Editor’s Note: The future of travel experiences will hinge on how we differentiate our offerings in a way that captures and holds our customer’s hearts and minds. At Singapore’s Web in Travel, Luke Clark discovered two different yet unique approaches to injecting innovation into the travel mix from the outset, to ensure some startling results.
Singapore as a destination is a joyous contradiction. It sits in a unique spot on the equator, straddling numerous different worlds. It is on one hand imbedded in culture and religion on one hand – yet on the other, firmly at the forefront of trade and technology.
Sit in Changi Airport or in the heart of the Keppel Basin’s port area, and you can see the cogs turning on international tourism and trade – in a city that during its convention or Formula 1 season, quickly reaches its maximum carrying capacity for guests.
Yet, step off in a different direction, and in an hour’s travel time, you’re transported to a place where time and technology have sat still for thousands of years: and nature and culture still rule the universe,
Such is the push-pull dynamic of the Lion City: and one that two contrasting panellists at Web in Travel 2024 explored in rich and fascinating ways. For each, the mission was simple: how could they innovate in their respective travel spaces, to ensure the next generation enjoys unique and unparalleled experiences?
Technology toys help STB to translate your travel dreams
For Juliana Kua, Assistant Chief Executive, International Group at the Singapore Tourism Board, reinventing and reimagining the Lion City’s destination experience means constantly striving to retell Singapore’s story for each new generation of travellers – in a way that speaks their language and touches their heart.
“Especially for a destination like Singapore, competition is stiff all around the world and getting stiffer every day,” noted Kua in her WiT presentation. “For Singapore to attract both new and returning travellers, we must create compelling reasons to visit – and leveraging technology is essential.”
As her first example, Kua shared a story about STB’s partnership with Mafengwo AI travel concierge. Billed by some in China as the “Alibaba of the tourism industry”, Mafengwo started out as a Chinese version of Trip Advisor: then over the years, has evolved into a fully-fledged OTA. Early in 2024, Singapore became the first overseas destination to partner with Mafengwo, to develop a Generative AI-powered trip planner named Xiaoma.
Xiaoma utilizes proprietary data from Mafengwo’s extensive travel reviews, accumulated since its founding in 2010, alongside publicly available information from platforms like Baidu, as well as STB’s own proprietary information including its WeChat mini program.
Which sounds very impressive. Yet to actually act as a personal concierge, a tool like Xiaoma must be able to handle the nuance and depth of everyday travel discussions – and be able to stretch well beyond obvious discussion points, all in an effortless version of local language. So, does it actually work?
“For a destination like Singapore, competition is stiff all around the world and getting stiffer every day,” noted Kua. “For Singapore to attract both new and returning travellers, we must create compelling reasons to visit – and leveraging technology is essential.”
“Let me share a little story of how I saw first-hand that it does work,” Kua shares. “In June 2024, I was up in Beijing, together with Mafengwo’s CEO Chen Gang, sharing this new beta launch, to dozens of media in the room,” she describes.
“Chen Gang, being a tech guy, was demonstrating how Xiaoma was going to work. And I think he could sense that he needed to make things a little bit more exciting in the room. So unscripted, I had no idea that this was going to happen, he asked everyone: ‘Okay, why don’t we make it interesting? Ask me difficult questions that you want xiaoma to answer.’”
Kua smiled, remembering how she felt at the prospect of this unplanned media test. “I must profess as a Singapore public servant, I tensed up a little bit, wondering what the questions might be. And especially when the question that was that he picked was, ‘What do you think are the pitfalls that you need to look out for when booking hotel rooms in Singapore?’”
Not a typical binary question for an AI Travel Concierge, she feared. “I held my breath: but thankfully with the live demo, Xiaoma was able to answer it quite well: and in particular, highlighting as the first potential pitfall, that rooms in Singapore are sometimes smaller than those in China. And of course, for those of us who know Chinese travellers, that’s an important consideration.”
“So, for me, at least this was one live demonstration of how the years of proprietary data does allow Xiaoma to be able to answer some difficult questions.”
The AI Travel Concierge will be publicly available for Singapore by the end of 2024, she noted, and there are plans to enhance its geolocation features for real-time event suggestions: something Singapore Tourism Board has been trying to crack for a long time. “Once launched, this would be, I think, a good example of how we are really trying to constantly find ways to enhance traveller experiences in Singapore.”
The second example of how STB is trying to utilising technology to enhance travel experiences is its Augmented Reality (AR) partnership with Google Maps. In October, Singapore Tourism Board and Google launched 30 location-based AR experiences dotted throughout Singapore, one of only two cities globally that Google selected for its pilot programme.
“In this rollout, we partnered 14 tourism businesses in Singapore across 30 points of interest in key tourism areas,” said Kua. First, STB worked closely with tourism partners to create AR experiences using a Geospatial Creator for Adobe Aero, a development platform that allows creators to easily and remotely anchor artistic 3D content onto real world structures.
These AR experiences were then integrated onto Google Maps, to be easily discoverable by tourists as they navigate the island: “Importantly, they do not need to download an app or to even scan a QR code – you just open Google Maps, as you usually do when navigating in a destination, and click on the AR experience.”
As Wong Ming Fai, chief technology officer for Singapore Tourism Board notes in this video, the AR experiences are designed to “integrate and connect the pieces” for guests in the city, as they interact with local attractions via their personal smart phones.
As the video shows, the collaboration not only helped large attractions like Gardens by the Bay to better tell its story, but also small family businesses such as Cantonese pastry store Tong Heng, helping its classic egg tarts appeal to a new ‘gaming-native’ generation. As Wong explains in the video, once successful, STB has bold aims to push further forward with augmented reality experiences: “Our vision is to become the world’s first AR city on Google Maps,” he notes.
Watch the full session: