Oneworld Launches AI-Powered Travel Agent for Easier Round-the-World Bookings

This practical application highlights potential uses for AI technology in the travel sector. However, Tarai, who said WiT Japan & North Asia was the first industry-specific conference he had attended, noted that travel faced specific challenges related to data fragmentation and silos, similar to what is faced by other verticals. The future, in our opinion, won’t be purely free text or structured but a balance between the two. While it’s easier to click a button than to type a word, specifying something unique is often much simpler with free text than navigating through a list of fixed options that might not match exactly. A common mistake I see is starting from the solution and looking for a problem.

• Or we should try this one because this is working for us.
• 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.
• By leveraging your data on loyalty programs, credit card benefits, and insurance coverage, AI agents will be able to craft highly tailored travel plans, negotiate on your behalf and even decide which card to use to book to maximize points.

Well, we provide customers that they would not be able to get, or if they could, it would cost a lot more than us providing it for them. You use the word roll-up; I used to be an investment banker, and a roll-up by definition really means taking a lot of companies and merging them together into one company and reducing costs. I’ve been at the company now since 2000, so I’ve been here a long time; I helped do all the deals. So, when we brought a company in, all of them were very small when we bought them, and one of the key things to get entrepreneurs to come and stay with us was to create an independent management style. So, the people who had started these companies would want to continue to do what they’re doing so well.

Someday a computer-generated avatar may explain why you can’t fly business class to Dubai. In the meantime, travel management and travel tech companies are testing how to apply Gen AI to various parts of business travel. Not the global airlines, major hotel chains like Marriott, or mega cruise lines like Carnival Cruises.

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By leveraging cutting-edge technology, we aim to make AI an intuitive and immersive service that goes beyond responding to spoken commands. We aim to redefine the AI experience and create a future where technology truly enhances and enriches lives. Wei said company data from the past year shows TripGenie users were asking a wide range of questions and using the Trip.com app for a “remarkable” 20 minutes or more – double the length of app users not engaging with the tool. He noted that this means users don’t have to re-enter preferences each time they use the service. They also don’t have to toggle between travel sites and services like Google Maps.

The CCL is part of Travelport’s main platform and uses AI and machine learning to help travel agents compare flights, hotels, and car rentals more quickly. Travelport claims it works faster than typical airline search responses and helps identify the most relevant offers for each traveler. Travelport, a tech company that provides reservation software for travel agents, this month introduced a feature called the Content Curation Layer (CCL). This feature uses AI to improve travel searches by quickly sorting through billions of options to find the best matches for customers. Where from and how would any general AI or generative AI platform or application get access to ARI (availability, rates and inventory) i.e. bookable in real time travel inventory?

Peakwork and honeepot have formed a strategic alliance, bringing the innovative “honeebot by honeepot” chatbot solution into Peakwork’s ecosystem. This partnership empowers travel websites, tour operators, and OTAs using Peakwork’s platform to implement a seamless, customer-centric chatbot designed to elevate the advisory experience and enhance conversion rates. Surpassing a remarkable milestone with nearly a million inquiries to date, our users are experiencing a transformative connection with TripGenie. Users engaging in conversations with TripGenie experience an average session duration that is nearly double that of other users, showcasing a growing excitement for the unparalleled value that TripGenie brings to their travel journeys. Wei answered questions as part of PhocusWire’s initiative to check in with travel companies that were early adopters last year of generative AI. Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.

AI Agent Era can only come true if data silos are integrated, Atsushi Tarai calls for AI protocols in travel

Our customers have a chat bubble, so at any point in their journey, if they have a query, they can get hold of us, and we react to it. That access increased the volume of requests massively. But the more people you speak to, the more issues you can identify and solve. We were coming out of COVID and suddenly had an explosion of inbounds and contacts. I’ve had a tortured relationship with AI since the first version of ChatGPT flickered to life.

As an AI trip planner, TripGenie excels in rapidly generating daily travel schedules for users, offering flexibility for adjustments and facilitating seamless sharing. The third category addresses after-sale queries, such as post-flight assistance. We are delighted that TripGenie has truly evolved into an all encompassing AI travel assistant, covering every stage of the user’s journey.

AI has been around for decades now and is already bringing disruptions … like revenue management or personalization for instance. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is among leaders ChatGPT App who have touted how their companies might evolve thanks to generative AI. But the change is yet to come – a fact Chesky acknowledged at an event he spoke at in September.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the travel industry, with Greece introducing an AI-powered travel assistant named Pythia and Google showcasing its Gemini AI system at an industry event in Malaysia. I think the smart travel agents will adopt AI to move faster to scale themselves in ways that they can. I think again (there will) be an erosion of the lower-level functions of the travel agent.

Singh liked the idea and worked with the Labs team and Madrona Ventures managing director Matt McIlwain to develop the product vision, customer target, and business model. The latest stories about business travel delivered weekly to your inbox. Two of the largest corporate travel agencies want to join forces to create a single giant. Despegar has sold its destination management company BDExperience to World2Meet, the travel division of Iberostar Group, for an undisclosed amount.

Despite the promise of AI agents, McKinsey cautions that significant development is still needed before these systems can operate independently. Ensuring accuracy, compliance, and fairness remains crucial, and businesses will need to train, test, and monitor AI agents much like they would human employees. Unlike chatbots, which are primarily knowledge-based, AI agents operate by moving from information to action. McKinsey highlights that the agents’ ability to complete multistep workflows will enable businesses to automate processes that previously required significant manual input.

There is a lot of capital being invested in AI and soon investors will begin to want to see returns for that investment. My view is that – compared with other emerging capabilities like blockchain or VR/AR – AI (especially LLM / generative AI) is more tech-ready and embeddable within products and use-cases will begin to emerge across the industry. Product-market fit might be harder to come by, but I think that we will see more compelling use cases emerging in the next few years. The Content Curation Layer (CCL) will use both AI and machine learning to provide a range of retail ready results by sorting through multi-source content that’s been aggregated. In turn, it provides search results at a faster rate than the average response time of an airline search, the company said. As the technology evolves, it could alter how travelers research and plan trips, potentially impacting established tourism industry practices.

And I don’t see it as being a huge issue for us at this time. But I do see on principle, it’s unfortunately going to something that I’ve said several times. I don’t think this was the optimal solution they were searching for. What’s interesting about regulations, I’m in favor of regulations in general.

Testing New Tech

The article discusses the debate between Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel and ASTA CEO Zane Kerby on the future of traditional travel agents in the face of advancing AI technologies. Fogel believes AI will accelerate the decline of human travel agents, while Kerby argues that the personalized service and trust provided by human agents cannot be replicated by AI. The article also includes perspectives from Skift staffers and highlights how companies like Fora Travel are integrating AI to enhance their services without replacing human advisors.

We’d make it even better for the consumers, and we provide more competition to the flight business. Come back in a few years — I’ll let you know how it worked out. In addition, we get to see the traveler across many different verticals. So, while an airline may know a lot of habits about that person in terms of their flight things they like to do, how they like to do their flights, they don’t know a lot about their hotel preferences.

Gulmann said that with the alpha release, the company plans to hone its product, aiming to open it up to more people through a beta release by the end of the year. He plans to make Otto more widely available in early 2025. Steve Singh, Madrona’s managing director and the interim CEO at travel tech firm Spotnana, led Otto’s seed round. The exec, who also founded Concur, acquired Direct Travel (one of the investors in the round), with various other investors in April. Singh is the executive chairman at Direct Travel and will assume a similar position on Otto’s board. Gulmann told TechCrunch that while the likes of TravelPerk and Concur focus on large enterprises, Otto is looking to serve customers who lack access to the services.

Apple warns investors its new products might never be as profitable as the iPhone

We have special, very early morning or late night entry with small groups. There’s still the Louvre if you visit Paris for the first time, but on the second, third, fourth, and fifth trips, the experience desire is getting more and more diverse. That’s why we’ve been expanding our curated offerings to more local, more culinary, and more off-the-beaten paths. The [Tiqets] team has stayed at about 250 people, but with AI, we’ve been able to quadruple our business.

As the social media influencer industry evolves and matures, destination marketing organizations are, in turn, taking them seriously as agents in their efforts to grow visitation. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. “She could partner with major hotel chains, airlines, or travel agencies to offer exclusive travel deals, experiences, or discounts. Through such partnerships, Emma will not only become the face of German tourism but also a global facilitator of unique travel experiences,” said a spokesperson for the board. Madrona Venture Labs is led by Mike Fridgen, one of the founders of Farecast, which was one of the very earliest machine-learning-based travel services. The company predicted the best time to buy flights and was founded by Oren Etzioni, the first CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, and Hugh Crean.

• Back in the day, this never came up, and now it starts to come up.
• Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit explains the impact on the travel industry.
• Startups are also banking on AI-powered features to take on incumbent travel platforms.
• Honeebot, an AI-powered chatbot, integrates into travel websites to help customers make informed travel choices.

It slowly and steadily absorbed many of its rivals over the years, starting with Priceline’s purchase of Booking.com in the mid-2000s and ramping up with big buys like Kayak for $1.8 billion in 2013. Booking has also expanded beyond flights and hotels into more parts of travel and hospitality with acquisitions like restaurant reservation platform OpenTable. This episode is pure Decoder bait all the way through — from Booking’s structure to competition with hotels and airlines increasingly chatbot for travel agency going direct to consumer, even to how European regulation affects competition with Google. Glenn really got into it with me — there’s a lot going on in this space, and it’s interesting because there are so many players and so much competition across so many of the layers. While it is moving at a fast pace, there [are] still a lot of improvements yet to come in particular around reducing hallucinations and training models that perform in multilingual and multicultural environments.

Kerby said the customer service travel advisors provide can’t be replicated by AI, comparing online travel agencies to vending machines – a low cost, low service option. Workshops by tech giants like Google and Microsoft emphasize the broader implications of AI in these industries, focusing on areas such as personalized trip planning, AI-powered marketing, and virtual assistants. ChatGPT Meanwhile, companies like Saffe.ai are pioneering the use of facial biometrics for secure and seamless authentication in travel and events. The insights from Fundación Metrópoli and BAE’s Intelligent Cities Initiative further illustrate the potential of AI to balance tourism benefits with residents’ quality of life through innovative urban planning and sustainable development.

A more advanced version of this tech could eliminate the friction of manually navigating options, comparing prices, and making reservations. As the technology improves, users might bypass online travel agencies like Booking.com altogether, relying on AI to find the best deals on their behalf. This could reduce the traffic to agency websites and commissions that they rely on. In the beginning stages, TripGenie primarily handled simple text interactions, such as Q&A. Recognizing the need for a more immersive user experience, we expanded TripGenie to include voice support and multiple languages. As we delved deeper, TripGenie’s functionalities broadened.

And I certainly can tell you that — I’ll give you a lot of examples in Europe, where, unfortunately, this goes back to politics, where the protection of certain vested interests are much worse in Europe than they are in the US. So, it depends on which industry, which thing you want to talk about. But you and I, we’re on the same page, though, that we want to create an environment, an economic system, that provides the best value to the society, and one of the ways to do that is to make sure there is fair competition. So, here’s the thing, while we certainly were not pleased with being called a gatekeeper in what is one of the most competitive industries in the world, the idea that we have such, as the regulators alleged, a dominant position. And I’m like, “Well, do you feel that you don’t have another way to travel? So, we have to follow the rules, and we are following the rules, and we are doing all the things necessary for that.

As Bill Gates has said, the impact of AI should be as transformative as the creation of the internet or the smartphone —both of which succeeded because they democratized data and unlocked possibilities across multiple fields. For AI to truly revolutionize hospitality, it needs to break down the silos that exist between departments like revenue, marketing and guest experience. PhocusWire reached out to travel industry leaders to gauge their opinions on the pace at which AI is changing the travel industry – some believe Chesky’s point is valid, others believe an AI-powered future is here. A key feature of the new tool, the company said, is the Content Optimizer, a Travelport Plus product that gives clients more control over content including NDC and traditional content. Agents can also use the Content Optimizer to refine search results, boost revenue optimization and fine tune content choice to prevent overload. Bringing it back a little more to reality … if supersonic travel is coming, tech and AI will 100% play a big role in it if it comes back again.