14 Jul Bespoke ski safari planning and AI

I recently wrote about the difference between humans and AI planning summer hiking itineraries. As I am in the throes of planning winter trips, I wanted to make the same comparison. Let talk about the difference between a human planning a winter bespoke ski safari and AI.

How does it work and what is the difference?

This is a really interesting question. How do I start planning a winter bespoke ski safari? My first step is to ask all the basic questions directly to the client. This gives me the lay of the land. I want to know what they are looking for, what they have done before and what they like and do not like. Sometimes these questions need to be asked in many different ways to get the information I need. So the background starts here.

Reading between the lines

The next step is more subtle. It relies on all my experience and years of planning and guiding bespoke ski safaris. It comes in the form of a telephone call with my potential guest where I ask many more questions. Reading between the lines is so important here, as much of what I understand from this conversation has a lot to do with what is unsaid. I look for the underlying feeling from the conversation. This is hard to put into words. After twenty years I still cannot explain it, but it is often about the feelings that I glean about the personality of the person that really helps me decide what might be the best trip for them.

So, what is going on under the surface of this conversation?

On my side it is a culmination of everything that I know about each area. This includes the level of difficulty of the skiing, the friendliness of people, the typical weather patterns in each area at different times on the season, the typical snowfall and the surprise snowfalls when and where. Then I take into consideration the accommodation: the style of hotels and the different rooms in each place. Once we have covered that I then start to think about the availability of the different guides. I have guides that come from Switzerland, Italy and France. I try to think about the personality of each of those guides and match them to the clients I have been speaking to. This is where ‘bespoke’ really comes in.

Are you getting an idea why AI might have difficulty duplicating this procedure?

Once we have a basic bespoke ski safari itinerary decided upon and I have attributed a guide to the job, I put all the logistics into place and do not come back to the itinerary until closer to the date. As we get closer I re-look at the itinerary, taking into consideration where it has snowed, where the snow has perhaps melted and the state of the skiing conditions. I also look at each individual day and tweak the details again. Finally, just before the guests arrive I have a briefing with the guide and we change things once more, generally based on even more information as we get more and more macro in our planning.

Finally they have arrived and we are on trip. The tweaking continues

We all go out for a drink on the first evening of the arrival day, introduce the guide and go over the trip itinerary. It is often here that we get even more information on the clients, how they are feeling, what they have been up to and very often information comes out concerning injuries or slight mishaps that they have been dealing with prior to arrival. You guessed it, the plan changes again. I would really like to see how AI would be able to even start. Firstly, gathering this sort of information is tricky because it is difficult to get people to read itineraries before they arrive, let alone know enough to make the necessary changes. It is these constant small tweaks that make a bespoke ski safari brilliant. We underestimate how the attention to detail makes a trip personal and great but it really does. Let’s raise a toast to celebrating the complexities of ever-changing human beings, the beauty of unpredictable environments and just getting out there and having a great time in the snow.

I look forward to welcoming you to the Alps this winter for your bespoke and completely tailor-made experience just for you and your friends.

Warm regards from the mountains,

Danielle