Booking.com adds ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot to help you make … – India Today
By Abhik Sengupta: Travel website Booking.com has unveiled a new “AI Trip Planner” to help users plan trips and itineraries by leveraging large language model (LLM) technology from OpenAI’s ChatGPT API. In a blog post, the company announced the pilot AI Trip Planner will be available to US travellers in the company’s app on June 28. The feature will be available in beta form, and a broader rollout will follow after testing with select travellers.
Booking.com explains that travellers would be able to use the AI-backed chatbot, similar to ChatGPT, to plan the trip effectively. The company states, “Travelers can easily chat with the pilot AI Trip Planner to describe what they’re looking for in broad or specific terms, ask questions and refine their search in real-time, with new options surfaced in just a matter of seconds.”
It simply means that the AI chatbot will help users zero destinations based on inputs and keywords, like romantic beaches in the Caribbean, vacation homes for a family of four with air conditioning and a pool, and so on.
Booking.com, in its demo, shows that results provided by the chatbot will include links to properties and costs per night. It all depends on how users use prompts to trigger the right results. The demo suggests that travel-related keywords such as itineraries and non-touristy will play a key role in getting the best results.
Speaking about the launch, Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking.com said in the post, “The recent developments with generative AI are accelerating the work we’ve been doing for years with machine learning to enhance and improve every aspect of the customer experience on our platform, whether it’s optimising the right order to display a hotel’s photos to surfacing 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, and hopefully enjoyment, to the entire trip planning process.”
While the AI chatbot can effectively help with creating itineraries and finding the right locations for trips, the scope is endless. Based on user reviews and other information available online, the AI Trip Planner can also effectively help travellers find information about the property, such as available rooms, sizes, and other amenities. It can also effectively help users gather information about stores around the area they are planning to visit. We can expect the AI Trip Planner to roll out to other countries, including India, but no official is available yet.
