Before we start
Three minutes of setup
You need a free account and a browser. Nothing else. No credit card, no download, no app.
-
Open one free tool
ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini (links in Tools). All three have a free tier that is good enough for today. Pick one. Do not open all three.
-
Fill in your context block
Twelve lines about your operation, below. This is the part that makes everything else work, and it is the part almost nobody does.
-
Run the build
Copy Prompt 1, paste, read what comes back, then run Prompt 2. The second prompt is where the value is. Prompt 3 makes it survive a real season.
If the wifi is bad: use your phone's hotspot, or pair up with the person next to you and share one screen. Two people on one laptop works fine for this. The page saves your context block in this browser, so you can finish at home or at the lodge.
Step 1 (about 5 minutes)
Your context block
The model is exactly the same for you and for the operator down the road. The only thing you control is what you feed it. This is that.
Edit the lines below. Be specific and be honest, including about what you are bad at. Every “Copy with my context” button on this page puts it in front of the prompt automatically.
Saved in this browser only, on this device. It is never sent anywhere by this page. If you clear your browser data it goes away, so copy it somewhere you keep things.
About the permits and licenses line: write down what you hold as plain facts. The AI does not know your permit conditions and will guess confidently if you let it. You, not the tool, verify anything it says about a permit, a license or a regulation.
Step 2 (about 12 minutes)
Build one thing you can use next season
Take one job that currently lives only in your head, or in one long-time employee's head, and turn it into a one-page procedure a seasonal hire can follow. Pick the one that would hurt most if the person who knows it were out on a trip with no signal.
Safety content stays with a qualified human. Recommendation AI may draft the written wording of a go/no-go call, a safety briefing or a pre-departure checklist. A qualified person (and, where the activity is licensed, the licensed person) owns every safety step and verifies it before anyone uses it. Reason: the model does not know your river, your aircraft, your vehicle or today's forecast, and it writes wrong steps in the same confident voice as right ones. Cost of ignoring it: the error is found by a guest, in the field.
Legal mandate Guide licensing is not delegable to any tool: big game guiding is licensed by the Big Game Commercial Services Board under AS 08.54, and sport fishing guides and businesses register annually with ADF&G. AI can draft your client briefings and reminders; it cannot hold or perform the licensed activity.
Contractual Safety conditions in your land-use permits, concession agreements and insurance policy govern over anything a chatbot writes. Check those documents; this page does not list them.
You are helping me write a staff procedure for my tourism business. The job: [WRITE THE TASK HERE, e.g. "the morning go/no-go weather call and how we tell guests"] Write it as a one-page document that a seasonal employee on their third day could follow without asking anyone a question. Rules: - Start with DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW. - Numbered steps, in the order they actually happen. - Plain English. No corporate language. Assume an 8th grade reading level. - Where a step involves money, safety, a permit, or a license, say so plainly and say who is allowed to do it. - Mark every safety step with [SAFETY: QUALIFIED PERSON VERIFIES]. Do not present any safety step as final. - At the end, add a short section: "Three things that go wrong, and what to do." - If you need information about my business that I did not give you, stop and ask me for it instead of guessing. Do not invent any law, regulation, permit condition, or license requirement. If a step might have one attached, flag it for me to verify with the agency that issued the permit, my insurer, or my attorney. Do not state it as fact.
Read what comes back before you do anything else. Some of it will be wrong for your operation. That is the point of the next step, and it is also the reason your job still exists.
Three things in that draft are wrong for my business: 1. [WHAT IT GOT WRONG] 2. [WHAT IT GOT WRONG] 3. [WHAT IT GOT WRONG] Fix those. Also: - Cut it to one page that prints on a single sheet. - Put the steps that involve money, safety, a permit, or a license in their own section, clearly marked. - Add a line at the bottom: "Last updated [DATE]. Safety steps verified by [QUALIFIED ROLE]. Questions go to [ROLE]." - Give me a second version at the end: the same thing shortened to a ten-line card for the van visor or the front desk. - Keep both marked DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW.
Now be a critic, not an assistant. Read that procedure as if you were a seasonal guide on their first July day, with a full van of cruise guests, a ship departure to beat, and no cell signal at the trailhead. - Where would you get confused or stuck? - Which step assumes knowledge nobody told you? - What would you probably skip because it is annoying or slow? - What is missing that a real day in the field would need? - Which step would fail if the weather changed or a guest did not show up? List the problems. Do not rewrite it yet. Do not be polite about it.
That third prompt is the habit worth keeping. Asking it to attack its own work costs you fifteen seconds and catches most of what would have embarrassed you in front of a guest. It is not verification: it does not check your facts, permits or safety rules. You do, and the qualified person signs off the safety steps.
The shift worth making: pull, not push
Push is writing out, step by step, exactly how the task should be done, then watching the AI follow your instructions rather than solve the problem. Pull is naming the destination and letting the AI work out the route, asking you for what it still needs.
Here is my objective: [WHAT YOU WANT TO END UP WITH, e.g. "a one-page cloud-night procedure a seasonal guide can follow"]. Ask me all the questions you need in order to build this, one group at a time. Then give it to me as [FORMAT, e.g. "a one-page numbered procedure plus a ten-line card"]. Start the result with DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW. Do not invent any fact, price, permit or policy about my business; ask instead.
Done for you
Two ready-made assistants
The same build, packaged. The Staff Procedure Coach turns one job into a one-page procedure and a ten-line card, with every safety step marked for a qualified person to verify. The Campaign Builder drafts a season of posts and image prompts, with no AI-written reviews and lodging prices shown as the total price. Paste either one into the assistant you already use, or set it up as a private custom GPT, Claude Project or Gemini Gem.
Status: draft instructions, not yet tested in a live account. Test them with fictional data first, and correct the first outputs.
Take these home
Seven more for tourism operators
Each one starts with your context block. Copy, fill in the brackets, run it. The first four are specific to tourism; the last three work for any small business.
Here is the English description of one of my trips or rooms, including what to bring, where to meet, and the cancellation policy: [PASTE THE TEXT] Translate it into German, Japanese, Spanish (for Mexico), Portuguese (for Brazil), and Hindi. - Keep it the same length or shorter than the English. - Keep all prices, times, meeting points, and the cancellation terms exactly as written. Do not round, convert, or soften them. - Where an English term has no natural equivalent (e.g. "aurora forecast", "layers", "bear spray"), keep a short explanation in brackets. - Put each language in its own table next to the English, line by line. - At the end, list every sentence you were unsure about, per language. - Mark every version DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW AND NATIVE-SPEAKER REVIEW.
Recommendation Have a native speaker check each version before it goes on your website or booking page. Reason: errors in cancellation terms, safety wording or prices are the ones that cost money and trust, and you cannot spot them yourself. Local coverage of Explore Fairbanks' 2026 goals names German-speaking markets, Northern Europe, India, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand among its targets.
Legal mandate If you run short-term lodging, any price in any language shows the total price including known, calculable fees: FTC Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 CFR Part 464, effective May 12, 2025. Tours and activities are not covered by that rule; general FTC Act Section 5 deception authority still applies.
Here is a real review a guest left about my business, with the guest's name removed: [PASTE THE REVIEW] Write three possible public replies: one short and warm, one that politely corrects a factual error in the review, and one that offers to take it offline. Under 90 words each. No corporate voice. Do not apologize for something we did not do. Do not promise a refund or credit; that is my decision. Then tell me which one you would post and why. Mark all three DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW.
Legal mandate Never use AI, or anyone, to write reviews of your own business. The FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465 (effective October 21, 2024), prohibits fake reviews, explicitly including AI-generated ones, reviews by people without real experience, undisclosed insider reviews, and incentives conditioned on positive sentiment. The FTC can seek civil penalties against knowing violators. Drafting a reply to a real review is not addressed by that rule; generating reviews is.
I run [BUSINESS NAME] in [TOWN], Alaska. I am checking what AI assistants tell travelers about my business. Answer as you would answer a traveler. 1. What do you know about [BUSINESS NAME]? What do we offer, when do we operate, and what does it cost? 2. A traveler asks: "What are the best [TYPE OF TRIP, e.g. aurora tours] near [TOWN] in [MONTH]?" Answer that question. Is my business in your answer? Where? 3. If a traveler wanted to book with us, where would you send them? 4. For every fact you gave about my business, tell me where it came from, and say plainly which parts you are unsure of or may be out of date. Do not flatter me. If you do not know my business, say so.
Run it in all three tools, and again in a month. Answers vary by tool and by day. Write down every wrong fact (hours, prices, season, a trip you no longer run) and fix it at the source: your own website, your Google business listing, your booking platform listings. As of September 2026, the AI assistants route most bookings through OTAs and booking-software networks (see the FAQ).
I am uploading [NUMBER] photos from my website. For each one: 1. Write alt text for a screen reader user: under 125 characters, describe what is actually in the photo and why it is on the page. Do not start with "image of". 2. Write a one-line caption for social media, plain and specific, no hashtags. 3. If you cannot tell what or where something is (a mountain, a river, a species), say so and leave a [CHECK] for me. Do not guess place names. Then, separately: I am pasting the script or transcript of my [VIDEO NAME]. Turn it into caption text, broken into lines of no more than 42 characters. Mark everything DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW.
Recommendation Do this for every photo and video on your site. ADA Title III applies to places of public accommodation (hotels, tours, attractions) and courts continue to hear website accessibility cases. There is no DOJ web technical standard for private businesses, so the exposure is litigation risk rather than a dated deadline. AI alt text and captions lower that risk cheaply.
Legal mandate For state and local government bodies only: the ADA Title II web rule (28 CFR Part 35, Subpart H, WCAG 2.1 AA), with compliance dates of April 26, 2027 (entities serving 50,000 or more) and April 26, 2028 (smaller), per an interim final rule dated April 20, 2026. Whether a given CVB or DMO is a Title II entity depends on its legal structure: check with the borough or city attorney.
I am going to paste an agreement: [OTA or booking platform terms / cruise line shore excursion contract / vendor agreement]. You are not my lawyer and I am not asking for legal advice. Do three things: 1. Tell me in plain English what I am agreeing to, in under 200 words. 2. List every clause that costs me money (commission, fees, chargebacks), sets my prices or cancellation terms for me, requires insurance, locks me in, or auto-renews, with the exact wording quoted. 3. Give me five questions to ask before I sign. Quote the document. Do not paraphrase the parts that matter. If something is ambiguous, say it is ambiguous rather than picking a reading. Mark your summary DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW. [PASTE THE AGREEMENT, with account numbers removed]
Write a job post for a seasonal [ROLE, e.g. driver-guide / lodge housekeeper / deckhand] at my business, for [START MONTH] to [END MONTH]. - Lead with what a real day is like, not with "we are a family." - State the pay range. I will fill it in: [RANGE]. State housing honestly: [PROVIDED / NOT PROVIDED / COST]. - Say plainly what is hard about the job (hours, weather, remoteness). People respect that and it filters out the wrong applicants. - List any license or certification the role needs as a placeholder, [CHECK], for me to fill in. Do not guess them. - Under 250 words. - Then write a 40-word version for a text message and a 25-word version for a social post. - Mark all three DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW.
I am pasting a procedure my seasonal staff are supposed to follow. Write 10 questions that test whether someone actually read it and understood it. Mix of multiple choice and short answer. Include two questions about what to do when the procedure does not cover the situation, and who to call. Then give me the answer key on a separate page. Mark both DRAFT - PENDING OWNER REVIEW. [PASTE YOUR PROCEDURE]
Read this once, remember it forever
What never goes in the box
Free tiers of these tools may use what you type to improve the product. Paid and business tiers usually do not, but that setting is yours to check, not to assume. Either way, some things do not belong in a chat window.
- Guest passports, driver's licenses, or any copy of ID, including from international guests.
- Full card numbers, bank account numbers, or anything off a payment terminal or booking platform payout screen.
- Signed waivers, or anything with a guest's signature on it.
- Medical information guests disclose on waivers or health forms (conditions, medications, allergies, mobility).
- Employee files: write-ups, medical notes, immigration paperwork, wage garnishments.
- Anything a lawyer sent you, or anything about an active dispute or incident claim.
- Logins: your booking platform, bank, payroll or email. Ever, to anything.
The reliable habit: before you paste, ask whether you would be comfortable if that exact text showed up on a screen at this convention. If not, strip the names and numbers first. The tool works just as well on “a guest from Germany, party of four” as it does on a real name.
Legal mandate Alaska Personal Information Protection Act, AS 45.48. AS 45.48.010 requires a business that owns or licenses Alaska residents' personal information to notify them of a breach in the most expeditious time possible and without unreasonable delay. Notice may be skipped only if, after investigation, there is no reasonable likelihood of harm, with written notice to the Attorney General. Every guest record you paste into a third-party tool is one more system whose compromise could trigger that duty. Whether a given AI vendor's handling of your data counts as a breach is fact-specific and not determined here.
How to tell evidence from marketing
The real numbers
Most of what you will read about AI in travel is written by companies selling AI to travel. Before you believe a number, ask four questions: who ran the study, how many were surveyed, when, and who paid for it. If the page cannot answer all four, it is an advertisement. Every figure below is measured (survey data), not a forecast.
| Finding | Figure | Source, n, dates | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| US firms using AI in any business function | 17% to 20% | US Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS)Biweekly national survey, Dec 14, 2025 to May 3, 2026. Firms under 20 employees: below 20%. Question revised Nov 2025, so older ~9% to 10% figures are not comparable. | Measured |
| Alaska firms using AI | 14.4% | BTOS state data, compiled by Visual CapitalistAverage of 6 releases, Jan 15 to Mar 26, 2026. Rank 43 of 50; US average 18.2% in the same compilation. Secondary source; state samples are small. | Measured |
| Accommodation, food services and transportation firms using AI | under 10% | BTOS, as reported by the Minneapolis Fed, May 29, 2026Exact sector value and question version not stated. | Measured |
| Tour and activity operators actively using gen AI | 12% | Arival, Global Operator Landscape, 3rd edition7,000+ operators worldwide; published Nov 4, 2024; field dates not stated. About 25% more were experimenting; over half of small operators were doing nothing. Global and two years old: likely understates 2026 use. | Measured |
| Operators using AI more than a year ago / say AI still feels overwhelming / got inaccurate information from AI | 64% / 56% / 44% | GetYourGuide with Arival505 operators, March 2026; country mix not stated. Vendor survey of its own supplier base. “Using more” is not an adoption rate. | Measured |
| US travelers using gen AI in trip planning | 24% to 39% | Three surveysDeloitte: 24%, holiday travelers, 3,896 US adults (2,099 holiday travelers), Sep 26 to Oct 3, 2025. Allianz Partners / Ipsos: 37%, 2,001 US adults, Mar 20 to Apr 14, 2026. Phocuswright: 39%, past 12 months, Nov 2025, n not disclosed. Different populations and wording: a range, not a trend. | Measured |
| Of US travelers using gen AI, share who researched activities and attractions with it | 67% | Deloitte 2025 Holiday Travel SurveySame sample as above, Sep 26 to Oct 3, 2025. Holiday trips only. | Measured |
What the numbers support. Roughly one quarter to two fifths of US travelers now use gen AI somewhere in trip planning, and about two thirds of those use it to look at activities and attractions: the thing you sell. On the operator side, a minority of small businesses use AI at all, Alaska sits below the US average, and the operators who do use it report that it is overwhelming and sometimes wrong. The most probable reading is a translation gap: the tools are free, but nobody has connected them to a specific job in a specific operation. That is what you did today.
What they do not support. A precise size for that gap. The traveler and operator surveys cover different populations, countries and years, and the operator surveys over-represent digitally engaged businesses; Alaska small operators are probably below those rates, but that is an inference, not a measurement. Treat the direction as well supported and the exact distance as unknown.
Tools, money and the questions people ask
Which tool, and when to pay
The 90-day rule. Recommendation Do not buy any AI tool or subscription for ninety days. Use the free tier until it genuinely stops being enough, and until you can name the specific job it will not do. Then pay for that, and only that. Reason: until you can name the job the free tier will not do, you cannot tell which paid feature you actually need. Cost of ignoring it: a subscription that renews all winter while the business is closed.
Frequently asked
What should I pay for, if anything?
After ninety days, if you hit the free tier's limits most weeks, one paid plan of the one tool you actually use. Paid and business tiers also tend to offer more control over whether your data is used for training; check the setting yourself rather than assuming it. Skip anything sold as “AI for tour operators” until you can name the job it does that the general tool does not.
Which tool is best?
For the work on this page, the differences between the three are smaller than the difference a good context block makes. Pick the one you will open again tomorrow. Tool names and features change every few weeks; nothing here depends on a specific version.
Should I be bookable inside ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude?
What has happened (reported events): FareHarbor experiences became discoverable and bookable in ChatGPT in April 2026, for members of the FareHarbor Distribution Network. Tripadvisor and Viator appeared in Claude and Alexa+ in April 2026, and Viator became a connected app in Google Gemini in July 2026, with booking completing on Viator. GetYourGuide became a connected app in Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude in September 2026. Google AI Mode hotel booking went live in the US in August 2026 through OTAs and major chains. In March 2026 OpenAI stepped back from in-chat checkout.
What it means: being bookable by an AI assistant today mostly means being in one of those distribution networks and paying its commission. That is a margin decision, not a technology decision. An independent lodge or direct-only operator can be recommended by an assistant and still lose the booking to whoever holds the transaction. How this settles is genuinely uncertain, so keep any commitment you make now reversible.
Contractual Commission, rate parity and cancellation terms sit in each platform's agreement. Read it (the agreement prompt above helps) before you join.
Do I have to tell guests I use AI?
Policy choice No enacted Alaska law requiring businesses to disclose AI use was found (secondary source, checked September 2026; medium confidence). Whether to disclose an AI chat assistant, use AI images in marketing, or draft review replies with AI is your call.
Recommendation Disclose AI chat, and do not use AI-generated images of Alaska to sell Alaska. Reason: authenticity is the product for a remote nature destination. Icelandair's 2025 “This is not AI” campaign pushed back on AI imagery of Iceland; its survey reported 52% of US respondents opposed AI in destination marketing, but that survey did not disclose its method, so treat it as directional only. AI for operations is low risk; AI that depicts the place is a reputational risk.
Can I use an AI voice to call or text guests?
Legal mandate The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. 227, applies. FCC Declaratory Ruling FCC 24-17 (released February 8, 2024) confirms that AI-generated voices are “artificial” voices, so AI voice calls require prior express consent. Automated marketing texts also fall under TCPA consent rules; the consent tier depends on content and technology, so check with counsel before you set one up.
Will AI replace my guides or front desk?
Not the part guests pay for. What it does well is the paperwork around that work: procedures, translations, replies, job posts, briefing scripts in draft. It does not know your terrain, your weather or your guests, and it cannot hold a guide license. The better use is getting seasonal staff productive faster, not cutting the people who run the trips.
Is it safe to paste my booking data or guest list in?
Strip it first. Names, contact details, passport and card data, signatures and medical notes stay out (see What never goes in the box). Counts, dates, trip types and anonymous patterns (“party of four, cruise guests, canceled for weather”) are fine and work just as well.
More from the session
Companion pages
The part that actually matters
What to do next week
-
Print the thing you made and put it where the work happens
Not in a binder. On the van visor, at the front desk, in the boat's dry box, taped inside the gear shed door. A procedure nobody can see is a procedure that does not exist. Have the qualified person initial the safety steps first.
-
Do one more before your seasonal staff arrive
Same context block, different job. Eight of these and you have a seasonal staff handbook that a new hire could actually follow, built from how your operation really runs rather than from a template.
-
Run the “what does AI say about you” check
Fifteen minutes, three tools. Fix every wrong fact at its source. Then do not buy anything for ninety days.
Free advising, no charge, no catch. The Alaska SBDC advises Alaska business owners at no cost. If you want help turning any of this into something real in your operation, that is what the service is for: aksbdc.org.
Where every number and rule on this page comes from
Sources
- US Census Bureau, BTOS, AI use by businesses (May 2026): census.gov
- Visual Capitalist, AI usage by businesses by state, 2026 (BTOS compilation): visualcapitalist.com
- Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, AI adoption in business (May 29, 2026): minneapolisfed.org
- Arival, tour and activity operators behind on AI (Nov 4, 2024): arival.travel
- GetYourGuide with Arival, operator survey (May 26, 2026): getyourguide.press
- Deloitte 2025 Holiday Travel Survey (Nov 12, 2025): prnewswire.com
- Phocuswright, search slips, AI surges (Nov 2025): phocuswright.com
- Allianz Partners / Ipsos via Hotel Dive (Jul 23, 2026): hoteldive.com
- Explore Fairbanks 2026 goals: News-Miner (Mar 3, 2026); KTVF (Sep 18, 2026)
- FTC, 16 CFR Part 465, consumer reviews and testimonials: Federal Register; FTC announcement
- FTC, 16 CFR Part 464, unfair or deceptive fees: FTC FAQ; eCFR
- Alaska Personal Information Protection Act, AS 45.48.010: FindLaw
- TCPA and FCC 24-17 on AI voices: FCC
- ADA Title II web rule compliance dates: Reed Smith; Title III status: adatitleiii.com
- Big game guiding, AS 08.54: commerce.alaska.gov; sport fishing guide registration: ADF&G
- Alaska AI legislation tracker (secondary, updated Sep 6, 2026): recordinglaw.com
- AI booking developments: Skift, OpenAI checkout; FareHarbor; PhocusWire, Viator; Tripadvisor; PhocusWire, Google AI Mode; GetYourGuide
- Icelandair campaign and survey (method not disclosed): Airways
Labels used on this page: Legal mandate a statute or regulation, cited. Contractual an agreement you have signed; check it. Policy choice your business decides. Recommendation judgment, with the reason and the cost of ignoring it. Nothing on this page is legal advice.