Well into the second half of the current twenties did the comity of nations begin looking at Artificial Intelligence (AI) with some operational confidence, albeit in an increasingly fractured world. At that point, a notable connotation layered the underbelly of all discussion… Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).
Much momentum was garnered at the recent AI Impact Summit in Delhi. As ICRIER’s indefatigable Dr Ashok Gulati noted, the Summit’s success lay in endorsement of the Delhi Declaration not only for Atmanirbhar Bharat but, equally, the 91 participating country heads and international organisations. Nevertheless, five key aspects arose, central to AI validation, namely:
- Will it accelerate growth?
- Will it increase or deflate the livelihoods multiplier?
- Will its benefits flow equitably, especially for rural women, employable youth and MSMEs?
- Will its outcomes be pegged with sustainable management, not damaging the environment?
- Will its data volumes, howsoever amassed, ensure reliability vis-a-vis critical analysis?
This was not all, there being worthy subsets to these five key AI aspects, rural or urban foci.
First, the overarching aspect of definition, data ownership, copyright, data usage modus, payment and governance:
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think and act as humans do. This includes the ability to learn, reason, solve problems, and take decisions. AI includes a wide technological range that covers machine learning, language processing, and computer vision, that enable computers to perform tasks that require human intelligence.
2. UN Tourism is at the forefront of integrating AI to reshape the tourism industry.
3. The challenge lies in using AI to improve personalized services, streamline operations, and elevate customer engagement, thereby delivering scalable solutions.
4. The IMF has estimated that AI’s destructive wringing will bring job losses upto 40 per cent in emerging economies and 60 per cent in their advanced counterparts. However, this will be offset by re-skilled workforce enlarging the size of the cake with new/more efficient AI-linked technology, also requiring larger workforce itself, at augmented livelihood levels.
Second, in the Tourism context where the local community and other stakeholders are AI agnostic, a structured orientation would be required, blending thematically with India’s proposition of five priorities unanimously endorsed by G2023, namely:
- Green tourism
- Digitalization
- Skills
- MSMEs
- Destination management.
Third, drawing on international technological upturn, India has strengthened its position at the world tech high table, carrying the day at two widely noted outcomes, namely G2023 and now the AI Summit. India foresaw partnering global stakeholders, using longlists of key demand and supply side proponents to chart the course inclusive of local community and trade participation, thereby optimising value chain advantage… and, incidentally, strengthening fragile habitats unable to leverage visitor footprint due to climate change, inconsiderate ‘development’ causing irreversible environmental damage to the earth’s finite biomass and species loss.
Fourth, this approach carried a target shift, from merely numerical to yield-based returns, structured on carrying capacity, emission benchmarks, mitigation and AI allocated funds time-lined use.
Fifth, just as Tourism sector proposals in Union Budget 2025 laid the course for pre-startup baselines in Environment Impact Assessment, Budget 2026 pushed the tourism value chain further to ensure ‘feel good’ experiences for the visitor, reinforcing long-term sustainable growth via international, national and local stakeholders, visitors and investors alike, to support India as a preferred AI tagged multi-season destination. Towards this, Budget 2026 prioritises skilling, fiscal incentives and infrastructure to augment sustainable livelihoods, enhance visitor experience and resilient growth. These initiatives include:
- National Institute of Hospitality, envisaged to meet global competitive standards;
- Pilot scheme to enhance 10,000 tourist guides’ skills at 20 iconic sites, based on a 12-week training programme, partnering IIMs, critical for heritage and experiential tourism;
- National Destination Digital Knowledge Grid to map significant cultural, spiritual and heritage sites, upscaling visitor engagement through digital storytelling and DMO0s;
- Develop international standard, sustainable trekking and nature routes across India, including mountain trails in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir, hence also the Karakoram, and in Araku Valley (Eastern Ghats), Podhigai Malai (Western Ghats), besides birdwatching around Pulikat Lake, each focused on heightened sustainability, conservation, livelihoods, and all espousing responsible tourism;
- Finely curated 15 archaeological sites including Lothal, Dholavira, Rakhigarhi, Sarnath, Hastinapur and Leh Palace to become vibrant experiential tourist locations. Excavation, visits via seamless walkways will compliment immersive storytelling technology, interpretation centres, conservation laboratories and visitor experience… to position India’s heritage assets at globally competitive standards;
- Strengthen India’s spiritual tourism footprint by developing Buddhist circuits in Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. The principal foci encompass preserving temples and monasteries, building pilgrimage interpretation centres, improving connectivity and upgrading pilgrim amenities, targeting Buddhist inbound source markets, ipso facto reinforcing India’s civilisational tourism appeal;
- Within the ambit of Purvodaya development, Creation of five tourism destinations in five Purvodaya states to unlock Eastern India’s regional potential, the imperatives being: align tourism with inclusive growth, position the region firmly on the national tourism map and integrate destination building with industrial and infrastructure corridor development;
- Improve access to remote and underserved tourism regions, through AI enabled incentives for indigenous manufacture of seaplanes, together with Seaplane Viability Gap Funding to support operations. This will unveil island, coastal and riverine destinations, strengthen last-mile connectivity, leading to tourism growth in hard-to-reach areas;
- Develop seven Green High-Speed Rail Corridors to facilitate environment friendly passenger/tourist dispersal between key city pairs growth connectors, namely Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Siliguri;
- Faster International Baggage Clearance to improve the airport experience, by reforming international baggage clearance, enhancing duty-free allowances per modern travel realities with clarity on temporary carriage of goods to reduce procedural friction at airports.
Sixth, the terrain remains desperately competitive, needing sharp post-COVID foci on the back-end (product) and front-end (market) to maintain:
- India’s position as a sustainable, high quality, all-year, multi-experience destination;
- Momentum and progress of the Incredible India mother brand and sub-brands;
- Leveraged visitor footprint and equitable local, rural share in livelihood gains from tourism, especially for women, trained 1employable youth and MSMEs;
- Advantage from technology and innovation;
- Work Plans, inclusive of trade and local community participation, complementing soft skills ‘capacity building’ and hard ‘infrastructure’; thereby optimizing unique visitor experience; alongside
- Safeguards costs and care codes, conscious of geopolitical turbulence, climate change and viral contagion, that severely impact destination image, market perception, hence also domestic livelihoods; and
- Drawing strength from ethno-cultural diversity.
Seventh, while the tourism sector’s resilient global potential is evident, tourism receipts and arrivals apart, the negative impacts of over-tourism are known too. Hence, as Budget 2026 avers, the tourism sector should now take the lead for top-end technical arrangements to instal scientific, monitorable, climate-resilient governance indices, using cross-sector technical expertise, best practice, base-lining and EIA for Work Plan Formulation, Access to Multilateral Funding, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation.
Eighth, when a tourism destination nears its yield plateau, for that destination to remain AI compliant may require re-aligning its product and market profiles, provided by DMOs.
Finally, in all cases, Work Plan amendments including those attributed to AI baseline parameters (climate, nascent partnerships, host community preferences, animal and plant species, altitude, forest types, drainage basins, watershed management, topsoil, geomorphology, urban planning imperatives etc) must invariably receive the local community’s prior approval, embedded in MoUs, keeping in view the objectives of:
1. All-season revenue and yield targets for all tourism segments to support Vision India@2047;
2. Equitable local share in livelihoods for supply chain, especially women, employable youth and MSMEs;
3. Local community and FAITH’s fulsome participation across Work Plans per site;
4. Energy is a critical parameter in the evolving global sustainable development landscape;
5. Safeguards with committed finance are necessary.
This comprehensive India-related content backdrop to Artificial Intelligence makes it opportune to now consider insights from other locations:
- WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM steered two discussions by-laning India’s Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit 2026 (16–20 February, New Delhi), to target key longitudinal moves up the outcome ladder in a rapidly evolving world scenario, strategic autonomy intact by
- Bolstering AI competitiveness; and
- Fostering collaboration and prosperity.
Shaped by WEF’s technological wherewithal to unlock tidal opportunity, altering human capacity at the civilizational level, key themes at the Summit included how disruptions to economic, social and geopolitical systems now especially impact developing countries.
At Davos 2026, leaders discussed Scaling AI: Now Comes the Hard Part. Here’s what they said:
i. AI scaling is the next big frontier.
ii. There’s been massive investment, and the majority of companies are working to scale AI, but going beyond pilots remains a challenge.
iii. Operational hurdles are front and centre.
- Unlocking AI’s full value requires new strategies, capabilities and organizational design, not just technology.
- Redefining work and processes matters.
- Scaling AI isn’t just about tools; it demands reimagining how teams and workflows function to integrate AI effectively.
vii. Cross-industry insights. Bridging the gap between AI experimentation and long-term transformation requires a multi-industry and cross-sector approach.
iix. Other major insights:
- The day after AGI: Two ‘rock stars’ of AI on what it will mean for humanity
- Shared infrastructure can enable sovereign AI – if we can make it trustworthy
- How the Global South is reimagining the future of AI.
2. FIREFOX
Introducing AI, the Firefox way: What we’re working on and how you can help shape it
We are approaching AI in Firefox with user choice and openness as our guiding principles. That’s because we believe AI should be built like the internet: open, accessible, and driven by choice so that users and the developers helping to build it can use it as they wish, help shape it and truly benefit from it.
3. ICRIER
Ethics and Governance of AI.
4. INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CORPORATION (WORLD BANK GROUP) AND ATTA (ADVENTURE TRAVEL TRADE ASSOCIATION), 2019 COLLABORATION
As now seen below, in conversation mode, AI source market profiles generated from USA and Australia adventure and cultural traveller data can enable creation of limitless travel options if they are broad-based, and not merely on age or income, as for International Finance Corporation (World Bank Group) and ATTA (Adventure Travel Trade Association), 2019 collaboration; (R1= First AI analyst; R2= Second AI analyst):
“R1: Absolutely. It’s not just about demographics anymore. This episode breaks down a major research study that profiles these travelers in detail, revealing what really motivates them, how they behave, and what they’re looking for in their trips.
R2: Right, and while the study focuses on travelers heading to Pacific island destinations like Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands, the insights ly much more broadly.
R1: So, it’s about understanding the traveler’s mindset and preferences in a way that helps destinations tailor their offerings and marketing.
R2: Exactly. Now, this research was a collaboration between the International Finance Corporation and the Adventure Travel Trade Association. They surveyed over two thousand five hundred travelers from the US and Australia back in 2019, and also analyzed around 800 million social media posts to get a real-time sense of traveler conversations.
R1: Wow, that’s a huge data set. And they used cluster analysis to identify four traveler segments, right? But three of those are the main focus for adventure and cultural travel.
R2: That’s right. And combined, these three segments represent a massive market—about a hundred and eight billion dollars in travel spending.
R1: That’s wild. And the interesting part is that these segments are pretty consistent across both countries, with only minor differences.
R2: Yeah, which means the profiles are quite universal for these markets. So, let’s meet these three traveler segments.
R1: Let’s start with the Adventure Intensives.
R2: Sure. Adventure Intensives are mostly males aged between twenty-five and forty-four, well-educated, with medium incomes. Many are married with children, but there’s also a younger group of single millennials there.
R1: And these are the most adventurous travelers, right? They’re willing to endure some discomfort and really push their limits. Winning and challenge matter a lot to them.
R2: Exactly. They actively seek out destinations where cultures and lifestyles are very different from their own. They tend to do the same adventure activities regularly and often have expert or advanced skills.
R1: What kind of activities are we talking about?
R2: Things like mountain climbing, skydiving, kayaking, motorized sports like off-road buggies, and snorkeling. Americans in this group tend to rely more on travel blogs and magazines for inspiration, while Australians lean more on friends, family, social media, and review sites.
R1: Interesting. Mostly travel with family or spouse, plan & book their trips themselves, often short notice.
R2: Right. So marketing to them should highlight adrenaline, challenge, ruggedness, and authentic local culture. Instagram works well for the younger ones, and Twitter for the older Adventure Intensives.
R1: Got it. Now, what about the Experience Samplers?
R2: Experience Samplers are a bit more diverse. There are two groups: younger folks aged eighteen to twenty-four, often with lower income and education, usually living alone; and an older group, forty-five to fifty-four, with higher income, often married. Slightly more female overall.
R1: They want to try a variety of adventure and cultural activities but prefer safety and comfort, right?
R2: Exactly. They’re explorers who like new experiences but aren’t competitive risk-takers. Their activities include camping, horseback riding, kayaking, scuba diving, cultural festivals, and language classes.
R1: And they tend to travel with adult family or friends, less often with children.
R2: Yes. Their inspiration mostly comes from friends and family. Australians in this group are also motivated by visiting family abroad and good airfare deals, while Americans look more for accommodation deals.
R1: So marketing should promote mixed itineraries combining culture and soft adventure, and use YouTube and Snapchat for younger groups, Facebook for older ones.
R2: Exactly. Now, the third segment is Cultural Explorers.
R1: These are older travelers, mostly fifty-five and up, slightly more male, often married or living alone, with middle incomes and high education.
R2: They seek deep cultural engagement and learning, enjoy nature and contemplation, but avoid risk and competition. They prefer destinations with different cultures and languages and want authentic local interactions.
R1: So their adventure activities are minimal and soft—light hiking, birdwatching, snorkeling. And cultural activities include visiting historic sites, cooking classes, and craft workshops.
R2: Right. They plan their trips well in advance, mostly book themselves, and often travel alone or with a spouse. Their inspiration comes from friends, family, travel shows, and travel agents.
R1: Marketing to them should emphasize authentic cultural engagement, learning, and comfort, using traditional media like Travel & Leisure in the US and Get Up & Go in Australia.
R2: Exactly. Now, just to clarify, the study distinguishes between hard and soft adventure activities.
R1: Right, hard adventure includes things like mountain climbing, skydiving, motorized sports, and rafting. Soft adventure is more like hiking, birdwatching, camping, and snorkeling.
R2: Adventure Intensives enjoy both but lean toward hard adventure. Experience Samplers prefer soft adventure, though Australians in that group do more hard activities than Americans. Cultural Explorers mostly avoid hard adventure, focusing on soft activities and cultural learning.
R1: And cultural immersion activities include visiting indigenous villages, attending festivals, language classes, and home stays.
R2: Exactly. Now, when it comes to travel behaviors, Adventure Intensives often book all trip elements themselves, travel with family or friends, and plan on short notice.
R1: Experience Samplers also mostly self-book but travel more with adult family or friends, less with children.
R2: Cultural Explorers plan far in advance, book themselves, and often travel alone or with a spouse.
R1: And their sources of inspiration differ too. Adventure Intensives look to blogs, magazines, and social media. Experience Samplers rely on friends, family, social media, and review sites. Cultural Explorers turn to friends, family, travel shows, and agents.
R2: Americans tend to rely more on travel blogs and magazines, Australians more on social media and friends or family.
R1: So, what about marketing and product recommendations?
R2: Adventure Intensives want expert guides, technical challenges, adrenaline, and authentic cultural experiences. Marketing should highlight pushing limits, ruggedness, and unspoiled nature.
R1: Experience Samplers want variety, safety, and social sharing opportunities. Marketing should emphasize mixed adventure and cultural activities, newness, and excitement.
R2: Cultural Explorers want authentic culture, comfort, and learning. Marketing should focus on enriching experiences, detailed information, and traditional media channels.
R1: It’s clear that understanding these nuanced traveler profiles helps destinations tailor products and marketing to attract the right visitors.
R2: Absolutely. Remember the KISS principle!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sudhir Sahi is a Delhi-based UN Tourism and environment specialist. Formerly with Air India, he has been associated with Indian Mountaineering Foundation, authored research papers on environment and tourism.
