Excerpt from CNBC
- With customer service an obvious target for generative AI chatbots, the travel business is expected to be an early adopter.
- Already, online travel agents from Expedia to Kayak and Trip.com are deploying ChatGPT plug-ins as a “virtual assistant” and the time between suggestion and actual booking is expected to decrease.
- Airports, also, led by Seattle-Tacoma International, say generative AI will help eliminate some of the stress and anxiety associated with air travel, though long-time industry analysts are less sure it is a panacea.
The ability of ChatGPT to seize upon a specific, verifiable application in a focused business sector could go a long way to underscoring it as a monetizable asset. Current use cases for generative artificial intelligence may seem limited and a bit ad-hoc, but a big explosion in use cases over the next year is the expectation, according to researchers, with customer service a prime target. That makes the travel sector, already once remade by the dawn of the internet, a likely place for rapid adoption.
Already, generative AI is being experimented with inside the travel sector, albeit with mixed results. One profound limitation of ChatGPT’s application in travel to date is that its data does not extend beyond September 2021. That is a problem for now, particularly in the world of travel where information needs to be current to be useful – but only for now.
The online travel agencies are already today in mid-reshaping from the inside by AI, and even if travelers are not aware of it, recommendations offered and decisions being made influenced by the technology.
“Booking.com has been using AI and machine learning for over a decade,” said Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, parent company to Booking.com. “It is ingrained in the customer journey at every step on our platform.”
That includes personalized recommendations for trips, and machine translation in more than 40 languages and dialects.
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