We've had a truly insightful morning at XDW discussing digital travel assistants and also prospects of AR and XR for enhancing real-life experiences through interactive and visual augmentations.

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We were joined by Rajneesh Badal (Zoey) and Ondrej Mitas (Breda University of Applied Sciences). They discussed the initiatives behind travel with Zoey and shared great tips with us on developing digital travel assistants. In this age, digital travel assistants are about providing personalised travel recommendations and manipulating travel behaviour. To achieve this, Rajneesh and Ondrej have top suggestions:

1. It is vital to consider travellers' emotions when making digital recommendations to ensure that the information is satisfactory, pleases the travellers, and implies that they are communicating with information tourist information services.
2. In the early days, human moderators mostly supported Zoey, but with enhanced databases, automated services can now make human-like recommendations.
3. Researching, optimising and improving services is key, and it requires digital and human contribution.

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Later, Sven and Camillo from MSM.digital joined us for an exciting discussion on the sparks of AR and XR in digital innovation and upscaling engagement and interaction, particularly in the Tourism and Travel industry. They reflected on the fact that AR and XR contribute to travel experience at all stages (pre, during and post experiences) by creating portals to take travellers to different locations and timezones.

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Some key takeaways from this session include:

1. An extensive marketplace exists for AR solutions. Different modalities of AR contribute to the digital presence of businesses and destinations and allow interactivity.
2. Social AR has great potential and is the best way to reach the audience using existing and well-known apps and platforms. The key is to be multichannel and address different demographics that they engage with most.
3. AR has many prospects in the future. AR solutions can become the next general travel assistant by bringing objects to life and allowing augmented conversation in real life.

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