You tend to travel because you want to enjoy the experience at the other end.
Quote from Mike Croucher, chief architect at Travelport, in an article on PhocusWire this week.
AI analysis, part 1: Travel tech giants
Travel is ultimately about the destination.
It’s not about filtering flight results or checking availability on an Airbnb. Sure, finding a good deal might prove mildly thrilling, but the process itself is often tedious and time-consuming.
The goal of all that legwork is arriving at a location – and if that legwork is minimized, the overall experience can only improve.
That’s where digital solutions come into play. Artificial intelligence, in particular, helps decrease the effort travelers have to put into searching for and booking trips.
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AI not only expedites the trip planning process, but it also makes the experience highly personalized – a service consumers have come to expect in many aspects of their online lives.
For travel brands, realizing this only serves to assist their bottom lines. The easier it is for consumers to find what they’re looking for, the more likely they are to convert.
And while many companies have invested heavily in AI – whether to optimize search results or to create chatbots or voice assistants – the travel sector lags behind in customization compared to other e-commerce companies such as Amazon.
A big reason for this is data. Consumers interact with Amazon far more often than they do with travel sites, namely because people don’t travel that frequently.
Which makes the need for a seamless travel planning experience all the more important. Travelers invest heavily in these once- or twice-per-year trips, and the better travel brands can anticipate people’s preferences, the easier it is for travelers to make purchases.
Companies that utilize their data to the fullest extent will be the ones that come out on top. Knowing customers is immensely valuable, and with AI, the ability to get there is easier than ever before.
And getting where you’re going is really what it’s all about.