Beyond borders: How AI search enhances travel experiences from inspiration to innovation

Mar 19th 2024ai

The experience of booking and embarking on travel is truly a journey and not just a destination. For guests, this journey begins with the dream of travelling to a foreign country, dining at the newest 5-star restaurant or simply getting away for the weekend with your partner to a local resort. The source of our dreams and inspirations may be a social media posting, word of mouth or your favorite travel magazine.

In today’s digital world, inspiration can come from so many places. And just as there are a multitude of inspirations, there are a multitude of choices that a prospective guest must make to turn their dream travel experience into reality. The guest is now faced with the Paradox of Choice which is the premise that having too many choices increases our anxiety, and decision-making becomes more difficult.

No matter if you are a hotel, airline, cruise line or restaurant, the prospective guests are asking you to understand them, curate and personalize their experiences. However, travel providers create numerous variations of packages and booking options to attract a wide audience of potential guests. The growing inventory of travel offers makes it difficult to curate and personalize those offers for a particular guest. Travel providers are taking cues from retailers when it comes to understanding their guests and delivering a truly personalized experience. They are leveraging first-party data and employing artificial intelligence to deliver a curated and unique experience for their guests. Travel providers are working hard to better understand their guests and to help them make informed decisions. From inspiration to innovation, from booking to post-travel experience and loyalty, it is a journey for both guests and travel brands.

Interested in this topic? Come hear myself, Kellay Buckelew VP of Digital Experience for Norwegian Cruise Line and Piyush Patel, Chief Strategic Biz Dev Officer for Algolia, as we discuss “Transforming Travel: Role of AI in Leisure, Entertainment and Commerce” at the Adobe Summit 2024

Data – the foundation of curation

In order to curate and personalize a guest’s experience, you must first understand your guest; not only their historical preferences, but also their needs at the ‘moment of truth’. Context is everything and while the data from past interactions can help inform an understanding of the guest, it is equally important to understand the current intentions of the guest.

It is not enough to know that last year during Spring Break they spent a week in the Caribbean. A brand must understand not only the destination, but the activities and experiences that the guest and their families engaged in. Are they thrill-seeking adventurers who want to go deep-sea diving or zip lining across a ravine? Perhaps they are more interested in a wellness package that includes spa treatments and healthy cuisine. Are they budget conscious or luxury travelers?

Once a travel brand has this understanding and knowledge of their guests’ preferences (typically stored in their CRM platform), they have the first steps of their data foundation. Now comes the hard part, which signals can, or should I read to understand the context of what their intentions are today, in the moment?

Are they planning a business or leisure trip? Additionally, a travel brand must recognize where their guest is in their travel journey; planning, embarking, experiencing or post-travel.

This is when a brand needs to begin to employ AI Search, merging historical data with the speed and scale to respond within milliseconds of a customer query with real-time, relevant responses. Responses which demonstrate that the brand understands not only the guest’s history, but also understands that while last year we went to the beach, this year we desire a cultural experience in a European city. Your business teams could never envision all the variations of queries and write the business rules that would deliver a relevant experience. There just are not enough resources and time to undertake such a daunting task. However, AI Search can do this; respond rapidly to the current signals, criteria and data while maintaining a consideration for the historical data. Speed and scale that can only be achieved with AI.

Once a brand builds a solid foundation of data, the possibilities of delivering innovative experiences can be endless. However, keep in mind that this foundation of data must stand on quality data, and just like a house, if the foundation is weak so will the structure be weak as well. Dedicate the time, work with internal and external partners to solidify the data foundation.

Now it is time to move on to the experience.

Federated search experiences – scale search across commerce & content

People often fall into one of two groups when it comes to booking travel. I will call the first group “Spearfishers” and the second group “Wanderlusters”.

Spearfishers know exactly what they are looking for and want an experience that is streamlined and extremely relevant. Wanderlusters yearn to travel and explore new places, they are looking for inspiration, open to new adventures and want an experience that is rich in content.

How do you satisfy the experiential needs of these two groups of potential guests? It is clearly not a one-size-fits-all. You need a technology stack that brings together best of breed content and commerce solutions with a best of breed AI Search solution that can deliver Federated search results.

Federated search displays multiple and relevant results for a single query. The results can come from different data sources; product catalog, blogs, reviews, categories, and related items. Offering Federated search results on an initial query allows a travel brand to show product/package results alongside more immersive content listings that are inspirational. This initial results page provides a natural entry point for both Spearfishers and Wanderlusters.

When AI Search is connected to the Commerce and Content engines, a travel brand can then deliver on the expectations of both Spearfishers and Wanderlusters. Spearfishers will be guided through a traditional commerce experience while the Wanderlusters can be immersed in an exploratory, immersive content experience.

By harnessing the power of AI (and especially natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML)), conversational commerce technology delivers on the promise of optimizing travel recommendations with product comparisons, travel guides, query refinement, travelers’ reviews, and a conversational interface that enhances the overall search functionality and experience, and tailors travel options and ideas to meet the guests’ preferences.

The AI search guided travel experience – be there for the guest every step of the way

Let us look at the example of a European family vacation.

Choose your destination: deciding which European cities or countries you want to visit may be the most difficult decision you have to make. There are a multitude of factors that you will need to consider such as interests, weather, and budget. Leveraging a travel planning web site that is powered by AI Search can take all these factors into consideration and begin to provide options based on their understanding of your needs.

Now that you have decided on the destination, let us say it’s a tour of Southern Spain, you will need to book flights and accommodations. Where will your itinerary start and end? Which city should you fly to? Madrid, Valencia, or Seville? So, you are all set with airfare, now you need to fine-tune your itinerary and book hotels and activities.

Will you be staying at luxury or budget hotels, or do you want to stay in an AirBnB? Again, a multitude of factors that traditional search engines could never plan for without the use of AI helping deliver the most relevant options given the data and understanding of the guests’ preferences. You may need to adjust your itinerary based on your preferences, budget, and available time. A friend told you that you must take the time to visit the Alhambra in Granada but had not planned for that in your original query. Web sites that leverage AI chat and search can make the experience more efficient as you fine-tune your itinerary and adjust your search parameters. Now that AI Search has helped you make these decisions and finalized your itinerary, you are ready to enjoy your trip!

But it does not end there in terms of how AI Search can help you with your travel journey. We know the best laid plans can sometimes go astray. We’ve all experienced delays, cancellations, and hiccups of what we thought were rock-solid travel plans. You are away from home and now you need to rely on your mobile phone to make these adjustments. In fact, based on a report from Statista, revenue of travel apps worldwide reached $1.2 billion U.S. dollars. Travel brands must ensure that the AI Search and conversational interface they have on their desktop web sites are also as good, if not better, on their mobile experiences; mobile web and app.

As consumers continue to shift their disposable income from products to experiences, it is incumbent upon travel brands to leverage tools such as AI, chat, and federated search to really understand their guests, deliver inspiration and innovation throughout the travel experience from booking to post-journey.

Come hear myself, Kellay Buckelew VP of Digital Experience for Norwegian Cruise Line and Piyush Patel, Chief Strategic Biz Dev Officer for Algolia, as we discuss “Transforming Travel: Role of AI in Leisure, Entertainment and Commerce” at the Adobe Summit 2024 on Wednesday March 27th at 3:45 pm.