When soccer fans head to the FIFA World Cup starting in June, they’ll have a new option for finding things to do, places to stay, and ways to get around in various host cities: artificial intelligence.
Some visitors will likely turn to general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, with recent studies finding they’ve become popular travel-planning tools despite the risk they’ll present outdated or false information. But multiple host cities are also deploying specially developed AI assistants and virtual concierges they say will deliver curated, relevant, and up-to-date facts and guidance for visitors.
Frisco, Texas—home to Toyota Stadium, which is serving as a World Cup base camp for Sweden’s national team—has worked with the AI travel planning service GuideGeek on an AI assistant called Frankie that can answer questions about hotels, restaurants, shopping, and activities in the Dallas-area city. The bot launched last year after a couple of months of work, ensuring it could give correct and comprehensive answers based on data sources like the official Visit Frisco tourism website, says Cori Powers, director of marketing and communications for Visit Frisco.
“We really wanted to ensure that it was conversational and fun and would make trip planning to Frisco convenient,” says Powers.
Recently, Powers says, the bot has seen a rise of questions about World Cup planning, along with other questions related to summer vacations. Noting the questions users ask Frankie has helped the organization add relevant copy to its website—which in turn feeds back into Frankie—and social media channels.
“One of the biggest values for the tourism boards is identifying where those content gaps are,” says Greg Oates, director of AI advocacy at GuideGeek and its parent organization, Matador Network. “If a tourism board has seen that a lot of people are asking about something specific and it’s not being answered in the website, then they can update that content or expand on that.”
For better or worse, GuideGeek’s city-specific bots are designed to steer off-topic questions back to their sponsoring cities, which means Frankie reflects even some questions about the greater Dallas area back to answers about Frisco itself. But the bots also have features that ordinary tourism websites don’t, including the conversational interface, map integrations to highlight relevant sites, and the ability to serve up relevant images. Additionally, GuideGeek bots, which serve more than 30 locations and brands around the world from Aruba to Manitoba, can answer questions in dozens of languages.
“If you’re coming from somewhere and English isn’t your native language, you just talk to GuideGeek in whatever your language might be,” Oates says. “GuideGeek understands that [and] will respond in kind.”
Already, Visit Frisco has seen a burst of queries in languages like Spanish, German, and Mandarin.
And GuideGeek’s multilingual capability has also proven useful in New York City, where NYC Tourism + Conventions has deployed two GuideGeek-powered bots: Ellis, targeting business event planners, and Libby, aimed at tourists and travelers visiting the city. The tourism organization deployed Libby last year, motivated in part by the World Cup, and the fact that while its website is only available in five languages, GuideGeek’s AI can support more than 60. Libby, which is available through the Tourism + Conventions website and through WhatsApp, quickly proved popular, says Nancy Mammana, chief marketing officer at NYC Tourism + Conventions.
“When we launched it in June, it really started to catch fire quickly, and it’s become a very important channel for us,” she says. “We’ve seen over 45,000 conversations happen with the tool in 68 languages from 178 countries, and over 122,000 queries, which is great.”
Libby, which is advertised with QR code-embedded marketing material throughout the city, has even been embraced by locals for some events, like Restaurant Week, Mammana says.
It also won’t be the only AI bot available to help navigate the New York area around the World Cup, which in addition to potentially heavy crowds will see changes to normal transit patterns, along with special deals at restaurants and exhibits at area museums. An “Official NYNJ World Cup Concierge” will also be available with the backing of the official FIFA World Cup New York New Jersey host committee, built with a company called Neurun that got its start building AI guides for running events like marathons.
The AI concierge, which will be accessible through the host committee website and other websites that embed its web page widget with host committee approval, is designed to be a single “official source of truth” for the World Cup events, says Bruce Revman, cohost city manager of the FIFA World Cup 26 New York New Jersey host committee. That means that it will have access to up-to-date transit info, highlighted through an integration with Google Maps, along with other verified information about what’s going on in the area during the World Cup events. Users will also be able to ask for general New York City information, like opening hours at area attractions, or use the tool to locate places to watch World Cup games and find special deals available during the tournament, Revman says.
In addition to testing its AI concierges by hand, Neurun deploys additional AI agents that pose questions of the bots and grade and record their answers, says Neurun’s cofounder and CEO, Cade Netscher.
“It’ll record the activity that it does, so we can watch it, ask different questions, see what happens, make sure it looks appropriate,” he says. “And then we can fill in the gaps.”
Like Libby, the concierge is likely to have uses beyond the World Cup. Revman says it’s expected to be promoted around events like Sail 4th 250, a celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary this July focusing on tall ships.
And while AI travel planning tools are sometimes criticized for taking the human element out of vacationing, replacing personal research and expert advice with computer-generated itineraries and fact sheets, Revman emphasizes that questions will be based on official information derived from human expertise, whether users are asking about security protocols, sightseeing options, or travel logistics.
“It’s been a fun time, working with the host committee and their partners in this,” says Netscher. “You see AI headlines—everyone’s terrified of AI replacing human connection and everything—and we think with this technology we can leverage AI to enhance human connection.”