mAiGreece the new digital application for Greek tourism will be available from Monday 10 June 2024. The Minister of Tourism, Olga Kefalogianni and the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, presented the Digital Assistant, which will use Artificial Intelligence to act as a personalised travel “companion” for all visitors to the country. The aim is to provide visitors with all the information they need to enjoy their stay in Greece.
Travellers will be able to “chat” with mAiGreece by submitting their query in writing or the spoken voice. Using geo-location technology (GPS), mAiGreece will provide information according to the area where the visitors are located. Users will be able to create a profile on mAiGreece, and choose the categories they are interested in, for example arts, beaches and others, in order to receive information according to their preferences. It will also include visual media, which will make it easier to understand information about the country’s iconic sites and destinations.
Features of mAiGreece
mAiGreece provides information on attractions, sightseeing, museums, archaeological sites, blue flag beaches, hospitals and health centres, police stations, embassies and foreign consulates, as well as all the content of visitgreece.gr. In addition, it will have an emergency function via a 112 key. Pressing this key will send an SMS message to the operations centre of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection with the geographical location of the sender.
mAiGreece supports 31 languages, including the 24 official languages of the EU, as well as Albanian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic and Korean. This ensures that visitors can easily navigate and explore Greece’s rich tourism opportunities in their own native language.
It is worth noting that visitors to Greece have been asked by their mobile phone providers to receive an SMS text message on their mobile phone with a link to the app when they enter the country. mAiGreece will be available free of charge for mobile devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, through the App Store and Play Store. The connection to the app will be made using the visitor’s Google, Apple or Facebook account.
Funding from the Recovery and Resilience Fund has been used for the implementation of the project which has been earmarked to support and strengthen the digital transformation of the country. They relate to a contract the Ministry of Public Works has for cloud services which is monitored by the Information Society (KPI MAE).
The project was implemented by OTE, Accenture and UBITECH, while the technology provider is Microsoft with Azure Open AI technology.
Crisis Management
However, mAiGreece will not be able to provide up-to-date information, such as events scheduled in particular destinations at a specific time. This is because the application only draws data from confirmed sources such as the EOT site, according to Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni. So visitors will still have to make their own searches using other sources of information.
Although we have not yet explored the full potential of mAiGreece, the application will certainly be very useful in terms of crisis management. For example, emergency management relating to natural disasters could save lives as visitors will be notified immediately by 112 using the mAiGreece application.
