Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the travel industry by offering the best deals to customers as well as accelerating growth. The rapid development in AI has made almost all industries curious about this technology.
AI is a branch of computer science that is explicitly programmed to create machines that can act smarter than humans. With its incredible benefits, AI is offering path-breaking innovations to various industries. Apart from retail, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, now the travel industry is transforming with AI. From chatbots to recognizing patterns in reservations, AI is completely changing the travel industry, benefiting both the travel industry and the travelers.
Thanks to AI, the traditional cumbersome process of performing every job manually is eliminated and replaced with machines. From self-driving cars to SIRI, from filtering a job application to targeting the ideal customers for marketing to traffic predictions, AI has come a long way. For instance, AI in retail uses predictive analytics to enable marketers to understand a customer’s behavior and accordingly send them the best possible offers based on their browsing and purchase history. This helps reduce the cost and time invested in managing customer relationship. Moreover, with predictive maintenance, AI can predict a future device breakdown too. Furthermore, as maintaining the security is a growing concern, AI helps overcome cyber threats and many other unknown risks associated with various industries as well.
Greg Oates said, “after years of hype, hospitality and travel companies are now delivering real added value for consumers by integrating artificial intelligence into online search and booking platforms.” With AI, both business users and the end users can benefit. Now, I would like to take you back a few years. Imagine if we planned for a trip and we had to go through a list of processes, including the visit to a travel agent, paying commission, and booking the tickets. Travel planning would’ve continued even after we reach our desired destination, like hiring a tourist guide, finding a hotel, and deciding the places to visit.
But that’s not the case anymore! We are living in a technology enriched world and the world is automated with interactive machines. Today, with advancements in AI, your travel experience has completely changed. As soon as we search for some place online, we get all the possible recommendations for places to visit, nearby hotels, and flights rates via advertisements or push notifications. This is the power of AI.
Another fantastic application of AI are the chatbots. Chatbots have helped the travel industry understand their customers well and to offer them with desired help. Flight and hotel prices change dynamically and we cannot keep checking them all the time. The advanced technology in AI notifies us with hot deals and best prices notifications, which allows customers to save their time and money.
Kayak founder Paul English said “we’re trying to create superhuman travel consultants who are AI-powered and can handle more trips per hour than a regular travel agent can. They can make dramatically better recommendations than normal travel agents.” This states that we are just at the beginning of the AI advancements in the travel industry. The travel industry is transforming with AI, and a few years later, we will see groundbreaking innovations which might leave us stunned.