GEC NEWS WIREBuzzAR, a Singapore-based mixed reality and AI company is working with the Saudi Tourism Authority to integrate BuzzAR’s AI tour guide, BAE (Buzz AI Experience) to digitalise the country’s hospitality industry. With US$1.16 million from HSBC, BuzzAR has 4x their revenue in Saudi Arabia and is on track to bring in US$3.2 billion of tourism dollars to Saudi Arabia by 2026.
BuzzAR was founded by Bell Beh and Ken Lim in 2018 and has hit significant milestones since, including a US$3.8 million fundraise in 2022, and the launch of BAE, the world’s first AI travel companion in April this year. BuzzAR saw the MENA region as having the potential to be a prime tourist destination and began expanding into the market in 2022. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) Vision 2030 aims to diversify the economy, with a US$64b investment plan geared to help the entertainment sector contribute more than US$23b, or 3% of GDP by 2030.
100 million tourists are targeted for 2030 and Saudi Arabia is facing a shortage of registered tour guides. With BAE, tour guides can handle bigger groups, target a wider audience, and free up their bandwidth to further personalise services and enhance the tourist experience. BuzzAR acquired US$1.16 million through the HSBC New Economy Fund to catalyse their expansion.
“BuzzAR is committed to digitalising the Saudi Arabian hospitality industry through BAE. The company has been breaking boundaries since their inception, and we are impressed with their expansion plans. Their track record in finding success in other markets makes them the ideal hospitality tech partner for companies and governments in the MENA region. I expect them to scale rapidly given the huge growth in tourism in the region.” says Ian Wilson, CEO of Wilson Innovation Lab, ex-head of Non-Gaming Operations at Marina Bay Sands and BuzzAR’s first angel investor.
Since HSBC’s fund injection, BuzzAR has 4X its revenue in Saudi Arabia and made key hires, growing a dedicated team to open up tourism channels connecting APAC to MENA. This development helped cement a partnership between BuzzAR and the Saudi Tourism Authority, to further develop BAE (Buzz AI Experience) for the MENA region. BAE is trained to relate to the emotions of each user to be a digital tour guide. Beyond offering storytelling and personalised content discovery for travellers, she has built-in booking and payment functionalities to seamlessly handle transactions for travellers on the go.
BuzzAR together with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) projects that BAE’s refinement and deeper integration can bring in 1 million travellers to account for US$3.2 billion of tourism dollars by 2026.
