Booking.com Is Wait-and-See on Generative AI

25.08.2023 - 14:04 / skift.com / Justin Dawes / Rob Francis / Generative Ai

A task force at Booking.com is dedicated to exploring how generative AI could be integrated into the platform, but just to be clear — the company is not rushing into anything. 

“There’s certainly a place for it at Booking.com. We’re sure of that,” said Rob Francis, chief technology officer of online travel agency Booking.com, owned by Booking Holdings. 

Intentional about not succumbing to the “frenzy” around the emerging type of AI, however, the company wants to avoid releasing technology before it is ready or has a real purpose, he said.

“We’re certainly kicking the tires and seeing what sort of great experiences we could bring to our customers with generative AI. We see some opportunities already,” Francis said. “Right now, what’s most pressing to me is to make sure that when we hit on the thing that’s right, that we can do it incredibly well, while maintaining trust with our customers.”

Francis is scheduled as a speaker at the upcoming Skift Future of Lodging Forum in London on March 29. 

He declined to share specifics about how or when the generative AI will be integrated into the Booking.com platform. He did say, however, that he sees a sweet spot around using the technology to better understand exactly what a user is looking for when entering the Booking.com platform.  

“Our ability to marry up the intent of a traveler, or one of our partners, with what our platform can bring to them is where we see a big opportunity,” Francis said. “We are a two-sided marketplace, and so our ability to actually help connect both sides and bring value to that intent, I think is going to go much further into our experience. It’s just a little too early to say what that’s going to look like.”

He also pointed to the potential use of voice assistant technology, which got a lot of hype in the beginning that eventually died because of how frustrating voice tech can be to use. But there could be a new opportunity for it, as other experts have said. 

“I think that starts to get much more interesting with some of these capabilities.”

While Booking.com is moving slowly, Trip.com has taken the opposite approach with the recent release of a generative AI chatbot called TripGen. The company is gathering information from user interactions as the product development team explores how to further implement the technology into its main platform. 

At Booking.com, there are several issues that the company is addressing as developers explore and test the technology. 

A lot can go wrong with the technology at this point. An example of that was seen when Bard, Google’s new generative AI chatbot, gave inaccurate information during its first demo. Francis wants to make sure something like that does not happen with Booking.com. 

One