Destination Toronto had personalization top of mind when it began exploring the potential for 6ix, its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant.
The tourism body began hearing about Matador Network's GuideGeek service, which leverages ChatGPT, around 2023 and was looking for ways to personalize content at scale.
Launched last summer, the 6ix chat assistant is accessible via the Destination Toronto website as well Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook and was “up and running” within a few months, providing deeper insight into what users were looking for.
While most users are currently engaging with 6ix on the website, Paula Port, vice president of global marketing for Destination Toronto, believes the wider opportunity lies with the messaging apps.
“I think users are still looking at it as a search function versus a conversation,” she said.
“We’re used to these chatbots sitting on a website, so that’s how they’re engaging with it. We’re starting to see some take advantage of the conversation.”
Ross Borden, CEO of Matador Network, which owns GuideGeek, said destinations that integrate the technology with their social media channels stand to gain the most from it.
“The ability to engage travelers 24/7 with instant, custom responses on Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp is a game changer,” he said.
“It also drives more traffic to the destination website from social media channels, which is crucial given that recent changes to Google are lowering search traffic for many DMOs [destination marketing organizations].”
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Borden also said destinations should be integrating AI across the entire organization and training staff on how to use it effectively “to be more relevant with the industry and more valuable in their community.”
“Staff are already using AI. It’s on leadership to ensure everyone is on the same page about how and for what purpose. Also, DMOs [destination management organizations] will benefit by developing custom GPTs [generative pre-trained transformers] to help teams optimize their time and talents, and data warehouses/lakes to help optimize their content for AI search,” Borden said.
A number of DMOs have released AI initiatives recently. Usage ranges from the development of a dashboard for sustainable tourism management, a chat platform for business event professionals and a challenge inviting developers to use AI to create new tools for visitors. Meanwhile, for Destination Toronto, the priority has been to understand how its content strategy aligned with the sorts of questions customers were asking, according to Port.
“We started to see much more specific questions than a traditional website’s content covers. That was one of the interesting pieces but that was really our goal, just to understand how that search and that conversation was changing,” she said.
Port said questions around directions and what’s on for a particular day are informing the destination on how it needs to develop its content.
“As a DMO, we tend to play in the space of inspiration and very inspirational itineraries, and that needs to adjust in order to accommodate this changing behavior.”
The destination is now testing different content formats and structures around the behavior. The destination is also aware of the need for timely, accurate content, said Port, with consumers “less forgiving” of inaccurate content on 6ix than they might traditionally have been with the website.
“We need to really keep on top of key dates and important moments happening in the city. That's really a focus of the type of content that's being sought out on 6ix,” she said.
Port acknowledges that this also requires a change in mindset for the team, and the DMO is encouraging employees to experiment with different AI tools as it tests, learns and iterates with 6ix.
Future roadmap
Looking ahead, the destination wants to expand the use of 6ix in the market with use cases including meeting attendees.
We started to see much more specific questions than a traditional website’s content covers...that was really our goal, just to understand how that search and that conversation was changing.
Paula Port, Destination Toronto
“We’re beginning conversations with members and partners across the city in terms of how they might be able to integrate it at their venues and facilities and really help to get the word out,” Port said.
“It’s about making it useful in situations where visitors are looking for ‘what’s on tonight’, or ‘where to go for dinner’.”
The destination also wants to be able to get more insights and trends from 6ix.
“I know it’s something GuideGeek is looking at within its roadmap,” said Port.
“I would like to be able to draw out more insights about what users are searching for, what questions they have and how can we get better at answering them. What are the trends we’re seeing in terms of activities or times? I’d like to be more nimble in responding to that.”
More widely, the organization is looking to redesign its digital ecosystem as part of a three-year strategy driven by the rapid developments in AI.
“This speaks more widely to what we were getting at with the structure of data to prioritize it or to make more accessible for some of these models,” Port said.
So far, Borden said GuideGeek has focused on text conversations to make the service easy to use via mobile devices.
“In the short term, we are adding more imagery and maps into the conversations," he said.
“In the long term, we are very interested in vertical videos, new API to connect with more partners and AI agents that will actually book travel for the user.”