Booking launches new artificial intelligence-based travel planner

07-07-23

• Booking.com announced the beta launch of its new AI-powered Trip Planner. 

• As of 28 June, it is available on the app to a group of specifically selected Genius US travellers.

The AI Trip Planner has been built, firstly, on Booking.com's existing machine learning models that recommend destinations and accommodation options to millions of travellers on the platform every day.

Secondly, it has been partially powered by OpenAI's OpenAI ChatGPT API's large language model (LLM) technology to create a new conversational experience as people begin their travel planning process.

Travellers can ask the AI Travel Planner general travel-related questions, as well as more specific queries to help them at any stage of their travel planning process.

This includes researching potential destinations and accommodation options, providing travel inspiration based on each traveller's needs and requirements, as well as creating itineraries for a specific city, country or region.

More personalised and relevant travel recommendations

Travellers can easily chat with the AI Trip Planner pilot to describe what they are looking for in general or specific terms, ask questions and refine their search in real-time, with new options appearing in seconds.

From seeking inspiration on romantic beach destination options in the Caribbean to zeroing in on a specific list of holiday homes for a family of four with air conditioning and a pool, the AI Trip Planner makes recommendations quickly and conversationally.

Integrated travel planning experience

The AI Trip Planner takes the travel planning process one step further, providing travellers with a visual list of destinations and properties, including pricing information from Booking.com, with links to view more details.

Travellers can go back and forth between their chat with the AI Trip Planner and the Booking.com app interface as they consider options for their trip. With a single click on any accommodation they are interested in, they can complete the booking, as the AI-powered Trip Planner is directly integrated into the accommodation booking experience on the Booking.com app.

"Our main goal at Booking.com has always been to leverage technology to make travel easier," explained Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking.com.

"Recent advances with generative AI are accelerating the work we've been doing for years with machine learning to power and improve all aspects of the customer experience on our platform, whether it's optimising the right order to display photos of a hotel or showing the most relevant reviews. Our new AI Trip Planner is simply the next step in our ongoing journey to explore how we can bring even more value to the entire trip planning process."

"Our new AI Trip Planner offers us really exciting possibilities to help our customers plan and research travel options in a very natural and human way," added Rob Francis, CTO of Booking.com.

"Recent advances with generative AI are accelerating the work we've been doing for years with machine learning to power and improve all aspects of the customer experience on our platform, whether it's optimising the right order to display photos of a hotel or showing the most relevant reviews. Our new AI Trip Planner is simply the next step in our ongoing journey to explore how we can bring even more value to the entire trip planning process."

"Our new AI Trip Planner offers us really exciting possibilities to help our customers plan and research travel options in a very natural and human way," added Rob Francis, CTO of Booking.com.

"Often, people are asked to adapt to technology to do what they want, but with generative AI, we can start having scalable, one-to-one conversations with our customers on their terms, much like you would start talking about planning a trip with your partner or friends. It's just the beginning, we have a lot of ground to cover to innovate and further connect the travel experience on Booking.com, all in a safe, ethical and inclusive way," he explained.

In short, starting 28 June, the beta version of the AI Trip Planner will be available to a growing percentage of Booking.com Genius members in the United States. This means that US travellers must log into their Booking.com account on the app and have their language settings set to English to access the new travel planning tool.