Umni in a panel of UNWTO Conference

We are excited to share that our CEO, Elitza Stoilova, was invited to join as a speaker at a side conference, part of the 68th Meeting of the UNWTO Commission for Europe to be held, under the auspices of the Government of Bulgaria, in Sofia on 2 June 2023. She will be speaking on the topic of AI affecting tourism in a panel focusing on Education and Skills in Medical and Wellbeing Tourism, which is also the topic of the conference.

We are grateful to UNWTO for the invitation following Umni winning a UNWTO global startup competition in March’23, and for giving the opportunity to discuss the importance of education in the industry in a tremendously changing technological environment. Elitza will exchange thoughts and ideas on the stage with such people as Mr. Massimo Caputi, President of Federterme (Italy), Mr. Roberto Antunes, Executive Director of NEST (Portugal), Prof. Dr. Todorka Kostadinova, Vice Rector, Medical University – Varna / Board member and former Vice-President, European Health Management Association (Bulgaria), and Mr. Ricardo Leitão, Nova Medical School (Portugal). Opening remarks of the conference will be made by H.E. Mr. Zurab Pololikashvili, Secretary-General, UNWTO, and H.E. Mr. Ilin Dimitrov, Minister of Tourism, Bulgaria.

1000 new AI-based applications per month enter the market. As creating an app doesn’t require any more programming skills and AI can build a webpage in seconds just based on the description, the barriers to creation are down to the limits of the imagination, personal expertise, and a bit of time. We witness the change in the definition of conversation from a specific type of communication that involves an interactive exchange of ideas, thoughts, or information between two or more people, to… between 2 or more humans, or human(s) and machine(s). There is nothing new or scary in it. We have done it every day since 2015 – being involved in conversational marketing and conversational commerce as businesses and consumers.

What is coming next is everything “conversational”. It will become how we communicate with the technology we use, and a must-have element for our creations. Therefore, AI literacy is becoming increasingly important for employees in tourism businesses due to the growing integration of AI technologies in the industry – starting from AI chatbots and voice bots, personalized recommendation engines, apps, and wearables, and to AI-driven Sales, Marketing, and Forecasting, AI-powered CRMs, & hardware.

AI in many forms and use cases is becoming part of our daily work and life as one of the many other instruments we use, upgrading tools we already use with new functionalities. AI chatbots will play a focal role as connectors. Therefore, mastering conversation with AI to utilize all the tools – for work or leisure, is becoming an essential skill and the new competitive edge for us as professionals to fit in this new AI Era.