A recent survey from Intuit / ICIC indicated that 89% of small business owners surveyed said that AI is used in some way at their business. For a new technology, that is a huge adoption number and indeed, AI has seen fast adoption and integration in the business world. Some of the main uses of AI technology according to the survey:

Data analytics

Marketing element creation

Email and communication generation

Blog post and content creation

Web scraping and summation

Respondents to the survey indicated that gaps in understanding how the technology works as a major barrier to adopting and implementing AI technology. Other barriers were uncertainty of how the tech can benefit the business and questions about data security, a hot button issue for small business owners in the digital era. We highlight AI technology that has real world applications and benefits for small businesses and their owners.

Never Miss an Opportunity

Some of the key features of AI technology is its ability to comprehend human inputs and give responses based on those inputs. AI interaction portals are being rolled out en masse in consumer facing businesses as a way of providing anytime customer service and gatekeeping functionality. Small businesses can greatly benefit from AI powered ‘chatbots’ that can provide customer service any time a customer wants to interact with the business. AI technology can handle most types of inquiries and can collect and record pertinent customer information for human follow up. More advanced platforms can provide change of address and email services as well as answer product questions, price inquiries and can place orders if properly configured with the business’s inventory system. Small businesses can benefit by providing services across different channels and AI’s high level of engagement makes it a practical addition for anytime customer service.

Faster and More Effective Training

The comprehension and engagement capabilities of AI technology positions it as a powerful training tool that can deliver greater speed and effectiveness than traditional methods of training. Fundamental skills and concepts can be delivered to new hires in real time, greatly reducing transition and onboarding times. AI powered training technology can be configured to provide trainee evaluations and can dynamically adjust training pace for better user understanding of the material. The travel industry is a fast paced industry and travel providers cannot afford to have gaps in service and quality in guest facing teams and training tools that employ AI infrastructure can significantly reduce training times and enable new hires to start contributing at a much faster pace. hospit-AI-lity is a new travel training platform from Travel Technology Solutions and utilizes AI and advanced data loading pipelines to acquire proprietary content and deliver it in an engaging manner. Flexible data resourcing allows hospit-AI-lity to be easily updated and customized and can be used for upskilling and reskilling opportunities among existing staff.

Behind the Scenes

The Intuit / ICIC survey indicates a hesitation among respondents to adopting AI technology, driven by gaps in understanding of how it all works. Knowing the computational methods behind data analysis and acquisition does not serve small business owners well but by framing the capabilities of AI technology into viable features with real business applications, owners can get a clearer picture of the benefits of AI technology. In the backend, AI uses data to ‘learn’ and in purpose-built AI applications, information pipelines, such as RAG, deliver proprietary content through a large language model that ‘learns’ from the external data sources. Complex breakdowns of content are read back into the technology and are used to answer inquiries from human users. In simplified terms, AI technology houses complex systems of data gathering, translation, information absorption and references to a language model to construct relevant outputs back to the user. For small businesses, the high levels of engagement and data processing can offer a wide variety of applications in customer facing interfaces and backend operations such as marketing, market analysis and content creation.

The Bottom Line

AI based technology has seen massive adoption in the business world and has been a game-changer for the travel industry but are there benefits to smaller sized business and travel providers? AI tech has been applied to many different industries and facets of business but one key capability is the technology’s ability to comprehend and engage human users. For customer facing businesses, AI chatbots can offer gatekeeping customer service and data acquisition 24 hours a day, ensuring all customer inquiries and interactions are handled and addressed. AI technology can also drive training effectiveness and deliver essential skills and habits at a much faster pace than traditional methods. For the smaller travel providers, faster training equates to less potential for service and quality gaps. AI use among small businesses continues to ramp up but a more thorough understanding of the technology and its benefits can drive adoption and implementation much higher.