United Airlines flight attendants voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike as tensions with management rise.
15.08.2024 - 14:08 / skift.com / Justin Dawes
Oneworld Alliance said Thursday that it has been piloting a generative AI tool meant to help users book multi-city trips.
The tool was built on Google Cloud’s infrastructure and is powered by the AI platform from Elemental Cognition, which was founded by IBM Watson inventor David Ferrucci.
Oneworld represents 13 airlines, including American Airlines, British Airways, Japan Airlines, and Qatar Airways. Oman Air and Fiji Airways are set to join.
The tool was built to streamline the booking process of Oneworld’s Round the World offering, an air travel package that includes up to 16 journeys between cities on at least three continents. The trip starts at the home city and goes either west or east around the globe, ending at the home city in up to a year.
Itineraries involving multiple airlines are challenging to design for various reasons, like fluctuating flight availability and complex booking rules for the travel package.
Oneworld wanted to find a way to ease the cumbersome process and make more sales, said Roger Blackburn, Oneworld vice president for Europe.
“For Round the World passengers, they are sometimes booking trips of a lifetime,” Blackburn said. “But they maybe don’t have a great idea how they stitch that into a coherent journey around the world that works on the Oneworld network and comes in at a fare they can afford, and they really need a helping hand to help them get through that process. We’re trying to do that with a tool that is easy to use online.”
In the future, this could expand to include more legs of the journey, like finding hotels or determining which airport is most convenient.
“This is not the only difficult travel problem. It’s a particularly difficult travel problem. But there’s complexities around things beyond the airline journey,” Blackburn said. “For us it’s a starting point to try and do some other things, perhaps with with what we can offer our passengers.”
The tool includes a chatbot that users can interact with in natural language, starting by indicating the home city, destinations, and dates of travel. The tool then analyzes the best route for the itinerary and works with the user to troubleshoot any issues, like if there is no availability for certain flights. Besides the chatbot, users manually select cities and dates and then lets the AI do the hard work of finding the flights.
Even using the tool during the brief Skift test, it’s clear that the process is time-consuming. But after a relatively painless back-and-forth with the chatbot — which likely would have taken far longer manually — the tool finalized a 175-day trip to eight cities on three continents for a total of $4,560.
During a pilot over the past 18 months, those who have used the new tool have
United Airlines flight attendants voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike as tensions with management rise.
Flight Centre Travel Group reported financial results Wednesday, with executives expressing optimism about future growth despite some headwinds.
As the summer travel season comes to a close, travelers have a new way to save on fall getaways. JetBlue recently announced the «Game On» fare sale, which offers flights as low as $49. The promotion is a nod to the fall football season, however the fares can provide an affordable options for early fall vacations, or last-minute trips. As an example, JetBlue shows a fare of $49 one-way from New York's JFK airport to Nashville, Tenn. for travel in both September and October.
British Airways is spending $9 billion to lift its reputation after years of slumping popularity.
I worked as a flight attendant on domestic and international routes for two years, and I saw all kinds of behavior on planes.
Since 2015, Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) has been a go-to newsletter for savvy travelers seeking the best flight deals available. Whether it’s flash sales, competitive price drops, mistake fares with discounts of up to 90 percent, or coveted mileage-saver award seats, this newsletter has informed some 2.4 million members about values spotted by its software and verified by a team of flight analysts.
There are myriad reasons your flight might be delayed or canceled, from crew members calling out sick to animals wandering onto the runway. But the most common reason is weather.
UN Tourism and the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance will work together to implement a common framework for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) for the sector.
United Airlines is celebrating National Aviation Day on Aug.19 by giving budget-savvy travelers the gift of savings. United shared the deal via its Instagram page with a cheeky message implying that texts from United are better than texts from your ex.
Summer isn't over just yet: As much of the country scorches under stifling heat waves, two weeks still remain until Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer. But for some airlines, the peak domestic summer travel season is already winding down. In some pockets of the country, summer might as well have ended a few weeks ago.
Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, August 16, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.
Grupo Xcaret has launched an exclusive booking tool to provide travel advisors with a seamless experience.