Client story Tourism NT builds an AI-powered chatbot to foster customer interaction and encourage tourism

Facts at a glance

Client industry

Tourism

Challenge

Tourism NT wanted to attract more visitors to the Northern Territory during the low season period of summer. It needed a creative and engaging way to showcase the diverse and amazing experiences that the NT offers, while also differentiating itself from other destinations.

Solution

Tourism NT partnered with Insight and Microsoft to build ChatNT, an AI-powered chatbot that featured Abbie Chatfield, a popular celebrity, as the Chief Sensory Officer for Summer in the NT. ChatNT used OpenAI's GPT-3.5 model via Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service to generate natural and playful conversations with users, based on Tourism NT's website content and Chatfield's tone of voice.

Results

• 70% increase in time spent on northernterritory.com 
• 1.54 million social media reach 
• 100+ media placements 

Area of expertise

Insight's Generative AI solutions personalise customer conversations with human-like responses and contextual awareness.

Download the client story

The vision: Accelerated adoption of generative AI

Some of the most famous and spectacular sights in Australia are found in the Northern Territory (NT), such as Kakadu National Park and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Tourism NT’s work is to showcase these amazing and diverse places to visit. It’s a vital role – tourism brought 1.6 million visitors to the NT and added up to $2.6 billion to its economy in the year to September 2023.  

Tourism NT’s Domestic Marketing team, along with its appointed PR Agency Edelman, came up with a creative idea to draw more tourists for its summer campaign in 2023. It appointed a celebrity to front an innovative AI-driven chatbot that would help visitors learn more about holidaying in the NT during the summer period. That celebrity was Abbie Chatfield, with the television host, radio presenter and podcaster given the title of ‘Chief Sensory Officer for Summer in the NT’. 

ChatNT was the answer, an aptly named chatbot designed and built to have entertaining and informative chats with audiences about summer tourism experiences in the NT, using Chatfield’s distinctively playful way of speaking. 

Tourism NT engaged Insight to help build ChatNT using OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model via Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service which gave the team access to the technology behind ChatGPT. The team used Azure AI Search to ingest and index Tourism NT’s data to inform ChatNT’s responses. 

"We were excited to make the first leap into working with generative AI with a short-term marketing campaign, knowing that we’d be able to take our learnings and apply them to any future AI-based travel planner tools for Tourism."

Kristie Beattie, Director of Digital and Data, Tourism  NT

Making ChatNT

To ensure audiences had a safe and appropriate experience with ChatNT, Insight configured the Content Filtering capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service to flag interactions or requests that could be identified as hate speech, self-harm or sexualised content. 

Insight also made sure that ChatNT kept a chat history of user interactions in Azure Cosmos DB without identifying information, so Tourism NT could examine how visitors used the system, how long they chatted with the chatbot, and how happy they were with the answers they got.

ChatNT made people spend 70 per cent more time on Northernterritory.com since it launched. The excitement about ChatNT also reached over 1.54 million people on social media and got more than 100 top-quality domestic media stories.

"Tourism NT is moving the tourism industry forward and will undoubtedly continue to unleash creativity through technology. We are proud to partner with Tourism NT to deliver Australia’s first AI-powered tourism marketing solution and further explore generative AI opportunities on Microsoft Azure."

Veli-Matti Vanamo, Chief Technology Officer, Insight APAC

Tourism NT is eager to find new ways of using generative AI in tourism to help potential visitors plan trips, book things to do and make schedules in enjoyable and interesting ways.

Insight has experience helping more than half a dozen Australian organisations to deliver some of the country’s first public use cases of chatbots built using Azure OpenAI Services. ChatNT was an exciting challenge for the team as infusing a celebrity’s authentic and iconic tone of voice was a unique application of GPT-3.5 and was an incredible success.

"ChatNT is a remarkable application of technology driven by people, creating something only a human could but augmenting it with the powerful capabilities of AI and large language models. Its ability to capture the playful, humorous and genuine tone of Abbie’s voice will create a uniquely Australian experience for tourists in the Northern Territory"

Sarah Carney, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Australia and New Zealand

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