The Complete Guide to Using AI in the Retail Industry in Puerto Rico in 2025

Puerto Rico's retail scene in 2025 is shifting fast: more than 1.5 million island shoppers drove roughly $1.82B in online purchases, mobile use sits at 98% and nearly half of consumers have tried AI tools - so AI is now a practical revenue lever, not a gimmick.

Local retailers can use AI for omnichannel personalization, smarter demand forecasting and conversational shopping assistants that convert social buzz into sales - see how generative models map to retail use cases in Publicis Sapient's generative AI retail use cases (Publicis Sapient, 2025).

Puerto Rico's Digital Trends study underscores the social-plus-mobile pathway to purchase: Puerto Rico digital spending and mobile commerce study (2025), and practical training - like Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work bootcamp syllabus (Nucamp) - can help island teams turn those signals into concrete tools: chatbots, inventory forecasting, and dynamic offers that prevent stockouts and lift AOV.

“Although there has been a slight deceleration compared to previous years, eCommerce remains strong.”

Puerto Rico's retail opportunity sits at the intersection of island tourism and fast, mobile-first shopping: San Juan is showing up as a top domestic search destination, which means visitor-driven demand often arrives in tight, event-driven waves that local stores and e‑commerce teams must be ready for (San Juan 2025 search trends - TravelAgeWest).

That pattern makes data-first personalization, hyper-local storytelling and mobile-savvy experiences essential - think digital passes, timed offers, and tailored promos that match spikes in foot traffic or festival calendars (Emerging tourism marketing trends and mobile passes - Bandwango).

On the operations side, island logistics are a real constraint, so practical tools matter: retailers can reduce stockouts with simple, island-aware reorder plans (for example, a Google Sheets forecast tuned to San Juan transit times) while automating back-office work and investing in reskilling to free staff for higher-value roles (Nucamp inventory forecast guide to prevent stockouts at San Juan port).

Put simply: combine tourism-aware marketing, smart inventory controls, and targeted workforce training to turn seasonal surges into predictable revenue instead of missed sales.

“Ultimately, sustainable travel is about a lot of the things guests cannot see, but travelers can rest assured that their stay is not further contributing to single-use plastic use or food waste by booking with brands that have innovative practices and policies in place.”

Core AI use cases for Puerto Rico retailers center on connecting every touchpoint into a single, timely experience: AI-powered recommendation engines and generative content lift cart size and brand affinity across web, mobile and in‑store screens, while conversational shopping assistants and WhatsApp bots handle local language, service hours and tourist-driven surges; see NVIDIA's work on AI-powered omnichannel management for examples of personalized recommendations and shopping assistants.

On the operations side, omnichannel-aware allocation and size optimization can place inventory where island demand will actually be fulfilled - reducing split shipments and lowering fulfillment costs for chains that serve both San Juan storefronts and strong online orders (antuit.ai's omnichannel allocation explains the approach).

For smaller island brands, simple predictive tools still win: a Google Sheets inventory forecast tuned to San Juan transit times can prevent port-related stockouts and turn festival-week spikes into sold‑through success rather than empty shelves.

Success depends on orchestration more than flashy models - align timing, measure cross-channel attribution, and offer clear privacy-forward opt-ins so personalization feels helpful, not intrusive; when those pieces click, AI turns fragmented interactions into a single, revenue-generating journey for Puerto Rico shoppers.

“Customers expect the same brand experience online and in-store, and that requires AI-fueled consistency across systems.”

Puerto Rico's supply chains become truly intelligent when island-specific constraints - port lead times, tourist-driven spikes, and multi‑island fulfillment routes - are baked into AI models that do more than predict demand: they prescribe where to hold safety stock and when to push replenishment.

Tools like Peak's dynamic inventory planning bring AI-driven reorder points and safety‑stock optimization to each distribution center, helping stores hit service targets without bloating inventory, while Manhattan Active's demand forecasting adds multi‑echelon simulation and outside‑in signals (seasonality, events, weather) so planners can test

what‑if festival surges

before they happen.

For smaller teams, the same principles scale down: a Google Sheets forecast tuned to San Juan transit times and island rhythms can prevent common port-related stockouts and turn short-term tourist waves into predictable revenue.

The payoff is practical and immediate - fewer emergency airfreights, more on‑shelf availability during peak weekends, and freed working capital - so inventory becomes a growth lever instead of a cost center, with AI handling the heavy lifting and humans running the exceptions.

Learn more about Peak's Dynamic Inventory and Manhattan Active demand forecasting to see how island retailers can move from reactive restocking to proactive, measurable resilience.

Puerto Rico retailers can turn storefronts into intelligent, loss‑resilient spaces by pairing AI‑powered video analytics with smart checkout checks and clear operational playbooks: real‑time computer vision flags loitering, concealment or unpaid items at self‑checkout, while edge‑deployed cameras and POS integration give managers the instant evidence they need to act during busy San Juan weekends or festival surges - see how Pep Boys scaled DVR clarity and cut shrinkage beyond the industry 2% average in a staged rollout (Pep Boys DVR technology retail shrinkage case study), and how Veesion's AI layer converts camera feeds into push alerts for staff within 30 seconds to intercept incidents and save checkout time (Veesion AI-enabled CCTV shoplifting prevention case study).

The practical payoff for island teams is obvious: fewer mysterious stock losses, faster checkout recovery, and measurable reductions in emergency staffing costs when technology empowers timely human intervention.

“The i3 DVR offers much greater clarity than VHS and it is easy to maneuver throughout the systems, to search, and to program the information our stores need… you can see exactly what happened on February 1 in an outlet at 6:24 pm.”

Generative AI now makes it practical for Puerto Rico brands to produce thousands of on‑brand, discovery‑friendly product pages and ads without hiring an army of writers or photographers: multimodal models can turn a single product photo into rich, SEO‑optimized descriptions, auto‑generated A+ content, and even contextual images showing a product in a shopper's space (or a San Juan beach scene) to boost conversion and confidence - see AWS's work on image‑to‑text, image search and image generation for retail use cases (AWS generative AI image-to-text and image generation for retail).

For bilingual, mobile‑first shoppers on the island, platforms that localize copy and adapt tone automatically save time and improve relevance across Spanish and English audiences (read Amplience on personalized, localized product descriptions Amplience AI personalized product descriptions and localization).

Marketplaces are already lowering the barrier to scale - Amazon's Enhance My Listing and A+ Content show how bulk listing generation and AI imagery can lift listing quality and create richer storefronts without heavy agency costs (Amazon Enhance My Listing and A+ Content generative AI for sellers).

The lesson for Puerto Rico retailers is simple: pair multimodal AI with brand rules and human review so content scales fast, stays authentic, and speaks directly to both locals and visitors who make impulse purchases during peak tourism weekends.

“Listings used to take me an hour, but with Gen AI, I just upload photos and have content generated in under 15 minutes.”

Virtual assistants and digital humans are becoming the island's frontline for retail CX - always-on, bilingual, and tuned to the peaks and valleys of Puerto Rico's tourism-driven demand - so deploy them as multilingual, omnichannel agents that meet shoppers where they are (WhatsApp, SMS, web chat, or voice) and hand off to humans smoothly when needed; platforms like Kore.ai AI for Service platform show how AI agents, agent-assist tools, and automated QA speed resolution, boost retention, and scale during festival weekends, while local partners such as Vex AI Puerto Rico artificial intelligence company can integrate assistants with POS, ERP and loyalty systems so a single chat can check in-store stock, reserve an item, and offer a localized discount in Spanish or English.

Good conversational design and careful integrations (intent-aware routing, knowledge-base access, and privacy-first data handling) turn virtual assistants into revenue drivers - imagine a tired late-night visitor using WhatsApp to reserve sunscreen for pickup before sunrise: that tiny, frictionless moment adds up across thousands of visitors.

Start with clear, measurable use cases (order status, product finders, returns, and proactive outreach), pair automated self-service with real-time agent guidance, and iterate - these are the practical steps that move AI from novelty to a dependable, island-ready service channel.

“A significant 84% of local organizations report having applied AI in at least one business function. More importantly, results suggest that AI is starting to deliver value to Puerto Rican organizations.”

Physical AI - robots, autonomous systems and high‑fidelity simulation - offers Puerto Rico retailers a way to tame island complexity: use digital twins and simulation to rehearse warehouse layouts, port delays and multi‑island fulfillment scenarios before a single pallet moves, deploy shelf‑scanning robots and autonomous checkouts to keep San Juan shops stocked during festival surges, and outfit frontline teams with embedded, voice‑activated agentic AI headsets that flag low stock, report theft and pull up loyalty offers hands‑free (so a single headset command on a crowded festival night can trigger a replenishment workflow without leaving the sales floor).

These capabilities are already shipping in retail pilots - from shelf robots and autonomous pricing to headsets that execute no‑code workflows - yet they depend on hardware, sensor fusion and energy profiles that imec says must evolve for safe, reliable physical AI, and on careful governance to set operational guardrails.

Treat simulations as the dress rehearsal, agentic agents as the stage crew, and humans as directors - together they can turn unpredictable tourism spikes into consistent sales and fewer emergency freight runs (Imec: agentic and physical AI hardware challenges, BusinessWire: X‑Hoppers embedded agentic AI for voice workflows).

“x-hoppers has been a game-changer from the previous technology used in stores at Heron Foods.”

Puerto Rico retailers ready to move from experiments to production should build a pragmatic stack that matches island realities: edge devices and vision AI at stores, GPU-accelerated model training in the cloud, and lightweight tools for small teams to start fast.

Start with proven building blocks - NVIDIA Metropolis and Jetson-powered edge analytics for real-time video insights at busy San Juan storefronts, Merlin-style recommender workflows for session-based personalization, and Omniverse/DGX Cloud for simulation and scalable training - so teams can test “what-if” port delays and festival surges in a digital twin before a pallet moves.

Combine vendor tech with low-cost local practices: a Google Sheets inventory forecast tuned to San Juan transit times can prevent near-term stockouts while staff complete formal reskilling.

Tap available programs and courses (NVIDIA DLI, Connect, and developer labs) alongside public–private training partnerships to close skills gaps; the result is a layered, island-aware tech stack that delivers immediate wins (fewer emergency airfreights, better on-shelf availability) and a clear path to more advanced AI like multilingual assistants and agentic store workflows.

Learn how vision AI and edge-to-cloud patterns apply to retail operations with NVIDIA Metropolis and explore scalable cloud AI with NVIDIA DGX Cloud, then use simple island-tailored tools to get value quickly.

“By bringing real-time analysis of thousands of data points together with unlimited AI computing and visualization power and putting this solution into the hands of the people operating the plant, Sight Machine, through its collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, is delivering the next generation of capability for entire systems of production.”

Closing the loop on AI in Puerto Rico retail means treating momentum and risk as two sides of the same coin: local adoption is already high - V2A Consulting finds 84% of Puerto Rican organizations have applied AI - but the island's biggest vulnerabilities are practical, not theoretical (59% report a lack of in‑house expertise; 48% lack understanding), and regulatory complexity is rising as states and territories pursue new AI laws, creating a patchwork retailers must navigate (see the V2A report: V2A Consulting - State of AI in Puerto Rico 2024 and analysis: The Beckage Firm - AI Governance in the States (June 2025)).

Next steps are concrete: run small, measurable pilots with built‑in impact assessments and transparency rules; require human oversight and bias audits on high‑risk customer or hiring uses; map vendor contracts to expected disclosures so cross‑jurisdiction compliance is repeatable; and invest in practical reskilling so models don't outpace people - courses like Nucamp's Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - syllabus & registration are a fast route to workplace fluency.

Prioritize simple, auditable controls first (logging, privacy notices, opt‑outs) and tie governance to business KPIs so AI becomes a reliable tool - not a liability - during busy San Juan weekends or major retail promotions.

“A significant 84% of local organizations report having applied AI in at least one business function. More importantly, results suggest that AI is starting to deliver value to Puerto Rican organizations.”