Going on vacation with a chatbot 05 30 2024

You might be surprised to learn there are many ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) is being embraced in the travel and tourism industry. Most of this travel information already lives on the internet or in books, meaning that it has likely already been incorporated into a chatbot’s training data. “There are probably thousands of places on webpages that describe a trip to Boston,” Kathleen Creel, a professor of philosophy and computer science at Northeastern University, told me. “There’s travel sites. There’s people on Reddit talking about living in Boston and what they like.” An AI tool trained on all of this data can process them to spit out a personalized itinerary. Well, no, we are making huge investments because you won’t be able to create these without working on it to make it happen. Some of our customer service stuff is already going through, so we’re able to do simpler things with that.

And it’s thinking these things through and dealing with lawyers and people who are [in the] public affairs field. We never had a public affairs department until relatively recently, and our legal department’s expanded a great deal. Part of the problem, though, is that we prefer to spend that money on hiring engineers and create better services. And unfortunately, when we have to spend a lot more money — not just with hiring lawyers, but hiring outside counsel, et cetera — that’s money that can’t be used to make better products and services for society.

Such features will only accelerate the industry’s growth as it lowers the barriers to travel, meaning AI is set to be a boon for the industry. AI technologies have a wide range of applications in business, and many publicly traded companies now use AI tools. Hopper, for example, uses machine learning algorithms to predict where airline prices are headed so users know when to buy. Its database uses trillions of historical flight prices to guide its predictions. Other sites, like Booking’s Kayak, also use algorithms to let users know whether they should buy tickets then or wait.

The travel industry is now keenly investigating how generative AI can be applied to enhance customer service, optimize marketing, and promote sustainability. Beyond much hype and headlines in recent weeks, the immediate opportunity with generative AI in travel planning seems to be helping in the pre-planning phase, before travelers really know what they want or do not want. We can also expect young companies to leverage this tech to its fullest because they are agile enough to experiment and push the boundaries of established processes.

Forecast annual percentage increase in hotels using chatbots worldwide in 2022, by hotel type

As part of its recently-signed memorandum of understanding with the Saudi Tourism Authority, the hotel company said it would be running campaigns to promote various destinations within the country. The agreement provides a framework to develop customized promotions, joint marketing campaigns, and promotion through loyalty programs. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. IHG currently operates 37 hotels across five brands in Saudi Arabia. With 31 hotels in the development pipeline set to open within the next three to five years, the hotel company plans to add over 10,000 rooms to its portfolio in the country. Red Sea Global, a company fully owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is exploring the possibility of a public market offering, with plans to launch as early as 2026.

ChatGPT suggested I wrap up my day by getting a “sweet treat” at Milk Bar, a chain of high-end bakeries from the New York pastry chef Christina Tosi. The same way I bet that people in the 1890s could never envision that in 30 years, there’ll be these manned machines in the air flying around. So, in terms of valuation, I’m not going to try and make a guess about whether it is a bubble or not. I do know in the 2000s, there were a lot of people who said the internet is a fad.

“If the self-service chatbot can’t answer a question, [the AI] will then send the inquiry to a mailbox that’s monitored by our own Travel Service Center,” said Wendy Meier, Americas innovation manager for travel, meetings and events at EY. Following an initial launch in Brazil, the chatbot has since been deployed in multiple languages across several regions, including Oceania, Asia, Italy and the U.S., with content that has been customized according to local needs. “We transformed a static FAQ document into a user-friendly chatbot,” explained Patrícia Bircak, Latin America South travel, meetings and events manager at EY, who built the team’s first chatbot pilot using Microsoft Power Virtual Agents. “The chatbot was seen as a solution for some of the more straightforward questions, freeing up resources and agency time, and therefore cost,” he said, adding that some enterprise clients have built chatbots within their own organizations.

JetBlue Airways makes use of facial recognition for a paperless boarding experience. In cooperation with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the carrier placed fully-integrated biometric, self-boarding gates in some airports across the US, including New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). Another AI technology that is gaining a ton of popularity in travel is facial recognition. With all the benefits brought to the table, it’s worth noting that chatbots can’t replace human interaction entirely yet. As the oldest millennials began moving up in the career-world, a 2016 survey from MMGY Global revealed that millennials have become the most frequent business travelers.

You are the target customer for the OpenAIs and the Googles and the Microsofts of the world. And all of their investment and their current market caps are predicated on their products being sold to you in a way that works. So, I think it’s important to note you’re not ready to make that investment in their tech yet because you don’t think it works.

Skift Research

Travel Sellers will be able to offer more choice, and highest level of service for travelers. You will find the Ask Skift bot on all Skift.com pages in the bottom right-hand corner. Also, you can always go to Skift.ai where this chatbot has a “homepage” and will be the future home of other AI tools and services we plan to launch in coming weeks and months. As soon as a new story or report is published, it goes straight into Ask Skift.

We are eager to use technology to improve productivity, but as with our burger, rather than completely overturn the process, we are shifting productivity somewhere else. Distributed management provides the solution to this, allowing team members to work collaboratively, but autonomously, over a network. The guest is happy, but you have added a level of complication for the kitchen, for your supply chain, multiplying the number of problems that you had before. The new chatbot, named Amadeus Advisor, is integrated into the Agency360+ suite and leverages Azure OpenAI Service to provide quick, natural language responses to complex data queries. Additional functionality could include an AI-enabled digital assistant that will make travel recommendations and on-trip itinerary suggestions. With the integration still in its early stages, Bailey acknowledged the learning curve in transitioning travelers from email inquiries and bookings to instant messaging.

Simplification is something travelers have requested for a long time and Bard is stepping in to meet the need. The desire for easier planning without human input has grown over the years. Now 68 percent of users say they enjoy the convenience and fast responsiveness of chatbots, ChatGPT App according to a Userlike survey. Gnock Fah said, “Our focus isn’t just on any content; it’s about diving deep into user-generated content that’s mobile-friendly, snackable, authentic, and highly shareable – everything that ignites wanderlust and enhances travel experiences.

Chatbots and virtual assistants have become an essential part of the customer service world and can often help improve customer satisfaction. According to a study from Tidio, 62% of customers say they would rather use an online chatbot than wait for human assistance. Going on a trip can take a lot of planning and preparation to decide what places to visit or attractions to see — and when to fit them into a limited schedule. That’s why many travelers rely on itineraries to help map out what each day of the trip will look like. But preparing a trip itinerary can be labor- and time-intensive. Artificial intelligence is seemingly becoming ubiquitous in the travel industry, but there are many hurdles that can trip up companies looking to boost business through the booming technology.

We just started that a couple of years ago, so it’s relatively early, but it’s definitely something that when I am deciding… Conversational AI will redefine how we interact with technology. It’s more than just chatbots, and personally, the idea of a world dominated solely by chatbots is unsettling.

• For this purpose, the speech is broken down into separate audio pieces, which the software then converts, analyzes, and responds to accordingly.
• One of the wonders of doing an AI agent is that there’ll be no hold time — you’ll go right to the machine.
• Larger online travel agencies, like Booking.com and Expedia, are also starting to use chatbots to provide customers with real-time suggestions, such as the cheapest flights available.
• Booking.com has yet to release anything powered by OpenAI the company behind ChatGPT, or Google’s Bard, a rival.
• Airbnb also last year launched an AI-powered “anti-party” system designed to screen bookings for potential misuse.

If AI is not able to answer a question, it can pass off the request to a customer care executive. By using chatbots, the travel industry has a tool to provide ChatGPT travelers with the right answers at the right time. Travel platforms have traditionally prompted users to search with specific queries for flights or hotels.

OpenAI acquired Chat.com

But the thing is, at the end of the day, and I say, it’s how do we make decisions? We make decisions, as I said, on data, but also, what’s really important to me is listening — really listening. And just because I have the title of CEO doesn’t mean I know everything. My biggest decision is really making sure that I’m hiring the right people, the best people, and even there, I’m using other people to help me make that decision. Amadeus detailed plans to incorporate Gen AI into a new chatbot for its business intelligence suite, debuting with Agency360+. The Amadeus Advisor chatbot by Azure OpenAI Service builds on the partnership between the two technology companies to foster collaboration across the travel industry.

The companies that will be able to capitalize on the opportunities are those that can adapt quickly and embrace change, said Patrick Surry, chief data scientist of Hopper, in a statement to Skift. Hopper, a travel agency app that’s pioneering fintech options like price freezes, did not grant an interview request on the topic, but Surry said in the emailed statement that generative AI could permeate much of what the company does. If you buy into the hype, then generative artificial intelligence (AI), as these bots are officially known, are set to radically improve everything about how we travel.

Another way to say that is, the customer is just one click away from somebody else. Yeah, the tech stacks are very different, and they’re built up differently. So, just for example, at the very beginning, you had Priceline and Agoda have what’s known as a merchant model, in which case people would pay upfront for their reservations. Booking.com started off in a different way, where they took no money upfront; you paid, for example, at the hotel, and then Booking.com got paid a commission after you left. Now, of course, we want to try and do things where we can actually get some synergies.

Hits $3b gross booking value in a year of “travelsilience”

With just a click of a button, travelers can reserve flights, hotels, tours, restaurant seating, and theater tickets. With the paid version, which costs $49 a month or $499 per year, Pana allows a manager to fill in guest details, such as trip dates and contact information. Through Pana’s app, the traveler will be able to message a virtual travel agent, a chatbot, or access human concierge. This chatbot for travel industry demo shows how Hello Hipmunk claims to help users with quick travel bookings. It also demonstrates how users can interact with the Hipmunk chatbot. “Right message, right person, right time” is a mantra APEX/IFSA CEO Dr. Joe Leader alluded to during the second installment of the IATA Aviation Data & Digital Webinar Series that has taken on a new degree of importance in light of the crisis.

“Having spent so much time over the last 10 years really deeply embedded in social media and the creator economy, we felt travel discovery needs something fresh. We saw that, post-pandemic, many users based their travel decisions on what they saw on Instagram and TikTok and harness that,” he said. The company was started by Jeremy Jauncey, the founder of travel agency Beautiful Destinations with millions of followers across social media platforms, and Saad Saeed, who was the co-founder of grocery delivery service Flink.

First came the ChatGPT-driven Bing chat, which initially had a glitchy rollout that included expressing its wishes to steal nuclear access codes and claiming it’d spied on Microsoft engineers (it doesn’t have either capabilities, thankfully). Next was Bard, powered by Google’s own neural language model LaMDA, which most famously convinced a Google engineer it was sentient. The hospitality industry is getting more IoT-friendly and digitally advanced. A recent report in which Oracle gathered perspectives from 150 hotel operators states that 78 percent of responders believe in the mass adoption of voice assistants to control room devices, lights, and air conditioning. This time in history feels reminiscent of the earliest days of industry, when the future was a wide-open horizon and anyone could become the next big name.

• One solution to these challenges is the upcoming rollout of varied ChatGPT plug-ins to popular platforms, such as Expedia and Kayak.
• This increased efficiency not only enhances the customer experience but also enables Priceline to stay nimble and competitive in a fast-moving digital landscape.
• From where he sits, the hotels don’t necessarily want to operate customer service in a hundred languages or take dozens of different payment methods, and that’s the service Booking is offering.
• Booking sites that use AI in travel booking might also see an increase in users.

The company is privately held and does not list full funding information. However, Pitchbook suggests that it has received roughly $4.5 million in funding from angel investors. While HelloGBye can be accessed online, it is only available as an app on IOS devices. When a user first opens the HelloGBye app, they are asked a few multiple-choice travel preference questions on a page which looks like a simple online survey.

Just add a calendar and payment terminal to that functionality and you’ve got a fully fledged e-travel agent that can identify the best destination pairs and the most profitable routes and dates by combining over 30 factors in seconds. Amadeus has announced a partnership with Microsoft to introduce an AI-powered chatbot designed to revolutionise the way hoteliers access and interpret business intelligence data. The integration allows travelers to search and book trips within Microsoft Teams and also share trip information with colleagues via the app, giving them the option to book the same trip. Oman’s ministry of heritage and tourism plans to implement 40 projects for boosting adventure tourism in the country. The projects include developing a cable car in the Botanical Garden and installing zip lines in Wadi Darbat in Dhofar for the khareef season. A zipline in Musandam was recently inaugurated, while a suspension bridge is being built in Wadi Shab in South Sharqiyah.

ChatGPT is giving Google a run for its money and has become a harbinger of what AI has in store for markets. Businesses are already adapting to this new reality, and the travel industry is no exception. Virtual assistants are learning how to plan whole travel itineraries, and chatbots are handling more and more support queries. Guglielmo Marconi, who lay the foundations for wireless telegraphy, lived at the Savoy and in 1905 created a system allowing the hotel to take reservations from cruise guests before they reached land. Where hotels have reservations of another kind is the fear that technology will take away from service and remove the human touch. The Gen AI technology within Amadeus Advisor allows for instantaneous collection of detailed insights, expediting the analysis of complex data and aiding in strategic business planning.

Despite this technology’s promise, limitations remain, namely, the lack of up-to-date data. Opening hours, availability, crowdedness, weather, safety considerations, and countless other factors always change in any location, so it is hard to plan a trip without accounting for real-time travel data. Such data must be compiled externally and regularly updated to ensure reliable answers to users’ queries. As millennials and younger generations are more engaged by products that provide “instant gratification,” the strategy of offering recommendations and immediate booking in one chat period may entice this audience. In 2017, Pana was included in a group of travel-friendly apps that partnered with the business-expensing startup, Expensify.

A lot of travelers start with a Google search, such as for flights to Italy or hotels in Las Vegas. As companies build generative AI features into their websites, they say the tech will be able to better utilize vast amounts of data they have already collected over years in business. That’s the stance that Omio is taking, and that’s also the basis for the Tripnotes travel mapping app being built, utilizing resources from the founder’s previous startup. The end goal for Tripnotes is that travelers will be able to complete bookings through the app. The AI-empowered recommender engine generates suggestions automatically based on the search queries you’re making — but not exclusively. The engine learns from both historical data containing all digital footprints of users and real-time data.

Take natural language processing (NLP), the technology used to power chatbots; it is widely used across the industry, helping to relieve overburdened customer service workers and provide faster response times. In addition to targeting business and leisure travelers, the company also offers Mezi for Business subscription, which features a marketed to travel agencies and travel management companies. With its Travel Dashboard, Mezi claims that a traveler working with a partnering agency can message the chatbot to find booking options. After an agency directs a client to its Mezi site, the chatbot can ask the user questions to get hotel, flight and destination preferences. Listed companies offer either a chatbot, or chat thread which combines responses from chatbots and human agents.

“It will also have a big impact on how we work, particularly in product development as we learn to use these new tools to improve the speed and quality of delivering our products and increasing our own efficiency and productivity. We will be able to experiment with how this can assist software development, as well as other use cases like making job descriptions more attractive to specific audiences. In 2018, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) predicted that air passengers would hit the 8.2 billion mark by 2037. While passenger numbers are again on the rise, the global pandemic has undoubtedly changed that forecast.

Our look at the most important tourism stories, including destination management, marketing, and development. The revenue for 3-to 5-star hotels in Oman went up to $191 million in March 2023, compared to $127 million last year, according to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information. During the same period, the number of hotel guests in star hotels increased by 26 percent, reaching 522,753 in March 2023 from 416,287 in March 2022. Omanis remain the top guests with 181,369 visitors, while visitors from Oceania saw the highest growth of 210 percent. Europeans were among the top nationalities that visited the country in March as 169,334 travelers from the continent visited Oman, compared to 119,432 in 2022. The number of Asian guests also grew by 53.4 percent to 64,686.

“We’re not just improving booking systems; we’re building a platform that anticipates the customer’s next move,” Keller added. AltexSoft claims it provides each client with AI-based custom systems, ranging from data sourcing to customer service. One such company is online travel agency Best Travel Store Inc., which specializes in finding the best flights for its clients at a significant discount. However, the client’s existing system was increasingly unable to cope with the increased complexity of the market, and it required a complete overhaul. For several years before generative AI reached the public, tech tools and automation had already played a vital role in the growth of the travel sector.

Blask envisions a kind of “travel buddy” that makes suggestions based on previous decisions and interactions with users. Even with search engines like Google, it’s not always easy for travelers to get useful tips and suggestions, as results can be outdated or incomplete. “There will always be people who say I want the human touch, I want to talk to people,” he added. But the company has broader plans, including creating the “ultimate concierge,” Chesky told analysts. In November, Airbnb paid a reported $200 million to acquire the startup Gameplanner.AI.

And, Trip.com is using some of the questions that consumers ask to inform the creation of some of its own marketing materials. For now, the TripGen chatbot can be used for trip pre-planning. The TripGen chatbot as it exists is not much different from ChatGPT. The user can ask a question about a travel destination and be presented with a general itinerary, but it’s based on data from 2021 and does not include specifics like hours of operation or website links. Trip.com, an online travel agency based in Singapore, has been one of the first to add a generative AI chatbot to its platform, with the release recently of TripGen.

Having received 185,000 visitors last year, AlUla has set a target of 250,000 visitors for this year. “AlUla is ready to receive up to 250,000 visitors in 2023, the majority of which will come from neighboring nations. Musafir.com will promote holiday packages to AlUla and collaborate on various promotional and marketing initiatives to increase tourist arrivals,” said Sachin Gadoya, Musafir.com’s CEO and co-founder. Musafir.com has curated a range of all-inclusive packages for AlUla with flights, hotels, airport transfers, breakfast and visa assistance. Penny Voice allows users to perform hands-free searches for hotels, get recommendations and discover destinations through voice commands on Priceline’s iOS app and web interfaces. The technology integrates OpenAI’s GPT-4o, voice engine and real-time API with Priceline’s customer data platform and inventory.

Even when it comes to books, you do not have to lug them around anymore. Having a kindle or carrying a PDF in your tablet means you can save a lot of space in your luggage. Especially after Covid-19, remote working has become a common spectacle. More and more people are choosing to work out of remote destinations as they mix work and travel.