With U.S. travel to Europe hitting 95% of 2019 levels, travel to the continent is back - and it’s bringing some interesting trends along for the trip.
Number one, and rising like a rocket, is the use of artificial intelligence to plan trips to foreign bourses. Germany-based Tui, for example, is shifting its operations to increasingly rely on ChatGPT to help tourists plan trips.
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Last July, Tui rolled out its new ChatGPT tool that enables customers to enter prompts on common travel planning queries on flights, hotels, excursions, and discount deals, among other queries.
The Tui chatbot responds with its own travel and transport recommendations, deal links, ticket services, and other suggestions and routes the customer to a reservation page where the traveler can finalize the trip using Tui’s checkout platform.
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Tui is hardly alone.
Expedia has also opened up a Chatbot travel services tool and is planning regular updates, throughout 2023, company officials say.
"By integrating ChatGPT into the Expedia app and combining it with our other AI-based shopping capabilities, like hotel comparison, price tracking for flights, and trip collaboration tools, we can now offer travelers an even more intuitive way to build their perfect trip," said Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern.
Using the Expedia Chatbot, users can not only get travel recommendations but they can also get closer to a travel confirmation as the AI tool automatically saves recommended hotels and flights and easily check availability on deals, and activities. It also lockdown travel staples like renting a car or using travel rewards.
Tui, however, is not saying it’s replacing human customer service agents with an AI bot.
That said, it’s certainly leaning into AI technology to get more travelers to use its platform by adding Chatbot technology into its call center operations.
“Gen AI is rapidly replacing tasks but not jobs,” said Tui chief information officer Pieter Jordaan. “We see it being used additive to existing jobs. However, humans using Gen AI will far outperform humans without the help of Gen AI.”
