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When Celia Quillian began planning her first trip since the pandemic in mid-March, she had a few criteria as she searched for the right destination— temperate weather in spring, not crowded with tourists, and within the U.S.
With all that in mind, Quillian, who lives in Atlanta, G.A., decided to try something new and plugged her wish list into ChatGPT. “I asked it to give me ten recommendations, just to see what it could do,” Quillian said.
The AI chatbot recommended several locations that fit the bill– including Puerto Rico, Charleston, S.C. and Palm Springs, Calif. Quillian, 31, had been to a few of the destinations before and knew they fit the description of what she had asked for. “I was like okay, this thing is definitely working.”
She chose Puerto Rico and then used the chatbot to create a seven-day itinerary for her trip for the following month, prompting it to create a table describing potential activities and breaking them down by distance and cost. “It took me an evening to plan the trip versus weeks of research,” says Quillian, who shared her planning experience in a video that she says received over 2 million views on Instagram..Continue reading…
Source: How AI Could Transform Travel–and How to Take Advantage of It | Time
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Thanks to AI, travelers no longer need to visit travel agencies to book flights or search for accommodation. AI assistants and Intelligent chatbots have now taken the place of travel agents allowing travelers to book flights and accommodations and hire vehicles online. These chatbots are deployed in social media sites like Facebook messenger, skype, WhatsApp, and Viber to offer users a more personalized booking experience.
The travel reservation giants like Booking.com, Skyscanner, and Expedia are utilizing such chatbots in their operations. Usually, you will be prompted to start the conversation with a chatbot by entering the details of your intended journey. Then the bot will search through the booking sites and find you the best deal. id you know that is also used to generate extra profit for travel companies?
Skyscanner Chatbot
When the Skyscanner chatbot is activated on Facebook or Whatsapp, users can enter their destination to start the conversation with the bot. If you are unsure where to go, just type ‘anywhere,’ and then the bot will provide you with suggestions, including the price for each destination using real-time search trends.
When you tell the chatbot the travel date, it will show you the cheapest flights to your destination. Then the bot will redirect you to the official Skyscanner website to complete the booking upon selecting to book a flight. Moreover, the Skyscanner chatbot allows you to receive price alerts for a flight. Skyscanner reported that it had surpassed one million traveler interactions with the application in February 2018[4]. Refer to the following videos on how this robot works.
Robots For Face-to-Face Customer Services
Robots are gradually infiltrating customer services in the travel industry, avoiding the need for human agents. Gone are the days when you had to wait in a queue to get information or try to find your gate in a busy terminal. The reason is that some popular airports and hotels have now employed robots to assist you in such situations. One example is the robot in London Heathrow airport that guides passengers in terminals [9]
According to a report published by Vero Solutions, it is expected that robots will replace humans in the check-in process by 2030 [5]. The Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki is the worlds’ first hotel fully staffed by multi-lingual robots primarily used for check-in and checkout processing. Another innovative AI solution is ‘Connie,’ the robot deployed in the hotel Hilton McLean in Virginia.
Connie, The Robot Concierge at Hilton
Connie uses domain knowledge of the IBM Watson AI program and Wayblazer to answer human queries related to hotel features and local attractions while providing recommendations. It uses Natural Language Processing to understand the sentences when someone talks to them.
Furthermore, Connie can move its arms and legs to show directions to guests and express different human emotions by lighting up with different colors. It continuously learns from human interactions and fine-tunes its capabilities. It is indeed an enjoyable experience for guests and particularly useful in this Covid-19 era to ensure customer safety.
AI-Driven Applications For Flight Forecasting
Imagine an innovative technology that helps you find the best flight price at the right time and gives you a heads-up on future flight prices. Some companies have made that useful feature a reality by introducing AI-driven smart price prediction applications into the industry. Hopper is an example of such an application used by travelers to get to that facility.
Hopper
Hopper is based on machine learning algorithms. It uses a flight database to predict optimal hotel prices and flights while offering users personalized recommendations about the most suitable time to book a flight. When a traveler is tracking a flight, it provides recommendations on whether he/she should buy it now or wait for a better price.
Hoppers’ extensive database consists of trillions of historic flight prices, and live price feeds to work out recommendations. It is reported that this app has sold more than $600 million worth of flight tickets since its invention [6]. Hotels and airlines use these forecasting applications to modify rates according to consumer demand.
Data Analytics To Identify Valuable Insights
A huge amount of data is being generated every second throughout the travel industry. These data can be hidden gems for travel companies if they can interpret them effectively and identify what has worked well for customers. Travel companies leverage AI to sort through these vast data sets quickly and accurately, which would otherwise become a daunting task for humans alone.
Data Analysis in Dorchester Collection Hotel
The Dorchester Collection hotel has processed and analyzed customer feedback surveys, customer reviews, and online polls using its AI platform Metis to determine its overall performance. They have discovered the lack of loyalty to their hotels through such analysis. Businesses get the opportunity to devise better solutions that fulfill customer needs by identifying such trends of customers.
Sentiment Analysis Through Social Media
Social media is listening to you all the time. Airlines and hotels are leveraging this technology coupled with AI to identify the sentiment of travelers through social media and how it relates to the traveler’s journey. For instance, if a customer posts about a particular flight delay on social media expressing his or her frustration, a listening tool will analyze it and interact with the customer in real time. Mindtree’s PaxPulse uses this sentiment analysis to deliver a better customer experience to its travel partners.
Mindtree’s PaxPulse
Mindtree’s PaxPulse is a social Intelligence and Recommendation Platform designed for the airline industry. It uses Mindtree’s pre-built classifiers, algorithms, and machine learning frameworks. When a particular passenger posts on social media about his travel partner, its smart algorithms process this sentiment and provide a certain recommendation to resolve passenger concerns.
Room Mapping + Dynamic Price Tracking
Here at HotelMize, we are using AI for our Room Mapping to track dynamic prices for the same room across multiple suppliers. When adding AI also to predict dynamic prices for a specific room, we get a precise idea of when and for how long the price will remain the cheapest it can…..
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