STG News
Booking.com, one of the world’s leading digital travel platforms, has announced its AI Trip Planner (Beta) is now available for travellers in Australia and New Zealand.
Both countries are the first markets in Asia Pacific to launch, with the AI Trip Planner only available for US and UK travellers in the company’s app since June last year (2023).
Built upon the foundation of Booking.com’s existing machine learning models that recommend destination, accommodation and attractions to millions of travellers on the platform every day, the AI Trip Planner is also partially powered by large language model (LLM) technology from OpenAI’s ChatGPT API to create a new conversational experience for people to start their trip planning process.
Travellers can ask the AI Trip Planner general travel-related questions, as well as more specific queries to support any stage of their trip planning, including scoping out potential destinations and accommodation options, providing travel inspiration based on the individual’s needs and requirements, as well as creating itineraries for a particular city, country or region.
In a recent study conducted by Booking.com*, nearly a third of Millennials (29%) and Gen Z (30%) consumers said they are likely to use AI when planning travel in 2024, compared to Gen X (18%) and just 7% of all Boomers. Over one quarter (26%) of Kiwi travellers said they are likely to use AI to plan travel when booking holiday homes, the highest for any type of accommodation booked. Almost a third of Kiwi travellers (28%) are likely to use AI to plan international travel in 2024, in comparison slightly less are likely to use it for domestic travel (21%).
Travellers can easily chat with the AI Trip Planner to ask questions and refine their search in real time, with new options surfaced in a matter of seconds. From inspiration on romantic beach destination options in Tropical North Queensland to zeroing in on a curated list of holiday homes for a family of four in Byron Bay, or even asking about the best attractions in New Zealand for a winter holiday, the AI Trip Planner makes recommendations in a quick, effortless and conversational way.
The AI Trip Planner takes the trip planning process one step further by providing travellers with a visual list of destinations and properties, including Booking.com’s pricing, with links to view more details. Travellers can go back and forth between their chat with the AI Trip Planner and the Booking.com app as they consider options for their trip. With just a tap on what type of booking they require, from accommodation to attractions they can complete the reservation in-app.
“Our primary aim at Booking.com has always been to leverage technology to make travel easier.” said Todd Lacey, Regional Manager of Booking.com in Oceania. “Developments with generative AI are accelerating the work we’ve been doing for years with machine learning to enhance and improve every aspect of the customer experience on our platform, whether it’s optimising the right order to display hotel or holiday home content to surfacing the most relevant reviews or attractions. Our AI Trip Planner is another step in our ongoing journey to explore how we bring even more value, and hopefully enjoyment, to travellers from Australia and New Zealand.”
“Over the past year, our AI Trip Planner has provided us with new possibilities to help customers plan and search for travel options in a very natural, human way, and we’re excited to now launch in Australia and New Zealand,” said Rob Francis, CTO of Booking.com. “With generative AI, we’re able to start having scalable, one-to-one conversations with our customers on their terms, much like how you would begin to talk about planning a trip with your partner or friends. It’s just the beginning, but we have lots of runway here to explore in order to innovate and connect the travel experience further on Booking.com, all in a safe, ethical and inclusive way.”
Travellers in Australia and New Zealand must be signed in to their Booking.com account in the app and have their language settings set to English to access the new travel planning tool.