TRANSFORMING

TOURIST DESTINATIONS
WITH ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
INDEX

Introduction 3

What is AI? 4

Defining “Smart Destination” 5

How does AI impact on the tourism industry 6

Influencing the traveller decision making 7-9

Why do DMOs need to use AI? 10

5 ways to use AI in a destination 11

Transforming your destination using MOCA AI 12-13

Demonstrating the value of using AI in Tourism 14-17

About MOCA 18

2
INTRODUCTION

This guide outlines how governments can implement Artificial Intelligence technologies in order
that they can transition to a new Smart Tourism landscape - one which works in harmony with
the citizens and local business growth.

While we have been listening to talk about the Smart City sector and its adaptation to tourism (as
Smart Tourist Destinations), it’s now that it’s really gathering strength and becoming a real boom.

Technology has changed the way we experience, enjoy and share the places we visit. And it’s
because those who have taken the lead, such as The Canary Islands in Spain, for example,
have shown: efficiency for the city in terms of achieving more awareness in visitors about the
environment and the maintenance of the destination, and also the efficiency to generate a win-
win model where tourists, the private sector, the destination and the country itself can benefit
from intelligent management services. It contributes to improve public services, boost local
employment and bring connectivity to remote communities.

The current tourist is more demanding, very well informed, seeks the best value for money,
expects to receive personalized services and lives in a hyperconnected world.
WHAT IS AI?
Today, modern definitions of AI focus
on automation and sometimes miss the
business opportunities available to business
leaders. These include the augmentation of
human decision making, faster and more
precise predictions, greater personalization
and differentiation.
According to the Gartner’s IT glossary, it’s
defined as “a technology that appears to
emulate human performance typically by
learning, coming to its own conclusions,
appearing to understand complex content,
engaging in natural dialogs with people,
enhancing human cognitive performance
(also known as cognitive computing) or
replacing people on execution of nonroutine
tasks.”
At MOCA we define AI as a set of methods
inherited from mathematics and physics,
which mimic the learning process of the
human brain. It consists of a series of steps
that allow the machine to learn from past
events and, from those, to infer future
results taking into account all learnt system
variables.
For example, if a tourist goes regularly to
beaches and these have a special or unique
characteristic (e.g. white sand or good
waves for surfers) AI can notice this and
recommend, in future trips, destinations with
the specific characteristics preferred by the
traveller. AI systems are not only capable of
learning the behavior of the person, but also
they learn the context, inferring not only visit
recurrency but also why it’s visited (context of
the location).
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DEFINING A “SMART
DESTINATION”
“Smart” has become an increasingly popular
term to describe technological, economic and
social developments fueled by technologies
that rely on sensorization, data analysis,
human-machine interaction and networked
exchange of information. The mobile
revolution, and specifically the role of the
smartphone and its many opportunities
to support travel experiences (Wang et al.,
2012), is especially worth mentioning in this
context.
A Smart Destination can be defined as a travel
destination that uses vanguard technological
platforms that guarantee sustainable
development of the territory, making
interaction and integration of the visitor with
the environment easier, increasing the quality
of their experience in the destination and
improving quality of life of the residents.
@mocaplatform.com
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HOW DOES AI IMPACT ON
THE TOURISM INDUSTRY
The 21st century traveler is a hyper connec-
ted individual in a multitasking and multi
platform mode. We are before individuals
who receive and process large amounts of in-
formation and who have the ability, thanks to
digitalization, to quickly compare and assimi-
late and thus accelerate the decision process.
Use their smartphones in their
85%
travelers transfers and trips.
Taking into account the data, which is
growing daily, we will need a technological
platform capable to store, process and
analyze all this Big Data generated from the
interconnection of the different stakeholders
and the information related with the
tourism activities. In this context, Smart
Tourism Destinations not should only make
a basic use of Big Data, it should be able to
understand the need of tourists and offering
right services that suit traveller’s preference
at the right time.

That is where AI plays an important role, as

Connect to TripAdvisor to inform their
150 decision based on opinions of other
a driver that potentially enhance the tourism
milion
users experience through offering products and
users
services that are more personalized to
meet each of visitor’s unique needs and
Share photos of their trips on social
97% preferences.
Millenials networks.

Use public Wi-Fi networks during their

80%
travelers trips.

Use their smartphone to plan or

40% reserve trips and spend an average

travelers
of 4 to 5 hours connected to their

smartphones.

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 INFLUENCING THE TRAVELER
DECISION MAKING
Nowadays the traveller does not go,
primarily, to a travel agency to gather
knowledge. The traveler seeks relevant
information online and validates it with
other users looking for recommendations.
The digital accessibility of a destination, the
mobility at the service of the visitor and the
communication of the destination with its
visitor before, during and after the trip are
not a future scenario but a reality for the
traveler in his decision making stage.
BEFORE
INSPIRATION DECISION PURCHASE
Apps, connectivity and new digital models
have made users demand product purchases
and service consumption in one click.
Every time there are less tourists with
maps in their hands or asking where a
monument or a street is. Instead we see
more travellers checking their travel guide
on their smartphone. They check digital
map providers (e.g. Google Maps) and
portals (e.g. TripAdvisor) to get to know
their surroundings and find, for example, a
restaurant that fits their tastes.
DURING AFTER
EXPERIENCES SATISFACTION RECOMMENDATIONS
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INFLUENCING THE TRAVELER
DECISION MAKING
In the midst of the experience, the traveller
uses social media as a channel for his
audience to live with them the journey. Social
networks already play a very important
role in a daily life of the traveller. In this
context, an active traveller could increase
the reputation of a tourist destinations and
their services, produce engaging content
and influence other travellers before starting
their trip to visit a specific destination.
Taking into consideration the situation and
how the digital transformation gives us
data that is used to gather knowledge and
improve the user experience, we must take
into account key factors for the destination to
become “top of mind”.
• Facilitate the tourist offering through different
channels and in a single click.
• Know the omnicanality of travelers to offer
the best user experience within destination.
• Identify the different types of travelers who
visit or intend to do so to adapt the offer to
their needs and lifestyle.
• Adapt and digitize the services and activities
of the destination to the different types of
visitors.
• Establish a fast and effective communication
with the visitors, attending their requirements.
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INFLUENCING THE TRAVELER
DECISION MAKING
In conclusion, digitalization and AI enable
a Destination to transform into a Smart
Destination.This allows to understand the
visitor journey - before, during and after
the trip - and discover tourism patterns
and trends. Connected and intelligent
destinations have a clear competitive
advantage and one of the best value
proposition of all destinations. The value
of these implementations and digital
improvements are a necessary reality.
But we don’t focus only on tourism services.
Smart tourism destinations seek to fusion
diverse services efficiently. A city that enables
smart tourism will even seek to connect its
systems with the means of transportation,
tourist places and accommodation options;
promoting the connection of multiple
services and offering lower costs for clients
while increasing quality of life.
@mocaplatform.com
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¿WHY DO DMOS NEED TO
USE AI?
Nowadays, in the tourism sector, there
is an obvious growing digital divide; the
destinations that still compete in a traditional
and non-digital way see lower profits,
growth and income compared to those that
have prepared their destinations with a
digital infrastructure and apps for collecting
behavioral data as well as marketing
automation systems to improve the visitor
experience and improve the local business
flow.
According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, “an
important shift from a mobile first world to
an AI first world” is occurring. Your phone
camera can “see.” You can speak to your
mobile device and receive responses back
from it. Self-driving cars are becoming a
reality.
As a Destination Manager Officer (DMO),
you can use AI-based technology right now
to incorporate personalization, reduce
traveller frustration, improve safety and
get faster and more precise predictions on
economic and tourism growth. All this with
reduced human intervention.
@mocaplatform.com
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5 WAYS TO USE AI IN A
DESTINATION
Knowing the interests of visitors during their
stay allows smart cities to better plan public
policies related to tourism, as well as cultural
events or general entertainment. Even before
the arrival of the visitor, if we have been able
to identify them in the purchase process, the
smart destination can adapt their services to
the traveller, improving their experience, and
offering the opportunity to local businesses
to influence these travellers with a more
personalized touristic plans and activities.
• Personalized services: Offer local
business services, activities, events and
culture according to the traveler profile
built by the geolocation data and its
interaction in the destination and the
context.
• Communication: Using intelligent
chatbots, travellers can be attended
quickly when asking for information,
booking a trip, and requesting for
assistance.
• Mobility: Increase the frequency of
visitors to the destination and to other
regions of interest.
»» Use geolocation to build traveler profiles
and understand similarities between visited
destinations and offer in your destination.
»» During purchase process, identify visitor profiles
and locate similar profiles to offer tailor made
destinations.
»» Detect traveler profiles and study their mobility
at the destination to find out if they will respond
to a personalized intra-travel offer in real time.
• Safety: Offer an system for alerts and
complaints online through chat bots.
• Health: Create a healthcare system
with the ability to offer primary care
through mobile devices and other online
sensorized devices.
• Transportation: Offer available
transportation means depending on
traveller socio-economic profile and
preferences. Recommend available
parking areas near place of interest.
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TRANSFORMING YOUR
DESTINATION USING
MOCA AI

Through digitalization, the optimization of

the acquisition cost of new tourists and the
enrichment of the user experience, MOCA
helps Tourist Destinations to generate a
better economic flow for the territory, while
contributing to the sustainability of the
environment, the improvement of the quality
of life of the citizen, and the promotion of a
more personalized tourism.

We developed a four step process that can

be applied without the need to invest on
skilled managers. MOCA platform is designed
to be transparent, interoperable and easy to
integrate with the current infrastructures.
1. Presentation: Discover our solution for
smart tourism destinations and some
of our success cases. We will do a live
demonstration in your destination so you
can see first hand MOCA’s capabilities.
2. Proposal: In this phase we will research
your destination’s infrastructure and
understand your city objectives to
propose next steps. We prepare a
specification that will show how to
connect your infrastructure and how to
gain value.
3. Deployment: We will connect MOCA
to existing infrastructure and deploy
new ones to fulfill the objectives in
your destination. In this context, MOCA
reduces time to deployment drastically.
In comparison with other platforms,
MOCA AI solution can be deployed in
6 months instead of the two years that
many consulting firms offer.
4. Going Live: Once the deployment tests
are successful, the service will be in
production on our cloud infrastructure
(also available on their On premise
version) and it’ll be available 365 days a
year.

@mocaplatform.com
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TRANSFORMING YOUR
DESTINATION USING
MOCA AI
In the same way that Google, Facebook
and Amazon helped change consumer
habits, MOCA provides governments and
destination managers with new ways to
create value from digital assets, on a much
larger scale and at minimal cost, while
owning their data completely and having full
access to it.
We help tourism managers and governments
to:
Increase sales generated by tourism
thanks to a better knowledge of the
visitor and their activation through
different channels (mobile, web and
physical world), offering tailored
services for each visitor segment.
Increase the flow of visitors within the
country by enabling connectivity with
other regions and taking into account
the profile and pattern of each visitor
created through AI.
Increase the visitor lifetime value
(LTV), and predict the future purchases
making use of historical data through
the AI.
Create new business models for both
local businesses and businesses within
the region.
Predict economic and tourism growth
by measuring and understanding
travelers’ patterns and behavior
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DEMONSTRATING THE
VALUE OF USING AI IN
TOURISM
We help different cities and destinations to
improve the positioning of their territory,
enhance the traveller’s experience during
their stay, increase the economic flow of
business and local activities and therefore
improved the overall quality of life of the
citizen.
Below we will show 3 examples of Smart
Cities where MOCA has helped transform
the cities by adding intelligence.
SPAIN: BENIDORM
MOCA has installed its SDK in the Visit
Benidorm app, allowing tourists to receive
useful information about sights of interest,
cultural heritages, restaurants, hotels and
transportation, at the exact moment the
information is needed.
By gathering information and analyzing
users’ behavior in real time, MOCA’s
technology enables the delivery of
personalized recommendations based on
the specific needs and preferences of the
tourist. Moreover, because of many travelers
arrive in cities without internet connections,
the experiences are delivered offline using
beacons as triggers.
Key Metrics for Benidorm Smart City:
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DEMONSTRATING THE
VALUE OF USING AI IN
TOURISM
SPAIN: MALLORCA
We helped Mallorca to better understand
mobility services by improving the
management of digital and physical
infrastructures which led to reduce public
spending and promote the sustainable
and intelligent development of tourist
destinations.
Key Metrics for Mallorca Smart City:
Mallorca is one of the largest deployments
of Internet connectivity on an urban area in
the world, particularly in Tourist Destinations.
MOCA is being used by Wiongo to process,
analyze and visualize historical and real-time
data on urban mobility using Wi-Fi access
points.
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DEMONSTRATING THE
VALUE OF USING AI IN
TOURISM
NETHERLANDS: ZUTPHEN
As an important traffic junction, Zutphen is
also working on making the city even more
beautiful and smart. Until July 2018 there will
be, among other things, extensive work on
the infrastructure maintenance.
This work has consequences for the
accessibility of the city, so in order to improve
the quality of life of its citizens, MOCA was
installed in the Zutphen app to inform people
about current traffic.
Key Metrics for Zutphen Smart City:
For instance, a citizen that is driving in the
proximity of the working area is alerted
via mobile app to take an alternative
route. Thanks to our solution, citizens will
always see the road closures and what
alternatives they have. Also, they get a
picture of the parking locations at a glance
and it gives you the latest news about the
IJsselkade, the Oude IJssel bridge and other
projects of River in the City.
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DEMONSTRATING THE
VALUE OF USING AI IN
TOURISM

MOCA AI RECOMMENDATION user device (mobile, web), connectivity (internet

SYSTEM
Recommendation systems (also known as
recommendation engines or recommenders) are
a type of information filtering system that can
be applied on virtually any kind of web portal or
mobile device and help users find new content
that is relevant to their interests - from places
to visit to products and services to discover.
In our approach, we apply content
recommendation systems that requires us to
address multiple real-time situations such as
available, internet not available), real-time user
location (to provide location-specific adjustments)
and global audience trends and anomalies
(such as avoiding to recommend items that
experience anomalous acceptance rates). Our set
of requirements require us to develop a hybrid
approach that addresses the limitations of
many existing methods.
Since 3 years ago, Mobile World Congress is using
MOCA’s Recommendation System providing an
outstanding example of our technology at big-
scale.

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS

With the attendee experience in mind, MOCA

ensured that My MWC mobile app delivered
real-time information to visitors, exhibitors
and organizers alike by providing highly-targeted
notifications. Integrating the event app and
website, MOCA provided a Recommendation
System based on machine learning. Mobile users
received in-app personalized recommendations
such as people to meet, exhibitors to visit
and sessions to attend depending on their
interests, behavior and micro-location. Using
real-time location technology, MOCA learned
attendee preferences and provided insights into
attendee behaviour to optimize and improve
future events.

@mocaplatform.com 17
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ABOUT MOCA

MOCA is a cloud based platform powered

GOVERNMENTS
by artificial intelligence that is able to
Their challenge is to
learn from the traveller’s interactions in understand the needs
the digital and physical world. It allows of the territories
interconnecting the
Smart Destinations to monetize their smart city.
data through automation, segmentation,
personalization and digital geo-marketing.

The uniqueness and competitive advantage
of MOCA relies on bringing a paradigm
shift in Smart Cities platforms, following PEOPLE
a person-centric approach. Around the They need to have
accessibility to infor-
person, we build the next layers to create a mation of the territory
holistic approach and create an ecosystem where they live and
travel.
where people, cities, and industries get the
information they need to maximize their
performance and ROI.

MOCA AI smart Cities Platform offers solution
for the 3 actors: governments, people and PRIVATE SECTOR
private sector, only with one integrated Their challenge is to
attract visitors and
platform.
increase revenue

Our solution is simpler, more convenient,

and less expensive for the government.
We help the tourism stakeholders to
embrace and benefit from a more accurate
solution for every region.

@mocaplatform.com
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