About the Business Queensland tourism virtual assistant

Note: The Tourism business AI virtual assistant is currently in a trial and evaluation phase.

The Business Queensland (BQ) Tourism AI virtual assistant is a newly launched digital initiative to support businesses operating in the Queensland tourism sector.

The virtual assistant is new, and we're evaluating its performance to help improve how it works and decide whether to roll it out to other areas of the BQ website.

Currently, the virtual assistant is designed to accept questions and provide responses in English only. Using other languages may significantly impact the quality and relevance of the responses you receive.

AI (artificial intelligence) technologies may make mistakes so always check the source content via the web links provided in responses or seek specialist professional advice.

The BQ Tourism AI virtual assistant has been developed by the Queensland Government through collaboration between the Department of Tourism and Sport and the Department of Customer Services, Open Data and Small and Family Business.

  • The virtual assistant has been developed and designed to support businesses operating in the Queensland tourism sector by connecting them to information and resources from the BQ website and other carefully selected and trusted websites.

    It offers a different way for BQ website users to locate the information and content they need by asking questions of the virtual assistant, viewing the responses, and following the links provided to view the source web content.

  • The virtual assistant supports questions relating to the operation of businesses within the Queensland tourism sector. Keep questions focused on topics relating to starting, running, or growing a tourism business.

    Use follow-up questions in your chat to get a more specific answer (the virtual assistant will remember what you've previously asked for).

    Visit the links provided to the source information the virtual assistant has used to provide a response, especially where accuracy of information is vitally important (e.g. health and safety, requirements for licences and permits to operate etc).

  • The virtual assistant will not ask you for personal information (e.g. your name, address, phone number, bank details). Do not enter any of this information into the chat.

    The only personal information we ask for is your email address if you've requested a transcript record of your conversation with the virtual assistant.

    View our privacy terms for more information about how we collect and manage data.

    If you use a shared device in your business (laptop, desktop, tablet, etc) we strongly recommend you don't include any personal, sensitive or confidential information as the record of these chats will be retained for a short period if the chat is reopened from the same device.

  • We've instructed the virtual assistant to only provide responses that are based on the content of carefully selected and trusted websites.

    The virtual assistant refreshes its knowledge of the content on these websites regularly, but information is not updated in real time. Responses may contain out-of-date or historic information.

    It may make mistakes in trying to interpret your requests or in trying to summarise the source information it is referring to. Always check up-to-date information from official sources, particularly where accurate information is essential (e.g. health and safety, legal and financial matters).

    Sources of information that the virtual assistant has used to respond to your request are included. Visit these links to view the complete information provided.

    View our disclaimer for more information.

  • At the end of your chat, you can ask the virtual assistant to send you a record (transcript) of your conversation. You'll need to provide your email address to receive the transcript.

    Note that the processing time to format and deliver this to your email account may take up to 2 hours. Remember to check your email spam folder.

  • The virtual assistant records and securely stores chat conversations.

    Our secure storage and management of these conversations are managed in line with our obligations and requirements under:

  • At the end of your chat, you'll have the opportunity to rate the experience.

    Five stars indicates an excellent experience, and 1 star indicates a poor experience.

    You can also provide comments in your feedback, which may help us make future improvements to the service.