The business concept of a new travel company called WeatherPromise is simple, if not a little outlandish. Book a trip with them, purchase a WeatherPromise, and you'll get a refund if it rains a certain number of days during your vacation.
07.03.2024 - 21:43 / skift.com / Justin Dawes / Generative Ai
Despegar and Kayak both released travel planning and booking tools this week meant to integrate generative AI more comprehensively.
Booking.com, Expedia, and several other big companies released simple chatbots powered by ChatGPT about a year ago. Those chatbots have generally existed as independent interfaces, doing little to really transform the travel planning and booking experiences as industry experts have touted.
While the business models for Despegar and Kayak are different, the new tools give us a better understanding of how the future could look.
Despegar is an online travel agency primarily for the Latin American market.
Kayak is a metasearch site owned by Booking Holdings, meaning it compiles options from various booking sites, allowing users to compare rates and navigate to a third-party site for bookings.
Gonzalo Estebarena, the chief technology officer of Despegar, said the new tool is the first version of what he believes will be the future of how the Despegar website operates. He sees the tool evolving as a virtual travel agent that will be able to accompany the guest before, during, and after a trip.
“I think that eventually, this will completely replace not only our website, but I think this type of logic … will be the next wave of web or app design,” Estebarena said.
The days are still early for generative AI, so the technology in the beta version of these tools is limited. While there aren’t as many errors in the results as AI chatbots from last year, there are enough bugs that today’s users will likely return frustratedly to the Google search bar.
See some quick tests below on how each of these platforms perform — the good and the bad.
The tool at Despegar is called Sofia. It’s built in Spanish to accommodate its main clientele.
The interface includes a chatbot panel on the left side of the screen, which is supposed to connect to the main portion of the screen.
The user can either ask the chatbot a question or select one of the suggested prompts on the right.
For now, the tool can share information about a destination as well as flight options. The company plans to integrate all of its products into the tool next — including hotels, activities, and car rentals — followed by connections to third-party products like Uber.
Some other issues:
Kayak’s new trip planner is called Ask Kayak.
Users can start by asking a variety of questions about a specific destination or a suggestion about where to visit.
When it comes time to purchase a flight or stay, Kayak links the user to the relevant online travel agency for booking.
Kayak did a good job of showing flight, lodging, and car rental options for a certain destination, along with other helpful features like tools showing
The business concept of a new travel company called WeatherPromise is simple, if not a little outlandish. Book a trip with them, purchase a WeatherPromise, and you'll get a refund if it rains a certain number of days during your vacation.
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