AI could reshape GCC tourism operating models as new infrastructure takes shape – Globant executive
By Staff Writer
Artificial intelligence could move beyond automating individual tourism processes to reshape how destinations and travel companies operate and interact, according to a senior executive at Globant.
The shift comes as GCC countries invest heavily in new tourism, hospitality and aviation infrastructure, creating an opportunity to integrate AI into new assets and systems rather than retrofit it into legacy technology, Federico Pienovi, CEO of APAC and MENA at Globant, told Zawya Projects.
The distinction, he noted, comes down to whether AI is treated as a feature or as the foundation.
“Automating a process, a chatbot on a booking page, predictive analytics on an existing dashboard, makes discrete tasks faster and takes cost out of a model you have already built,” Pienovi told Zawya Projects.
“Reinvention changes the model itself: the unit of delivery, how work is coordinated, and what the business measures. One improves your margin this year. The other determines whether your operating model is still competitive in five.”
In tourism, destinations traditionally operate through separate booking, loyalty and on-site service systems, requiring travellers to navigate between them. An AI-native model could instead use AI agents to coordinate services across these systems on behalf of travellers, the executive explained.
Pienovi cited the Agentic Tourism Corridor, involving Red Sea Global and AlUla, as an example of how AI agents could coordinate services between destinations.
Rather than requiring travellers to navigate separate booking, loyalty and on-site service systems, agents belonging to different organisations can communicate to coordinate the visitor journey, he said.
“The lasting value sits in the protocol, not in any single link,” Pienovi said. “Airports, destinations, giga-projects, international airlines, hotel groups and operators can join by adopting the standard, and every participant that joins makes the network more valuable to the ones already on it.”
He added that the GCC could provide a favourable environment for developing such infrastructure because a significant amount of tourism infrastructure in the region is being built from scratch, allowing AI systems to be incorporated at the design stage rather than retrofitted to legacy platforms.
Integrated approach
Companies seeking to deploy AI across their operations need to integrate their cloud, data and AI infrastructure rather than operate them as separate programmes, he said.
“Most large enterprises already own all three. They still cannot deploy AI at scale, because each was built at a different time, by a different team, for a different problem,” he noted.
Pienovi said companies should also move away from funding isolated AI applications within individual departments towards capabilities spanning entire business processes.
“An excellent AI in customer service that cannot see fulfilment solves a small problem and misses a large one. Fund capabilities that run end to end across the value chain,” he advised.
The Globat executive also called on enterprises to adopt a mindset that builds for what comes next rather than perfecting what exists today.
“That applies to partners too. Reinvention on the client side is not credible without reinvention in how the work is delivered and priced.
Capacity and pricing
AI could also change how tourism companies respond to fluctuations in demand caused by seasonality, major events, flight patterns and other factors.
Pienovi said many destinations still plan capacity on quarterly cycles despite demand changing daily. AI agents could analyse emerging signals and continuously adjust pricing, staffing and resource allocation.
The bigger opportunity lies in coordinating capacity across properties and destinations, rather than improving forecasting within individual hotels, he said.
“When agents coordinate across properties and destinations, a booking one hotel cannot take becomes a booking another one captures, and the guest never notices the seam.”
For staffing, AI's main benefit could be providing earlier indications of demand rather than making real-time adjustments, allowing operators to plan workforces weeks rather than days in advance.
Pienovi cautioned that more dynamic pricing should not necessarily mean maximising prices for every transaction, which could undermine longer-term customer relationships.
Human oversight
As AI agents assume functions ranging from itinerary planning and reservations to customer service and revenue management, human roles are also likely to change, according to Pienovi.
“When a task moves to an agent, the task disappears from someone's day, but the accountability for the outcome does not disappear,” he said.
Globant's agentic workflows are designed, assessed and approved by engineers with relevant domain expertise before deployment, with humans defining what agents can do and continuing to oversee their operation, he said.
Pienovi said every agent running in production should have a named human owner who is accountable for what it does.
“The real risk in this transition is not that agents replace people. It is that companies deploy agents at scale and quietly leave decisions un-owned,” he concluded.
(Reporting by Dennis Daniel; Editing by Anoop Menon)
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