Steve Singh’s latest business travel startup lands $6M for AI agent

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7 ways AI is affecting the travel industry

“Travelport is focused on driving revenue growth while operating as efficiently and effectively as possible,” Katie Cline, global head of external communications for Travelport, said in an email at the time. Then there’s the quandary of what Agoda’s Hughes calls the “resource allocation battle” – how to prioritize and develop systems to make strategic choices amidst competing demands and the ever-present threat of competitors gaining an edge. One practical tech solution, said Klook’s Liu, is to build flexible and modular systems which allows for rapid adaptation of the tech infrastructure and for systems to be decoupled to meet shifting consumer demands.

• Established companies like Kayak and Expedia have been experimenting with online itinerary planning for some time, and new products and features are being added on a near-daily basis.
• Hilton said on Wednesday it added 6,000 rooms to its portfolio in the third quarter — the highest quarterly room addition in its history.
• Second, it provided us with a learning ground to develop effective Al applications.
• Otto also leverages modern travel services such as Spotnana to provide the widest range of travel content to enable predictive and proactive servicing while you are on a trip.
• (The) hospitality industry is particularly known for it in a lot of countries.

At present, 62% of our company continuously uses Al, with over 100 use cases in production. But when the team at Agoda released “Maya and the Secret World of Agoda” last November, it was clear the project was no joke. And though the project served no specific business purpose, it offers insight into how the company’s use of technology is integral to a decidedly human approach to serving travelers. Imagine a world where travel planners have more time to listen, understand and cater to the dreams of each traveler, then make every journey special and unique. AI provides the tools and insights, but it’s the human touch, the passion and the creativity of travel planners that turn trips into cherished memories. Far from taking jobs, AI will open new doors for travel planners, allowing them to shine brighter and make a deeper impact on the lives of those they serve.

Developing techniques to handle that unpredictability took us quite a while. My knowledge about these issues is based on my experience running AI multi-day workshops with travel leaders and members of the National Tour Association from around the world, and the time I’ve spent with them has been a revelation. You could say it should also be something that differentiates on social media to share. These are definitely ChatGPT App the generations that want to share and talk a lot about their experiences. Social media is a big driver there, and just stating that you’ve seen the Louvre, just like all your friends, is less interesting than sharing a special way you experienced the Louvre. We’re also experimenting, not at the scale of some of the bigger travel companies, but we’re definitely experimenting on UX changes for recommendations.

The alliance’s Round the World (RTW) fares allow passengers to book up to sixteen flights between at least three continents on a globe-spanning trip that lands back home up to a year later. The company also acquired FLYR.com and Jason Calacanis-backed AI itinerary builder Roam Around earlier this year. This shift presents an exciting opportunity for us in two key aspects. First, it allows us to leverage our data more effectively. By better understanding customer intent through free text, we can utilize our extensive and detailed knowledge of our supply to find the perfect fit in ways we couldn’t before.

Now, what a lot of people also don’t know is that we’ve been growing very rapidly in that area and expanding. The reason they don’t know is because in the US, we’re not as big in the homes area as we are in other parts of the world. At Booking.com, I’m the one who’s responsible for that, so I guess I have conversations with myself about that. But the thing is, at the end of the day, and I say, it’s how do we make decisions? We make decisions, as I said, on data, but also, what’s really important to me is listening — really listening. And just because I have the title of CEO doesn’t mean I know everything.

Skift: What are Tiqets’s biggest challenges, and where do you see the most significant opportunities for growth?

However, this digital revolution is being overlaid on a legacy infrastructure that is often outdated and fragile. Systems like the venerable Sabre booking platform and the recent, industry-wide disruption caused by the CrowdStrike Windows update highlight the vulnerabilities within the travel ecosystem. Such incidents, impacting airlines, hotels, banks, and support services, underscore the urgent need for a more robust and integrated technological foundation. A new generation of AI-powered chatbots is streamlining the booking process, handling everything from flight searches and hotel reservations to payment and baggage tracking.

We have not done as much of that as I would like; we’ll do more of that in the future, I think. It’s really giving people new opportunities and different opportunities that would be an important thing, I think, for a lot of people. Plus, I think people also enjoy new challenges and coming up with new things.

Moreover, employees in travel companies tend to be innovators by nature. Their first instinct is usually to create something that adds value to customers in amazingly powerful ways. They also understand once travel preferences change, customers simply don’t want to go back to the old way of doing things. Let’s use the example of planning a trip to a new destination. Plug in some well-chosen parameters and a few precise prompts about the travel experience you want, and GenAI will present you with dozens of exciting possibilities, whether they’re cultural, culinary, historical or entertainment-based. This level of personalization is driving higher satisfaction and conversion rates among users, and it’s a perfect example of a new opportunity being driven by AI.

You have this mental thing like I have to go and spend so much time

coordinating and finding this thing. So for folks working in the travel industry, if they use

agents and make their processes streamlined and faster, they can get a leg up

on their competition, and they can kind of move toward these new capabilities. I think in the end the technology always improves over time and then you need

to be the first to capitalize on the new technology. And I think agents will be

one of the biggest technology waves that’s going to happen maybe in the next

three years. We’ve talked to a lot of users, and everyone complains about

booking travel because it takes a lot of time – you have to choose from all the

options, spend a lot of time finding the best flight.

Key Insights from BAE’s recent Walk The Talk: AI in Hospitality and Travel Event

Romie is able to proactively suggest alternatives if there is an unexpected event that could cause a travel disruption, like poor weather or a flight delay, according to the app. That’s been the case for Expedia, Kayak, and HomeToGo, all of which have announced upgrades or new AI tools in recent months. Ask Maxx and Maxx Intelligence are also now available on CP Mobile, so advisors can access the tools via iOS and Android phones. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we’ve tested sent to your inbox weekly.

The user starts with a prompt in everyday language about a specific destination. The tool then opens a full webpage with options for flights, lodging, and car rentals, along with AI-generated information about the destination. Travel metasearch engine Kayak earlier this year released the first version of a reimagined travel planning and booking process, chatbot for travel agency a tool called Ask Kayak. The Expedia app is also getting an itinerary builder and a tool for users to compare destinations. The online customer help center has been updated with AI to resolve problems more quickly, the company said, and guests can now view AI-generated review summaries for at the top of each individual hotel’s review page.

• Much like with the internet, mobile phones and social media, change seems to be happening slowly for a while and then it appears to happen all at once.
• Many travelers dream of the process being fully automated.
• Given the right data, AI algorithms can identify patterns and make predictions in seconds.
• We’ll take the money from the customer in China, we’ll put Euros into the bank account of a Swiss hotel.
• Beyond the conventional role of generating itineraries, TripGenie seamlessly integrates with on-site business operations like flight or hotel bookings.

Whether for business or leisure, the travel process isn’t always easy. Approximately 77% of travelers have run into some type of problem while traveling, according to a Bankrate survey, including long waits, plan disruptions and poor customer service. According to McKinsey & Company, these agents have the potential to revolutionize business processes, cutting review times by up to 60% in tasks like credit-risk assessments and code modernization. Major tech players such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are already investing heavily in this technology, aiming to unlock new levels of productivity and innovation.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. There are so many travel creators out there who love Germany, have visited, and know the best destinations. People would much rather listen and hear from real people. Hilton said on Wednesday it added 6,000 rooms to its portfolio in the third quarter — the highest quarterly room addition in its history.

She’s queried ChatGPT many times to get insider information on Tacoma and sees frequent responses that would lead the average visitor to make a wrong decision about a restaurant or attraction. A well-written article researched by a human would have been more useful. “That’s a lot of time spent just on planning and something that generative AI can simplify,” she says. Once a user initiates a chat, honeebot autonomously selects and recommends the top three to five options that best fit the customer’s criteria via the Peakwork Hub. It can fully resolve up to 80% of customer inquiries, simulating responses under a representative’s name. For more complex cases, honeebot curates options, allowing back-office consultants to finalize recommendations quickly, resulting in a 10-15% increase in conversions.

So, really, at the end of the day, it’s “what does the customer want? ” That’s what our job is — to provide them what they want, and we’ll provide them the value so they can get it better from us than they could other ways. Because let’s face it, as I say, what we’re doing is an information transaction, and going out and getting information is very, very inexpensive nowadays.

A lot of people were doing stuff where it was the old style based on the highest-paid person’s opinion — we never believed in that. We always believed “show us the data” because digital commerce is really one of the greatest experimental bench tables you could ever play with. And you can see right away, if I do this, what happens? And we’ve been very fortunate, and that’s really how we came from, really nothing, to be the size that we are — by continuing to look at what is actual real in terms of data versus just what is somebody’s opinion. AI isn’t advancing in our industry as quickly as it could, even though hospitality was one of the early adopters of AI, particularly with revenue management systems, which have been in use for decades to optimize pricing and inventory.

Taiwan Surges Back into the Global Travel Scene with €158 Incentive to Attract

Gulmann said Otto will also be able to handle details like finding a hotel with specific amenities and within walking distance to a conference center. The tool is meant to learn and remember user data like a favorite airline, frequent flight routes, and preferred hotels. The Skift Travel 200 (ST200) combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number. In March, Amex GBT announced plans to buy CWT, a travel management company formerly known as Carlson Wagonlit Travel, for $570 million. Britain’s antitrust watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority, is taking a closer look at the planned transaction, and its process has delayed the proposed merger date into next year. In addition, the tool enables customers to continue conversations across multiple devices with the aim of making travel planning quicker and thereby boosting conversion.

Not only do they want a piece of the inbound market but now they are after the domestic and outbound markets too, a natural advantage for the Japanese-based companies. Travel agents are still big and thriving and growing in parts like the cruise industry or complex booking. (In) luxury travel, they’ve rebranded agents to advisors and so on. So the industry calls themselves travel advisors, not agents.

“All those break points that we see between distribution technology and supplier technology we can hopefully see get healed by AI.” A beta version of the feature — which the ChatGPT company said has plenty of bugs — is available for developers to test and provide feedback. I want to receive travel news and trade event update from Travel And Tour World.

Our connected, open platform captures billions of data points from across the industry, allowing us to build a sophisticated Causal AI model that can predict demand and optimize operations across the entire organization. This unified approach unlocks the true potential of AI, helping hotels drive a comprehensive commercial strategy rather than optimizing isolated KPIs. Despite challenges from independent travel planning trends, agencies using AI are finding new ways to add value. These include AI-driven recommendations for sustainable travel options and adventure tourism experiences, per the release. The global travel agency market is set to grow by $156.7 billion between 2024 and 2028, with AI emerging as a key driver of this expansion, according to a Sept. 2 press release from Technavio. The market is projected to see a compound annual growth rate of 8.6% during this period.

As the tech advances, users could bypass online travel agencies altogether. The traditional travel agent’s role has been eroded by search engines. AI agents can swiftly process complex travel requests, scour multiple platforms, and deliver optimized itineraries. My recent experience with a lost stroller in Athens underscored this. While AI accurately tracked the baggage, the chatbot sent me alerts on my phone, it was the human gate agent on our first leg that caused the initial error and it was the human at the receiving end that was crucial in resolving the issue. This highlights the complementary nature of AI and seasoned human expertise.

It’s called Otto, and the startup shared its plans on Thursday along with news of a $6 million seed round. So, Skift got an update from Evan Konwiser, chief marketing and strategy officer. In November, Garg will provide a demonstration of MultiOn at

The Phocuswright Conference.

“Think of Otto as a high-end travel agent or executive assistant that remembers your preferences, such as your choice of hotels and flights. It will also remember other nuances such as if you prefer to stay within 10 minutes of your meeting place,” Gulmann said. Event participants are among the initial global users to engage with this digital human, experiencing a new tier of AI-driven service for orchestrating and handling their travel plans. As the Skift test from March showed, the tech still needs some work  — but CEO Steve Hafner is hopeful that AI will lead to a better future for online travel booking companies.

This created a trifecta of more data, more users and more requirements. We had to take special precautions to ensure that such situations wouldn’t negatively impact the customer. Additionally, we wanted to enable cross-product opportunities, such as suggesting a flight or activity based on the hotel booking dates. For many years, Agoda primarily focused on a single product, which meant our technology stack was heavily centered around hotel bookings. To enable the “connected trip,” we needed to challenge these assumptions and generalize our tech stack to support multiple products. This became even more complex when we aimed to facilitate single transactions that could include a flight, a hotel booking and an activity.

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. The company is testing how to essentially input those details into its platform so that its online booking tool only displays travel options that comply with a road warrior’s travel policy. This removes the need for an advisor to read the email and input the information manually.

This is huge for a country like India, where English is limited to tier-1 and tier-2 cities mostly. The GenAI tech is fostering inclusivity, if you view from the language lens. The call center agents are using GenAI-enabled features very effectively. Our employees are using productivity tools for coding as well as analysis of data on a daily basis.