From incredible India to intelligent India
For more than two decades, Incredible India has told the world what this country offers — civilisations, landscapes, spirituality, cuisine and cultural diversity. The next phase requires a different proposition, one that goes beyond putting an AI chatbot into a booking engine. This year’s World Tourism Day theme, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism”, invites a more consequential question: can technology make journeys more meaningful, destinations safer and better managed, and tourism’s economic gains more widely shared?
AI’s most immediate contribution is hyper-personalisation. Industry has traditionally segmented travellers and designed products around broad categories; AI can move closer to the individual, building around a person’s interests, budget, diet, mobility and pace, and revising the plan mid-trip.
A visitor could say, in her own language, that she has four days in Tamil Nadu, is exploring Chola history, prefers vegetarian food and wishes to avoid crowds. An intelligent system could weigh those preferences against weather, transport and live conditions to build the journey. Done well, such personalisation can deepen the experience. On a recent visit to Japan, one of the authors used AI to curate a day around a seafarer family member. Personalisation, in this form, makes travel more meaningful rather than merely more convenient. The gain is equally significant for tour operators. AI can help them research unfamiliar circuits, rework routes when conditions change and curate experiences around individual preferences rather than sell one itinerary to everybody. The quality of the output, however, still depends on human judgement deciding what the technology should optimise for. Destination management is another area where AI could have significant impact. In Tirupati in January 2025, six devotees died and around forty were injured in a crush while waiting for Vaikunta Dwara darshan tokens. The episode illustrates the limits of digitisation: a system may know how many tokens it has issued without recognising that thousands of people are converging on one point faster than the space can safely absorb them. Research shows that crowd density and movement patterns can provide measurable warning signs. Studies of the 2006 Mina disaster and dense crowds suggest that such signals could support early detection of dangerous conditions. Maha Kumbh 2025 demonstrated India’s ability to deploy AI-enabled cameras and command systems. The next step is predictive decision-making, using risk triggers to manage inflows, open alternative routes and position medical teams. Even a few minutes of warning could improve prevention and response, particularly in fragile Himalayan destinations.
Access itself can be managed more intelligently. What a destination can safely absorb changes with season, weather and emergency preparedness. Venice’s day-tripper fee raised more than €5 million in 2025, yet visitor pressure remained high. Pricing can raise resources, but intelligent systems can do more to regulate flows through timed entry, seasonal quotas and, where justified, restrictions on repeat visits to the most fragile circuits. The economic opportunity may be greatest for small tourism establishments, which dominate tourism in many developing economies. Large hotel groups can employ specialists in pricing, analytics, multilingual marketing and demand forecasting. A five-room homestay, village guide or family-run restaurant generally cannot. AI can narrow this capability gap by turning heterogeneous information on booking patterns, reviews, seasonality and traveller preferences into usable business intelligence. It can also help them develop websites, translate listings, create marketing material, etc.
This can also address longstanding information asymmetries. Travellers often lack reliable information about smaller operators and emerging destinations, while those businesses know little about consumer demand and preferences. Reducing this asymmetry can allow them to compete more on the quality and distinctiveness of their experience than on the scale of operations. India cannot import global AI systems and assume they understand its tourism ecosystem. Models trained mainly on Western languages, destinations and traveller behaviour under-represent Indian languages, cultural practice and lesser-known places. An algorithm that knows Delhi but barely recognises Ziro is not merely imperfect; at scale, such systems decide which destinations and businesses are visible at all. Localisation, reliable local data and transparency about why one route is recommended over another are therefore not optional.
Safeguards matter equally. Tourism systems handle sensitive information about identity, location, spending and preferences. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act and the rules notified in November 2025 provide a general framework, but tourism will need clearer practices around consent, data sharing and retention across hotels, platforms, transport providers and public authorities. Access to intelligence itself must also not become another source of inequality. Rural operators who stand to gain most may have weaker connectivity, fewer digital skills and less capacity to pay. Multilingual voice interfaces, assisted adoption and shared digital infrastructure will therefore be essential.
None of this diminishes the importance of human hospitality. Tour operators who use these tools well will spend less time assembling routine itineraries and more time exercising judgement, curating experiences and solving problems. AI can translate a menu, optimise a route or analyse thousands of reviews, but it cannot replicate the host who explains a family recipe, the guide who brings history alive or the unexpected conversation that becomes the memory of a journey. Intelligent India should mean artificial and human intelligence used together, removing friction and spreading opportunity, while leaving more room for what makes travel worthwhile: people, places, culture and pleasure. Incredible India sent a powerful invitation to the world. Intelligent India should determine what happens once it is accepted.
Rawat is Associate Fellow at Pahle India Foundation. Giri is Distinguished Fellow and Special Advisor to the Chairperson at Pahle India Foundation; Views presented are personal.
