Safety, Service, and AI Strategies for DMCs

Every country or every city has the good parts.

And unfortunately, there are the bad parts as well.

So whenever we're doing research for where we want to go, we always see the nice places or the nice things to go and see in the city.

But generally, you won't research to say, OK, I want to go to Italy or I want to go X, Y, Z.

What should I go and see? Or as Staffan was saying before, you know, the hidden gems.

We don't look for the bad things, but there are bad things that happen in every city.

The traveler needs to know.

what's safe, what areas are safe and what areas are not safe.

And generally what we would do is we would, when we're advising customers, if somebody's wearing a lot of jewelry, we would say, okay, if you're going to go to this area, make sure that, you know, you leave your jewelry in the safe in the hotel or, you know, even leave your passport in the safe in the hotel.

Don't sort of carry it around in your pockets.

don't display all your jewelry.

You know, if you've got nice watches or, you know, gold or rings or whatever it is, you know, put them away in the safe whilst you're traveling in this one destination, right? And that does happen.

And currently we would advise our customers where to go and where not to go, where to avoid.

And if they do pass through those areas, how they should look after their own safety.

There's only so much we can do, not being in destination, not being with the customer, as to advise them as to what steps they need to take, precautionary steps they need to take as they're traveling through certain areas.

Around Cape Town Airport, there's one way in from the south and there's one way in from the north.

And both of those routes, there's heavy crime going through those routes, either from the south or from the north.

And so what would I do as a company, number one, as in to advise our customers? So we would say to them, okay, well, you're going to Cape Town tomorrow.

You're only going to go one of two routes.

You're going to have to be aware as crime rates are very, very heavy going into the airport.

So, you know, keep all your belongings, expensive belongings in number one, don't display them whilst you're sitting in the car or the bus going towards the airport.

And also there has to be also some other precautionary advice that we have to give where we're in Cape Town.

I received from a friend from South Africa and, you know, it says urgent warning, robbery alert airport area.

So as you can see, the warning says what's happening, a group of young men dancing and performing in the road.

Okay, now normally I would think this is someone making a TikTok video, but in this sense, they're not actually making a TikTok video.