AI is quickly becoming one of the main ways people search, discover, and make decisions — including when they travel.
That’s exciting. But it also comes with a shift many of us are starting to notice.
When discovery is driven by generic AI systems, real expertise gets diluted. Local nuance, lived experience, and professional knowledge are flattened into average answers — often outside the influence of the people who actually know a place.
At the same time, AI brings real advantages: speed, flexibility, personalization, and access at scale.
The challenge isn’t AI vs. expertise. It’s how to connect the two — in a way that is safe, controlled, and grounded in real knowledge.
That’s exactly what we’ve been working on over the past year.
Together with leading destinations, we built the Joaia Guide Studio — a platform that enables organizations to create and operate their own AI Local Guides, based entirely on curated local expertise.
The first AI Local Guides are now live on their websites and in the Joaia app: www.joaia.app
This week we launch together with seven Swiss destination partners:
These partners were not just early adopters — they worked with us to turn the idea into a product that works in practice.
Using the Joaia Guide Studio, organizations create and operate their own AI Local Guides — embedded on their own channels.
With this launch, the Joaia Guide Studio is now publicly available.
Destinations, museums, tour operators, and other organizations can now use the platform to build and run AI Local Guides — grounded in their expertise and under their control.
Interested in creating AI Local Guides yourself? 👉 get in touch.
Hi Darius, thanks for sharing Joaia Guide Studio with the Travel Massive community.
Where does the name Joaia come from?
I tried the Lucerne (Luzern) example and it's very well polished. I like the ability to switch into the map mode. Although I did struggle at first to find the activation widget on the sidebar of the page.
Implementation wise, are you loading up the LLM context window prior to prompting the agent, or implementing an MCP for real-time queries?
Any interesting success stories from travellers using the tool "in the wild" that you can share?
Keep up the great work and wishing you every success with your project!
The name Joaia simply comes from Journey AI Assistant — no deep philosophical meaning behind it, unfortunately 😄
Thanks a lot for your feedback on the activation widget. We’re currently testing more dynamic frontend reactions based on user intent, but we’re still closely monitoring usage patterns before locking anything in.
The Local Guides run on our own AI engine with comprehensive agentic workflows. This allows creators to:
• ensure knowledge safety (the guide only knows what they explicitly provide), and • actively steer recommendations, instead of relying on generic AI behavior.
So far, we’re seeing that travelers mainly use the guides for inspiration and concrete service-related questions. Actual on-trip guidance is still less common — especially on the web solution, which makes sense given the context of use.
One interesting learning from the last two months of our silent launch: Most users don’t realize that these Local Guides are built entirely on curated local knowledge and only recommend places that real locals (destination employees) would suggest to a friend. Many still perceive them as a “regular chatbot with a character image.”
This is now the interesting part for us: iterating on the interface and experience so users naturally understand what makes these guides different.
Those are our latest takeaways so far. Curious to hear your thoughts on this as well.
Hi Darius, congrats on your work, it seems like a very well-done concept, and I’m looking forward to testing it live soon in Switzerland! I like the positioning as the second-best choice after a human guide :) All the best!
Thank you — really appreciate it 😊 You can already use the app worldwide with our AI Companion (general, uncurated knowledge), and in Switzerland you can also try some of the Local Guides, which are built on curated local knowledge by our destination partners.
Curious to hear what you think once you’ve had a chance to try it!
We created the video with Dayana from Nolling Studio (nollingstudio.com) - Voice Over and Background Music was done by us with Elevenlabs (easiest and fastest way to do)
+ 334 others joined this month
Comments
AI is quickly becoming one of the main ways people search, discover, and make decisions — including when they travel.
That’s exciting.
But it also comes with a shift many of us are starting to notice.
When discovery is driven by generic AI systems, real expertise gets diluted.
Local nuance, lived experience, and professional knowledge are flattened into average answers — often outside the influence of the people who actually know a place.
At the same time, AI brings real advantages:
speed, flexibility, personalization, and access at scale.
The challenge isn’t AI vs. expertise.
It’s how to connect the two — in a way that is safe, controlled, and grounded in real knowledge.
That’s exactly what we’ve been working on over the past year.
Together with leading destinations, we built the Joaia Guide Studio — a platform that enables organizations to create and operate their own AI Local Guides, based entirely on curated local expertise.
The first AI Local Guides are now live on their websites and in the Joaia app: www.joaia.app
This week we launch together with seven Swiss destination partners:
• Zürich Tourismus — www.zuerich.com
• Basel Tourismus — www.basel.com
• Luzern Tourismus — www.luzern.com
• Graubünden Ferien — www.graubuenden.ch
• Chur Tourismus — www.chur.graubuenden.ch
• Graubünden Viva — www.graubuendenviva.ch
• TESSVM (Engadin & Southern Valleys) — www.engadin.com
These partners were not just early adopters — they worked with us to turn the idea into a product that works in practice.
Using the Joaia Guide Studio, organizations create and operate their own AI Local Guides — embedded on their own channels.
With this launch, the Joaia Guide Studio is now publicly available.
Destinations, museums, tour operators, and other organizations can now use the platform to build and run AI Local Guides — grounded in their expertise and under their control.
Interested in creating AI Local Guides yourself? 👉 get in touch.
Hi Darius, thanks for sharing Joaia Guide Studio with the Travel Massive community.
Where does the name Joaia come from?
I tried the Lucerne (Luzern) example and it's very well polished. I like the ability to switch into the map mode. Although I did struggle at first to find the activation widget on the sidebar of the page.
Implementation wise, are you loading up the LLM context window prior to prompting the agent, or implementing an MCP for real-time queries?
Any interesting success stories from travellers using the tool "in the wild" that you can share?
Keep up the great work and wishing you every success with your project!
Hey Ian,
Quick context on a few of your points 🙂
The name Joaia simply comes from Journey AI Assistant — no deep philosophical meaning behind it, unfortunately 😄
Thanks a lot for your feedback on the activation widget. We’re currently testing more dynamic frontend reactions based on user intent, but we’re still closely monitoring usage patterns before locking anything in.
The Local Guides run on our own AI engine with comprehensive agentic workflows. This allows creators to:
• ensure knowledge safety (the guide only knows what they explicitly provide), and
• actively steer recommendations, instead of relying on generic AI behavior.
So far, we’re seeing that travelers mainly use the guides for inspiration and concrete service-related questions. Actual on-trip guidance is still less common — especially on the web solution, which makes sense given the context of use.
One interesting learning from the last two months of our silent launch:
Most users don’t realize that these Local Guides are built entirely on curated local knowledge and only recommend places that real locals (destination employees) would suggest to a friend. Many still perceive them as a “regular chatbot with a character image.”
This is now the interesting part for us: iterating on the interface and experience so users naturally understand what makes these guides different.
Those are our latest takeaways so far. Curious to hear your thoughts on this as well.
Hi Darius, congrats on your work, it seems like a very well-done concept, and I’m looking forward to testing it live soon in Switzerland! I like the positioning as the second-best choice after a human guide :) All the best!
Hey Gonçalo,
Thank you — really appreciate it 😊
You can already use the app worldwide with our AI Companion (general, uncurated knowledge), and in Switzerland you can also try some of the Local Guides, which are built on curated local knowledge by our destination partners.
Curious to hear what you think once you’ve had a chance to try it!
Amazing concept! How did you manage to create your introduction video?
Thanks Sébastien :)
We created the video with Dayana from Nolling Studio (nollingstudio.com) - Voice Over and Background Music was done by us with Elevenlabs (easiest and fastest way to do)