Travel technology provider Zumata is the latest company to seize on the allegedly growing need for new ways of performing travel searches.
The Singapore-based company has decided to work with the IBM Watson cognitive technology, giving its platform the ability to serve personalised hotel recommendations on third party websites.
For example, results can be returned based on a question such as "I need a luxury hotel in Sydney with a view of the opera house, an indoor pool and free wifi", showing hotel views, amenities and sentiments from social media about the property.
Over time, Zumata's platform learns from the results it shares and gets bookings from in order to refine the content that it produces for later searches.
The system works on a company's website, as well within applications on both mobile and desktop such as Facebook Messenger.
IBM Watson APIs used in this latest collaboration include the AlchemyLanguage, Visual Recognition and Retrieve & Rank feeds.
Zumata joins the likes of Etihad and Wayblazer in tapping the Watson functionality.
Zumata's director of business development and strategic partnerships, Robert Meza, says:
"Consumers want choice, whether it’s what they eat, how they spend their free time, or where they travel. Travel sites must now have large inventories to satisfy the wide-ranging needs and tastes of their customers.
"A site that can immediately present highly relevant and personalized results will have a significant advantage over sites that offer generic search results. Finding the perfect hotel should be convenient."
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