Club Med, a pioneer of premium all-inclusive vacations, has launched a new stage in its digital transformation with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). This forms part of one of its strategic pillars: “Happy Digital”, which aims to enhance their customer experience and employees’ working time through the smart use of technology.
In 2022, Club Med created its own Data Factory, a platform for data management. Since March 2023, Club Med has implemented a generative AI strategy (AI that uses existing content for learning purpose to generate new content – texts, sounds, images and more) to continue enriching the customer experience and free up the time of its teams to focus on value-driven tasks.
“Generative artificial intelligence (AI), powered by a substantial collection of data, is taking us into a new era of innovations. Our strategic choice towards customer-oriented digitalisation and direct to consumer distribution has enabled us to create a volume of high-quality data. Thanks to generative AI, we are able to reinforce all of our strategic pillars: from individualising our customer communications to improving our recruitment processes and developing innovative solutions to intensify our CSR commitments, thus reinforcing our Happy Digital positioning,” says Quentin Briard, Chief Executive Officer Marketing, Digital & Technologies at Club Med.
Club Med: technology at the customer’s service
Club Med has included the “Happy Digital” pillar in the core of its strategy, dedicated to using and developing technology to help customers. At Club Med, digital tools are designed to free up customers from the organisational constraints of their vacations and make their user experience easier. Digital technology must eliminate inconveniences, enhance the vacation experience, and not dehumanise the relationship between Club Med and its customers.
Data is at the core of Club Med’s digital strategy
In 2022, Club Med began a major transformation by rethinking its Data Factory, aggregating 2.1 billion data points of commercial, customer and operational data owned by the company. This progress, which is enabled thanks to AI, has transformed the way Club Med manages its information. Currently, over 5 million new data points per day are processed in near real-time.
Generative AI to enhance both customer and employee experiences
Progressively implemented since September 2023, generative AI facilitates the access of information for Club Med teams, offering precious time savings in their daily tasks. Club Med is also exploring the modernisation of existing software systems using generative AI to evolve towards more modern computer languages.
“We are developing the multimodality of AI, which represents above all an ability to personalise interactions with our customers, but also gains efficiency and precious time for our teams. For instance, with the automation of low value-added tasks such as indexing and automatically sorting the 50,000+ images we own. In addition, as a global brand, we capitalise on generative AI’s translation ability to translate marketing content for our international customers,” notes Siddhartha Chatterjee, Chief Data Officer at Club Med.
Club Med is currently in the process of scoping and implementing several LLM’s (large language models) for different use-cases, including Claude AI from Anthropic, in collaboration with the startup Allobrain. “Claude AI, is based on a LLM, a deep learning model that has been trained on large ranges of textual datasets to understand and generate human like texts. At Club Med, Claude AI has been trained to provide personalised answers in real time, especially to questions from our sales team about our resorts. By the end of 2023, progressively offered this conversational experience to our customers in selected markets for live use, helping them save time in their research,” Chatterjee adds.
Generative AI should represent an asset for Club Med, which opens new doors in its quest for innovation, customer consideration and growth.
An ethical approach
Club Med, which has placed human at the heart of its DNA since its creation, is developing strong ethics and deontology on these subjects linked to new technologies, positioning itself as an “early adopter” regarding artificial intelligence.
To ensure that the deployment of AI at Club Med is both ethical and controlled, Club Med has created an AI ethics committee, led by Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Professor at Sorbonne University’s Faculty of Science, computer scientist and philosopher, specializing in AI and digital ethics.
This committee ensures consistency between ethical requirements and innovation.
Data protection is also a priority for Club Med. A partnership with the French company S3NS, a subsidiary of Thales in partnership with Google Cloud, has been established to ensure a transition to data hosting located in Europe and encrypted by S3NS, in order to meet security and RGPD requirements.
About Club Med:
Club Med, founded in 1950 by Gérard Blitz, is the pioneer of the all-inclusive concept, operating nearly 70 premium resorts in stunning locations around the world including North and South America, Caribbean, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean. Each Club Med resort features authentic local style and comfortably upscale accommodations, superior sports programming and activities, enriching children’s programs, gourmet dining, and warm and friendly service by its world-renown staff with legendary hospitality skills, an all-encompassing energy and diverse backgrounds.
Club Med operates in more than 30 countries and continues to maintain its authentic Club Med spirit with an international staff of more than 23,000 employees from more than 110 different nationalities. Led by its pioneering spirit, Club Med continues to grow and adapt to each market with three to five new resort openings or renovations per year, including a new mountain resort annually.