in a local Excel file.
We do not need more speeches on innovation. We need every destination to publish an open data catalogue, every hotel to expose its availability via API and every airline to standardize its feeds. AI is not coming to save us, it is coming to consume what we feed it. If you do not feed it, it will eat you.
The travel startups we follow, plus the ones surfacing in today's news.
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