There’s been a lot of buzz lately surrounding Microsoft-funded OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence (AI) and similar advanced technologies, and its potential for a wide-ranging set of applications across various industries.
CNBC reports that researchers are predicting the coming year will see an explosion in generative AI’s implementation for specific functions across a variety of business sectors.
It's anticipated that the travel sector will be a particularly rapid adopter of ChatGPT and similar AI products, with the technology playing the role of “virtual assistant”—presenting users with trip options, making personalized recommendations, and building and booking itineraries based on their complex conversational queries.
And, while the present hype around ChatGPT might portray this technological advancement as ready to revolutionize the travel trade in the way that the dawn of the internet did decades ago, industry experts are viewing its probable implications rather more conservatively.
Generative AI’s unique natural-language processing and response capabilities make it particularly well-suited to performing customer service functions. Its ability to interact conversationally with users while instantly analyzing vast search engine databases provides, “interesting possibilities in particular for itinerary building and question answering,” Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, Booking.com’s parent company, told the outlet.
In this context, one obvious worry is that this AI could usurp the role of traditional travel agents. Fogel said the it isn’t really intended to replace human interaction. “Travel is fundamentally about connecting people and communities, and that human connection will always play a crucial role in the travel experience,” he opined. “The innovation happening in travel should be all about making the human interaction between travelers and supplier partners even richer, while creating efficiencies at scale,” he added.
Fogel pointed out that, in fact, AI-supported efficiencies are already woven into the travel search and booking process more than most people realize. “Booking.com has been using AI and machine learning for over a decade,” he explained. “It is ingrained in the customer journey at every step on our platform.”
Max Starkov, a hospitality and online travel industry consultant of thirty years, told the outlet that, rather than sensationalizing our language around this latest tech advancement, we ought to talk about it in more pedestrian terms: as a tool. “All of these technologies are simply advanced tools, enabling smart operators and vendors to better serve their customers and increase market share in the process,” he said.
An artificially intelligent customer service robot working with call headset and laptop. (Source: iStock/Getty Images Plus/PhonlamaiPhoto)
Big-name online travel agencies (OTAs)— such as Kayak, Expedia, Trip.com—have been ultra-fast to implement ChatGPT chatbot plug-ins on their websites and mobile apps., capitalizing on the AI’s itinerary-building capabilities and making its trip suggestions instantly bookable.
“The OTAs have already proved two of the main uses of ChatGPT in travel: trip planning and customer service,” Starkov said. He highlighted how the tech product’s integration is poised to shortcut the customer’s path from receiving a recommendation to making a reservation.“Adding AI as a planning tool will help the OTAs to shortcut the digital customer journey and almost immediately transport travelers from the planning to the booking phase of the customer journey,” he said.
For its part, ChatGPT creator OpenAI has outlined the technology’s best-use applications within the travel sector as, “enhanced chatbot, virtual assistants, translator of content, and marketing and website copywriting,” according to CNBC. Time will tell whether generative AI remains confined to such functions or expands into many more roles within the industry.
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