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Artificial intelligence is no longer a speculative topic in French tourism.

In under three years, it has established itself within travel agencies, tourism offices, hotels, booking platforms, airlines, and even the professions of cultural mediation.

Behind the trend, a tangible reality is taking shape: AI already reshapes professional practices, the skills expected, and the relationship between travelers and destinations.

The phenomenon is all the more significant because tourism is a sector characterized by abundant human interactions, data, and personalization. AI therefore acts simultaneously on three dimensions: automating repetitive tasks, augmenting human capacities, and creating new services.

Moreover, according to a study by OPCO Mobilités dedicated to “Artificial Intelligence in Travel Jobs in 2025,” usages are spreading rapidly across sector companies, even though maturity levels remain highly uneven.

The study highlights that AI is now seen less as a peripheral innovation and more as a structural transformation of travel professions.

For many professionals, AI represents a disruption on a scale comparable to the web’s emergence in the 2000s or the smartphone revolution of the 2010s.

In the tourism trades, the earliest uses developed around chatbots, recommendation engines, or hotel revenue management.

Today, generative AI enables the production of content, the construction of personalized itineraries, the automation of a portion of customer relations, and assistance to staff in their daily tasks.

Also read: Artificial Intelligence: How to Use It Daily in Travel Agencies?

This evolution touches nearly the entire travel chain: inspiration and search for stays, booking, customer relations, hotel operations, flow management, territorial marketing, heritage mediation, data analysis, HR management and training.

The challenge is no longer purely technological. It becomes organizational, human, and strategic.

TRAVEL AGENTS: from seller to “augmented travel designer”

The role of a travel agent is among the most exposed to generative AI. Long focused on booking and information access, it is shifting toward advisory duties, expertise, and emotional support. Travelers already use ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude to prepare itineraries, compare destinations or generate customized programs.

The added value of the professional thus lies not in access to raw information, but in the reliability of recommendations, the safety of itineraries, deep destination knowledge, the ability to create bespoke experiences, and human guidance.

AI thus becomes an assistance tool. It helps draft commercial proposals, create complex itineraries, produce quotes, respond quickly to requests, and personalize offers.

French platforms such as Galdeo are developing automated quotation and travel notebook solutions for bespoke travel professionals. The profession gradually shifts toward the role of an “augmented travel designer,” where humans retain roles of arbitration, creativity, and relationship.

HOTEL INDUSTRY: automate without dehumanizing

Hospitality is another major testing ground. AI is used for dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, energy optimization, automated check-ins, conversational assistants, review management, satisfaction analysis, and predictive maintenance.

New API-first PMS like those developed by Mews or Cloudbeds facilitate the integration of automation and predictive analytics.

But hospitality remains a sector where human warmth remains central. Several groups now emphasize an “AI + human” logic rather than a wholesale replacement of staff.

Industry leaders remind that automation should free time to strengthen high-value interactions: front desk, concierge, guest experiences, and handling delicate situations.

In other words, fewer repetitive tasks, more attention paid to the guest.

TOURISM OFFICES AND DESTINATIONS: toward “conversational destinations”

Destination management organizations (DMOs) are entering a new phase as well. Generative AI profoundly reshapes content production, multilingual translation, social media dissemination, visitor relations, data qualification, flow and behavior analysis.

Tourism offices are already piloting conversational assistants capable of replying to visitors 24/7 in several languages.

The emergence of “conversational destinations” is likely to be one of the major shifts to come: tomorrow, visitors will converse directly with territorial AIs able to recommend experiences, manage mobility, book activities, or tailor suggestions in real time.

Actors such as Ask Mona or Moovtoo are already working on conversational experiences applied to heritage, museums, and cultural territories. This evolution changes the roles of communications officers, community managers, and tourism promotion managers.

The skills expected evolve toward editorial leadership, supervision of AI content, conversational strategy, data management, and the analysis of user behavior.

AI is not only transforming existing professions: it is creating new roles.

Among emerging profiles in tourism:

– AI Content Manager: a professional responsible for supervising AI-produced content (texts, images, videos, translation, editorial coherence, search engine optimization).

– Tourism Prompt Designer: a specialist in crafting AI prompts tailored to tourism uses (creating itineraries, client responses, mediation scenarios, marketing production).

– Head of AI & Customer Experience: a hybrid role spanning marketing, customer relations, and innovation, tasked with steering conversational tools and personalisation.

– Territorial Data Analyst: a profile increasingly sought to analyze attendance, mobilities, visitor behaviors, tourism consumption, e-reputation, and campaign performance.

– Tourism AI Trainer: the surge in needs for cultural acclimation is creating a substantial training market. Many organizations now offer modules dedicated to AI applied to travel, hospitality, or destinations.

The real challenge of artificial intelligence in tourism is likely not solely technological, but profoundly cultural.

AI pushes the sector to redefine what makes its human value: the attention given to visitors, the personalization of experiences, the quality of guidance, mediation, emotion, and the relationship.

Professionals who extract the most benefit from these tools will probably not be those who attempt to replace humans, but those able to use technology to strengthen the quality of hospitality and free up time for high-value interactions.

Tourism thus enters a paradoxical phase: the more services become automated, the more human authenticity becomes precious.

AI does not herald the disappearance of tourism jobs; it accelerates their transformation and forces destinations, businesses, and schools to rethink the training of professionals.

The question becomes strategic: how can we master technologies while preserving the very essence of welcome and human connection?

Brice Duthion is the president and founder of the agency “Les nouveaux voyages extraordinaires” (LNVE), specializing in consultancy, conferences, and communication.

He engages with numerous public and private actors in his areas of expertise: tourism and hospitality, culture and heritage, territories and public policy.

[email protected]