The 25-person team at HORiZONTE GmbH in Münster offers holiday camps, group trips and school trips including transport and tour guidance to group houses and tent camps at various travel destinations in Europe. The travel concept includes all-round packages including bus transport and local knowledge Service tour guide on site. Individual wishes from class teachers, club employees or youth leisure organizers are gladly taken into account when planning the trip. Since 1982, HORiZONTE GmbH has stood for respectful treatment of the population Destinationswith employees and customers.
Challenges and advice needs
In order to be able to better cope with the increasing demands as a company (shortage of personnel, increasing administration, increased demands from customers, increasing importance of Europe-wide locations) and the employees working there in the long term, HORiZONTE GmbH asked itself which of the routine tasks could be further digitized and/or significantly reduced through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Two challenges arose here. On the one hand, tailor-made areas of application with high benefits in the company had to be identified and on the other hand, not all employees were open to increasing digitalization or the use of AI.
The task of the Future Center KI NRW was to identify relevant fields together with the employees and to involve all employees in this process. As experts in their tasks, they were able to make an important contribution to the targeted design of possible digitalization and AI applications that can be of great benefit to themselves and at the same time actively influence the design of their areas of responsibility.
We, the KI NRW Future Center, held an AI entry-level workshop with an ideas workshop in the company at the end of 2023. The aim of the workshop was to provide information about the potential of AI, to show possible applications and to work out concrete areas of application for HORiZONTE GmbH in the ideas workshop.
We met a very committed core team who, as we had planned, met in small groups the day before the workshop, exchanged knowledge and perspectives, tried out some AI applications and collected initial ideas for their own areas of responsibility. In the workshop, the first input was to provide an understanding of how artificial intelligence works, its fields of application, opportunities, limits and risks. It was explained how AI applications can benefit the company and how the process of AI application development should work. From this, a surprisingly large number of possible applications could be developed in a participatory manner and finally prioritized together according to their applicability in the company. Since the specific needs of employees should be taken into account in any AI development, an application example was demonstrated. It was shown how the perspective of users can be recorded and evaluated using AI-based surveys.
“Through the Future Center workshop, we were able to get a systematic introduction and work on a variety of AI application areas together with everyone.”
Simon Große Scharmann, Managing Director of HORiZONTE GmbH
Next Steps
“In some areas we have already been able to take concrete first steps in implementation after just 3 months. We know that the successful use of AI requires a lot of staying power, but we are motivated to take this path.”
Simon Große Scharmann, Managing Director of HORiZONTE GmbH
In summary, in the workshop we were able to identify promising potential for HORiZONTE GmbH, where an expansion of digitalization and the introduction of AI will be of great benefit to everyone involved. The motivated and committed teams will continue to implement the ideas. At the end of 2024 we will take stock and see which ideas have made it into application.
Back
The post Getting started with AI for travel companies – our ideas workshop « Future Center AI NRW appeared first on Veritas News.
