My private Italy: AI knows everything, so why VITOR?

Some time ago I stumbled upon a post by Bill Gates on his blog, Gates Notes, and, guess what, he was talking about us. Well, not about VITOR specifically, but about travel agents in general. Here is an extract (you can read the full post at https://www.gatesnotes.com/AI-agents).

Bill Gates and the end of the travel agent

“To do any task on a computer, you have to tell your device which app to use…….. this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life……

This type of software—something that responds to natural language and can accomplish many different tasks based on its knowledge of the user—is called an agent (my note: funnily enough, in The Matrix the Agents were malevolent programs scanning the net for “subversive” elements, including our hero Neo and his mates)……. Agents are smarter. They’re proactive—capable of making suggestions before you ask for them. They accomplish tasks across applications. They improve over time because they remember your activities and recognize intent and patterns in your behavior. Based on this information, they offer to provide what they think you need, although you will always make the final decisions.

Imagine that you want to plan a trip. A travel bot will identify hotels that fit your budget. An agent will know what time of year you’ll be traveling and, based on its knowledge about whether you always try a new destination or like to return to the same place repeatedly, it will be able to suggest locations. When asked, it will recommend things to do based on your interests and propensity for adventure, and it will book reservations at the types of restaurants you would enjoy. If you want this kind of deeply personalized planning today, you need to pay a travel agent and spend time telling them what you want.”

Mamma, butta la pasta!

Well, if Bill Gates thinks travel agents are finished, pack your bags, Marcello. As we say in Italian, “Mamma, butta la pasta” (literally “Mum, throw the pasta in”, because I’m on my way home): the game is over. Or, as they say in The Matrix: “Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye” (I love this movie, isn’t it obvious?). After all, he foresaw the pandemic years before it happened, didn’t he?

Artificial intelligence is already among us, and it is changing our business as we speak. Today, there’s not a single service provided by a travel agent that cannot be replaced by something on the web. You can book hotels, flights, transfers, museums, almost everything. Online you’ll find itineraries, reviews and travel tips. Hundreds of travel bloggers roam the world and share their point of view on almost every place and service. And if you want to know more about an attraction, what’s better than a nice, shiny audio guide? So, in the end, why take the time to talk to a travel agent, to VITOR? Face it, Marcello: this process is unstoppable. The so-called “agents” are smarter, faster and, most importantly, cheaper.

One little, unmeasurable thing

Trips to Italy are already very easy to organise, and you can do it on your own. Except for one thing, one little, unmeasurable, immaterial thing: passion. Passion for our wonderful country, for the beauty it offers, for the people who live there, for the delicious food and wine and for the people who make them.

It’s this passion, this unconditional love, that drives us. We love our country, and we love the people who love it. We want them to fulfil their dreams, to see Italy through our eyes, to live it as if they were Italians and to understand it fully. We love telling them stories about Italy and watching them enjoy all the nice things we have prepared. Then we love hearing about the good things they tasted and the nice people they met. We are lucky to live in one of the most beautiful lands in the world, and we want to share this luck with them. We sell, yes, but we are proud to say that we are in the business of happiness. And when you are happy, we are happy.

Passion is easier to show than to tell

Of course, every travel company in the world says it has passion. Words are cheap. So let me show you what it looks like in real life, through the stories of our guests.

It looks like a small group of American friends in Matera. They rolled pasta in the home kitchen of a retired schoolteacher, then ate what they made. Later on, they sat at the wheel of a ceramicist whose family has worked clay for eight generations. Each of them took home a piece made with their own hands. The evening ended with dinner at a farm near Fasano. None of these places has a booking button. They have a phone number, a name and a friendship built over the years.

It looks like a guide in Rome sitting down to Christmas lunch with our guests. They left the table in love with Roman artichokes. It looks like a photographer waiting on the shore of Lake Como for a couple on their anniversary. They later described that evening as “something of a fairy tale”.

What a machine can’t do (yet)

Here’s the part that a search engine can’t give you. Over the years we have built relationships with guides, drivers, winemakers, artisans and hosts all over Italy. When we call them, they don’t answer a customer. They answer a friend. That’s how doors open that no booking site will ever find.

Then there is judgement. One guest wrote to thank us for reshaping a whole itinerary around his wife’s health. A family from Singapore travelled with elderly parents. Our city guides kept checking that they were comfortable and never too tired. In another family, each member chose the one thing they wanted most from Italy. We built the trip around those wishes. An algorithm can optimise a route. It still struggles to notice that Grandma needs a bench and a coffee.

And finally, there is someone to call when things go wrong. Because, believe me, sometimes they do. A ferry doesn’t leave, a flight is late, the weather changes its mind. One of our guests had a “ferry incident” on her trip and later called it simply “part of the adventure”. That’s because someone in Italy was already fixing it. During every trip our guests receive a message from us each day on their dedicated WhatsApp line. And sometimes, I admit, I just pick up the phone to ask how it’s going.

Yes, we use AI too

Now, in the name of honesty, I have a confession to make. We at VITOR are not afraid of artificial intelligence. In fact, we use it. Her name is Sofia, and she is our virtual assistant. She helps our guests sketch their first itinerary and answers their questions before departure. During the trip she keeps them company, at any hour of the day or night.

So no, this is not a battle between humans and machines. Our idea is quite simple: let AI take care of the boring parts, so that we can spend our time on the human ones. Sofia never gets tired of answering what the weather is like in Florence in April. That leaves us free to call a winemaker we know and ask him to open his cellar for our guests.

You can’t ask for what you don’t know exists

Read Mr Gates’ words again: “When asked, it will recommend things to do.” When asked. And here’s the catch. An agent, however smart, answers your questions. But how can you ask for something you don’t know exists? Nobody types “pasta class in a retired schoolteacher’s kitchen in Matera” into a search bar. Nobody asks a chatbot for a ceramicist whose family has worked clay for eight generations. You don’t know these people, so you can’t ask for them. And an algorithm built on your past choices will keep offering you more of what you already like.

Take Marianne and her husband. They had been to Italy many times, always driving themselves and planning every detail on their own. When she contacted me about Emilia-Romagna, she honestly didn’t expect me to do much they couldn’t do themselves. Then came the places to sleep. Small, well-priced B&Bs, some in houses that had belonged to the same family for generations, with hosts who welcomed them into their homes. In her words: “I don’t think I would have found them on my own.” Not because she isn’t a good planner. She is an excellent one. Simply because you can’t search for something you don’t know is there.

Think of all the things you are not doing on your trip, simply because nobody told you they were there. That, quite literally, is our job. We know these places and these people, and we bring them to you before you even think of asking.

What’s waiting around the corner

In the world envisioned by Mr Gates, your agent will know everything about you (is this really what we want?) and will suggest you spend your time and money on things AI has decided could make you happy. But this way you’ll miss something essential in everybody’s life: surprise.

Surprise is Fabio, one of our drivers in the Val d’Orcia, suggesting a few extra stops nobody had planned. Surprise is a couple visiting Italy for the first time, the country where their grandparents were born. Surprise is the young daughter of a Canadian family. She finished her Pinocchio book on the flight, just in time to land in his home country. You will never know that, just around that corner, there’s something that will amaze you and add some value to your life. And that is precisely why we all travel: to be surprised.

So maybe it’s not time to pack our bags yet. It’s time to rediscover relationships and interactions, people and flavours, traditions and cultures. In a world of machines, it’s time to be as human as ever. This is the world where we at VITOR have chosen to live, and the world we want to share with you. We hope you enjoy it!

Ciao da Marcello