Trip planning startup Tripoto recently announced rather grandly that it has created the "world's first AI-based travel concierge".
Online virtual assistants in the travel industry are not new by any means, but ones that learn from the interactions they have with users as they evolve are far less commonplace.
Tripoto's effort, "Your Virtual Travel Buddy", is worth a play because it combines information and content from other sources to feed the conversation it has with the user.
Content from the company's core product (TLabs here), trip itineraries and travel planning, are also fed into the system.
In its basic form, it can respond to user queries ranging from destinations, top attractions, travel itineraries, how to reach, best time to visit, getaways, restaurants, culture, festivals, hotels, activities, weather, time and distance.
Product feeds come in via API from the likes of Airbnb, Booking.com, Rome2Rio and Agoda.
So, we tried a few examples...
This one worked out reasonably simply:
But this second effort didn't work out so well (didn't understand "from" and "to", nor are those Airbnb properties anywhere near the Eiffel Tower):
Early days, though...
Check it out here.