Everything Booking Holdings is Doing with AI

07.11.2024 - 17:43 / skift.com / Glenn Fogel / Justin Dawes

Booking Holdings has a lot of AI experiments in the works. 

All five of the travel giant’s consumer brands — Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, Agoda, and OpenTable — now have various consumer or internal tools powered by generative AI. That means the company can test multiple tools to see which work best. 

Glenn Fogel, president and CEO of Booking Holdings, outlined the brand’s AI projects and shared updates during a call with investors last week. 

“We know we are still in the very early days of GenAI and we have much more to learn about consumers, how they ultimately want to interact with this new technology,” Fogel said during the call. 

“Over time, as we further incorporate this technology, we expect to see benefits in travel and partner acquisition, retention and satisfaction. In addition, we expect it to improve operational efficiency, which will contribute to a deceleration of our fixed expense growth in the future.”

Booking.com released the first version of its AI trip planner in June 2023, which Fogel said has had millions of interactions with customers that are leading to new applications of generative AI. He said that’s still a very small proportion of the brand’s engagement with customers.

The app’s trip planner last week got an update that allows users to ask the chatbot property-specific questions. And the property search results page got a tool that allows users to automatically check amenity filters using natural language, meant to remove the need for manual filtering. 

Fogel said the company is working on some tools for hotel clients, as well. That includes a hotel-facing tool to help properties write responses to inquiries from travelers, which he said has led to an increase in response rate. Booking.com is testing a chatbot to help new clients, starting with short-term rentals, answer questions during the onboarding process and accelerate sign-ups.

The company is also working to incorporate generative AI into its customer service operations.

“Initial testing shows meaningful improvements in topic detection in Booking.com’s customer help center as well as customer service agent case summarization. Booking.com is still early in this journey and sees meaningful opportunities in improving customer service and driving greater efficiency by leveraging AI in the future,” Fogel said.

Priceline last month was the first travel company to release a voicebot based on the newest voice tech from OpenAI. 

The Connecticut-based online travel agency first released the AI chatbot Penny in June 2023. It became Penny Voice with the update, able to engage in verbal conversations with travelers to help with hotel search and managing bookings. 

“As Priceline continues to enhance this offering, we envision