These AI bots want to help fans navigate World Cup host cities

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 Chat GPT and Claude, with recent studies finding they’ve become popular travel-planning tools despite the risk they’ll present outdated or false information.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.”