Practical uses of AI for tourism and hospitality businesses at Better Bankside

On 8 January 2026, Digital Dialog delivered an in-person breakfast session on the practical uses of Generative AI for members of Better Bankside, the Business Improvement District representing businesses across Southwark.

Held at Jerwood Space, the session formed part of Better Bankside’s regular networking breakfasts, which bring together hospitality and visitor-facing businesses to explore emerging trends likely to affect their operations. Around 25–30 businesses attended, including restaurants, hotels, cultural venues and hospitality-led organisations operating in and around Bankside.

Why Better Bankside hosted the session

Better Bankside’s membership includes a significant number of food and drink, hospitality and visitor-focused businesses, many of which are experiencing growing interest in AI alongside uncertainty about how it should be used in practice.

The session was commissioned to provide clear, non-sales guidance on how AI is already shaping parts of the hospitality and tourism sector, focusing on realistic applications rather than tools, hype or technical detail.

The emphasis was on helping businesses understand where AI can support decision-making, operations and customer experience, and where careful judgement is still required.

A snapshot from live polling

As with other recent sessions, live polling was used to gauge how familiar attendees were with AI tools and how they are currently being applied.

By a show of hands:

• Around half of the room were already using AI tools regularly for work.
• Very few were paying for AI tools on a personal or organisational basis.
• Only a small number were using AI for non-marketing tasks such as research, pricing or operational analysis.
• No attendees indicated that they were actively automating parts of their workflow using AI.

This helped frame the session around fundamentals, confidence and appropriate next steps, rather than advanced automation.

What businesses were keen to explore

The session covered a range of practical areas relevant to hospitality and visitor-economy businesses, including:

• how AI is being used to support planning, research and operational thinking
• examples of AI improving guest communication and personalisation using existing data
• how AI is changing discovery and search behaviour, and what that means for visibility
• where automation can add value, and where it may be premature

Examples were tailored to hospitality and place-based businesses, with references relevant to the Bankside context.

Questions raised during the session

Alongside questions about how AI models are trained and whether they learn from business data, discussion covered trust, data use, brand voice, automation boundaries, and the role of human judgement when applying AI in hospitality settings.

Looking ahead

This session reflects the growing appetite among BID members and hospitality businesses for practical, grounded guidance on AI, focused on clarity rather than complexity.

Digital Dialog continues to deliver similar in-person and online sessions for BIDs, destination organisations and visitor-economy partnerships, adapting content to local context while keeping the core principles consistent.

Similar sessions are being delivered to other regional and sector-based organisations throughout 2026. If you’d like to develop your own AI skills, our AI in Tourism & Hospitality Course is open to individual professionals.