The AI market is once again accelerating rapidly. While the past few years revolved primarily around chatbots and smart assistants, attention is now rapidly shifting to AI agents: digital colleagues who not only provide answers but also actually perform work.
According to AI specialist Chris van Vleuten, that is an important development for recreation, tourism, and hospitality.
The chatbot phase was interesting, but the agent phase is only now becoming truly important. AI is not just going to talk about work anymore, but actually do work.
Chris van Vleuten
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OpenAI is continuously developing ChatGPT into a creative and productive platform. The latest imaging capabilities are particularly interesting for professionals working on marketing, campaigns, social media, print, websites, and visual concepts. This makes image generation not only more aesthetically pleasing but, above all, more practical to use.
There is also a lot of movement in the business world. OpenAI and Anthropic, the company behind Claude, are moving towards possible IPOs and massive valuations. This shows that AI is no longer a playground with handy tools, but is increasingly becoming a new digital infrastructure, comparable to the internet, energy, and mobility.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is expanding Copilot. By adding Anthropic's Claude models, Copilot is increasingly evolving into a multi-model environment. For users, that difference will soon become less visible. They will primarily notice that AI applications are becoming smarter, faster, and better.
The most significant shift, however, lies in agentic AI. An AI agent not only provides answers but also understands, prepares, and executes tasks. Think of reading reservation requests, checking availability, preparing responses, creating quotes, summarizing reviews, writing social media posts, populating newsletters, and generating reports.
Especially in the leisure sector, where much work is still done manually, this can yield significant benefits. Reduced work pressure, faster responses, better service, and greater commercial clout.
Fiksy.ai was also developed based on this idea: an AI agent for the leisure sector that helps organizations with recurring tasks in communication, administration, content, planning, and reporting.
According to Van Vleuten, organizations should not start with the question of which AI tool to buy, but with a much more practical question:
Which recurring tasks cost us time, attention, and energy every week? That is where the real gains are.
Google is also fully committed to AI. During Google I/O on May 19 and 20, Gemini, AI video, and agents are expected to play a major role within Google Workspace and other Google apps. As a result, AI is increasingly becoming part of the daily work environment: in mail, documents, calendars, browsers, apps, and workflows.
For recreation, tourism, and hospitality, the conclusion is clear: AI is no longer something for the future. The agent phase has begun. The question now is which tasks people will continue to perform and which tasks can be intelligently taken over by AI.
The agent phase is no longer a pipe dream. This is something that recreation companies, destinations, campsites, holiday parks, attractions, and hospitality organizations can already start with.
With thanks to (author of this article) Chris van Vleuten, www.destinatie.ai