We want to help you keep up with how brands across the
travel industry are exploring – and using – generative artificial intelligence
solutions from companies including OpenAI, Google and more. So we’re surveying
technology professionals at leading travel brands, and we’ll be publishing
their answers periodically here.
Mahendra Roopa, HomeToGo’s director of
engineering, is the latest to offer his thoughts on generative AI and its uses
for the travel industry.
We began working
with generative AI … at the beginning of 2023, but conversational AI is something
that has been on our radar for a long time. After seeing the breakthroughs with
ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0 we saw an opportunity where developing this technology
could drive real benefits for both sets of our customers – travelers and
partners. For travelers we continue to deliver highly personalized
recommendations, thus driving more bookings and qualified leads for our
partners.
It’s important to note that
we aren’t just rushing into AI because it’s trendy. We’re building tools that
will drastically improve how our travelers can find and book their perfectly
unique vacation rentals – as a global marketplace this expert matchmaking
between supply and demand is at the core of our business.
Our current work
with generative AI is focused on … Curation and personalization. We aim to provide travelers with a highly personalized browsing experience that
enables them to explore
and refine our unparalleled inventory through written conversation – so they
can find their uniquely ideal vacation rental faster and easier than ever
before.
For example, travelers can
ask prompts such as “I want to book a ski chalet in Switzerland over New Year’s”
and HomeToGo’s AI Mode will curate and provide them with a personalized list of
recommended ski homes matching those criteria. There are endless use cases:
Think pet-friendly finds (“I’m traveling with my dog, where can we stay in the
south of Portugal over the next week?”) to travelers wanting to stay in a
castle (“I would love to feel like a queen for a night – where are the top-rated castles in the United Kingdom?”).
The biggest
challenge for us related to generative AI is … The
recommendations from the current status of generational AI aren’t always
perfect.
This is a common problem with the current generation
of language models, and for us it’s important we get this right, especially to
support travelers that have an extremely out-of-the-box request for how they
want to travel. We have a team dedicated to constantly test and code new
solutions around these challenges, making sure responses meet our high
standards for quality, accuracy and relevance.
For the travel industry
overall, we see the most potential for generative AI to … Revolutionize how travelers plan, find and book their vacations. The process of finding and booking a vacation rental
online is something that’s remained largely unchanged in the last 10 years. Generative AI has the
potential to massively simplify trip planning by intuitively matching travelers
with their ideal destinations, accommodations, activities, etc. – going far
beyond what is possible with traditional search.
We think that generative AI can provide some real
benefits for travelers who can sometimes feel overwhelmed when planning their
vacations. Being able to ask questions and describe your ideal vacation to an
AI travel planner makes the experience of finding and booking the perfect
vacation rental incredibly fast and easy.
One year from now we
expect to be using generative AI for … Potentially multiple business cases! The
opportunities are endless – we know that generative AI has the potential to tackle many complex issues in the future, but we will take
our time to develop and test these applications across different stages of a
users’ travel planning process.
