Now, as travellers and locals explore our website, tourismkelowna.com, they can communicate with our new Chatbot, KAITI (Kelowna Artificial Intelligence Tourism Information), which can help answer general tourism-related questions about Kelowna and the Central Okanagan.
KAITI has been trained using all the information available on tourismkelowna.com and additional information provided by our team members, furthering its intelligence. KAITI is constantly learning and will continue to improve over time.
We have taken careful considerations while developing this Chatbot and have chosen a platform that integrates into our existing LiveChat function on the website. While communicating with KAITI, a website visitor can request to be transferred to one of our Community & Visitor Engagement team members. We want to ensure all lines of communication remain open and that the Chatbot is used as a helpful planning tool to provide general information to potential visitors; however, if they have more specific questions, they can easily connect with our staff.
In 2023, our Community & Visitor Engagement team had nearly 2,000 conversations with people via LiveChat. The average number of hours the team was available to respond to LiveChats was just under 5 hours daily. With KAITI, chat functionality will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, furthering Tourism Kelowna’s ability to serve potential visitors. We have set a conservative goal of increasing the number of annual conversations for our website chat by 25% with the implementation of KAITI.
We also have developed Chatbot Terms of Use, which provides information on how it can be used, its limitations, and disclaimers.
As a forward-thinking organization, we are excited to be able to implement new technologies such as generative AI.
Here are a few examples of questions we asked KAITI during our testing:
If you want to chat with KAITI, click on the chat bubble at the bottom left of your screen. Don't hesitate to connect with me at steve@tourismkelowna.com if you have any questions or would like additional information about KAITI.
