Cirkel Supply: AI4Alps

In the Innosuisse project AI4Alps, the ZHAW is investigating how customer decisions and booking processes change when information is no longer primarily found via traditional search engines and websites, but increasingly via AI-based response systems and digital assistants. Current knowledge shows that although companies can optimize their content for search engines, there is a widespread lack of practical, scientifically sound approaches to becoming visible in AI-generated responses, conducting customer dialogues effectively in multiple languages and cultures, and designing bookings in such a way that they also function reliably via new, AI-driven interaction channels. The project addresses precisely these gaps.

The aim of the research is to develop comprehensible and transferable guidelines on how digital offerings in tourism (and beyond) should be designed for this new reality. To this end, different variants of content, information presentation, and online processes are systematically tested and compared with each other—not in the laboratory, but as close as possible to real-life usage situations. One focus is on which characteristics of information (e.g., structure, clarity, consistency) help AI systems correctly pick up on and recommend an offer.

A second focus examines how multilingual, culturally sensitive chatbots need to be designed so that they not only translate, but also better meet expectations in terms of tone, service behavior, and trust building in different markets. A third focus looks at how booking and ordering processes will continue to function smoothly in the future, even as customers increasingly trigger these steps via digital assistants rather than traditional web navigation.

The result will be scientifically validated recommendations, evaluation criteria, and practical implementation modules that help companies make their digital customer interfaces fit for the future in AI-driven markets—with particular relevance for alpine tourism, but fundamentally transferable to other service- and transaction-intensive industries.