At Edinburgh Futures Institute, we connect students with partners across industry, culture, and the public sector to co-create solutions to complex challenges. MSc Data and AI Ethics student Chloe White exemplified this approach through her Futures Project: a collaboration with VisitScotland, supported by Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Tourism, Travel and Festivals Sector Lead, Joshua Ryan-Saha.
Addressing visitor flow imbalances
Scotland’s tourism industry is thriving, but uneven visitor numbers across regions, attractions, and seasons create growing pressures on infrastructure, communities, and the environment. Chloe’s project explored how artificial intelligence could be used responsibly to support visitor management, addressing both its potential and its ethical implications.
Her research combined a review of international best practice with 26 in-depth interviews with Scottish tourism stakeholders, European destination managers, and technology experts. This approach ensured that the recommendations from the research project reflect both academic insights and local realities.
A toolkit to inform ethical AI in tourism
The project culminated in ‘Leveraging AI for Visitor Management in Scotland: A Toolkit’ – a guide created primarily for VisitScotland and other Scottish tourism councils. The toolkit serves as an accessible overview of available AI approaches, outlining what can be achieved, key ethical considerations, and Chloe’s short- and long-term recommendations.
This guide was designed to help VisitScotland make informed decisions about whether and how to pursue future AI initiatives in line with their resources and priorities.
Each of the five ‘tool cards’ evaluates AI applications for innovation potential and identifies corresponding ethical challenges – including privacy, misinformation, bias, community impact, and environmental sustainability. The toolkit was also anonymised and shared with interview participants, ensuring transparency and inclusivity in the research process.
Recommendations for the future
The Toolkit recommends that VisitScotland prioritise blending chatbot functions with personalised itinerary building. This approach has the potential to:
- Encourage sustainable travel choices
- Promote lesser-known sites
- Extend visitor stays
- Help manage pressures on busy areas
At the same time, Chloe’s research highlights practical barriers to implementation, including: the cost of data collection, varying technical capacity across tourism organisations, and the challenge of visitor engagement with digital tools.
Crucially, the project emphasises that community participation and transparency are essential. Without engaging local residents and being clear about how recommendations are generated, AI risks shifting problems rather than solving them.
Creating real-world impact
Chloe’s Futures Project demonstrates how learning at the Futures Institute provides the opportunity to learn with experts and create real-world impact. Following her MSc submission, Chloe produced an updated version of the toolkit, which was subsequently shared with VisitScotland.
Chloe White, MSc Data and AI Ethics:
“Working with VisitScotland and Futures Institute Tourism Sector Lead Josh Ryan-Saha was a highlight of my master’s degree. This experience not only enriched the quality and relevance of my research, but also deepened my appreciation for the importance of interdisciplinary partnerships in developing responsible technology. Ultimately, the project demonstrated that the importance of bridging academic insight with practical application can lead to innovative and impactful solutions.”
Joshua Ryan-Saha, Tourism Sector Lead, Edinburgh Futures Institute:
“Chloe’s work is a brilliant example of the Futures Institute’s ethos, blending technical innovation with social responsibility. Chloe was able to speak to global leaders in the field of AI and tourism and synthesised this experience into a practical toolkit that will be genuinely useful for tourism leaders making technology decisions.”
Fiona Carruthers, Insight Manager, VisitScotland:
“In 2025, VisitScotland created a new Strategy and Competitive Intelligence Directorate, and this was a great time to partner with Edinburgh Futures Institute to explore how we can leverage AI for sustainable Scottish tourism. We valued the opportunity to gain fresh ideas on opportunities for using AI in different ways for visitor management.
Working closely with a student studying MSc Data and AI Ethics brought a fresh perspective and technical AI understanding. The collaboration was a great way to share our sustainable approach to tourism development and discuss visitor management opportunities and challenges being faced by the industry in Scotland. We also discussed ethical concerns and the feasibility of putting AI ideas into practise. The insights delivered will help our teams assess opportunities going forward as we drive forward sustainable growth for Scottish tourism, and we very much appreciated the recommendations put forward by the student.
We were hugely impressed by the student’s ability to summarise key findings into an easy to read and well-structured toolkit which is perfect for technical and non-technical audiences. The toolkit provides a lasting legacy of this collaboration which we will utilise as an excellent summary of this project.”
View the Toolkit: Leveraging AI for Visitor Management in Scotland: A Toolkit
Learn more about our Student Challenge Projects
If you’d like to get involved with our Student Challenge projects, get in touch with Katie Murray at katie.murray@ed.ac.uk
