Technology and AI put the visitor at the helm at the Port
At Discover Halifax, our visitor information tools – things like guides, maps, website, and kiosks - have been anchors to help connect visitors with our members. But we’re constantly evolving as technology allows, and we’re excited to share what’s new.
One point of high demand for our materials is the Port of Halifax, which welcomed over 200 cruise ships in 2024, carrying over 350,000 passengers. And as cruise passenger traffic increases, so has the dependence on greeters, and hard copies of guides and maps.
To provide cruise passengers with an alternative source of information about Halifax upon exiting the ship, we created a custom, interactive AI itinerary planner.
The planning tool was developed to help visitors, many here for the first time, to quickly and easily develop an itinerary for the day.
The tool has been developed to already know its location, the time of day, day of week, current and projected weather, and season. It then creates custom recommendations, generated by AI, based on a series of questions the visitor answers. Knowing answers to questions like how many adults or kids there are, how much time do you have available, and what your interests are, it begins to form a plan.
The prompt uses content from information we provide to it, and it is trained to respond with recommendations that align with the visitors' preferences and feasibility given variables like business hours or weather conditions.
These preferences can be reviewed on the screen, but they can also be emailed to the visitor via free Wi-Fi. In the future, there will be options to print, or to text the directions to a mobile device.
Given the prompt is fueled by AI, which doesn't always get it right, we were expecting inaccuracies to start. Simplicity has been key, and being able to control the variables has been important. For example, because this was created for cruise passengers, attractions are central, and dining is secondary. It is also geographically constrained due to visitation time and mobility which kept things straightforward, allowing the team to focus on how it works for the visitor.
This problem wasn’t easily solved before AI, but by embracing new technologies, we hope to surprise visitors with some custom recommendations, and help them better enjoy our beautiful region!
