The days of going over to a booking office to get travel tickets are long gone. That gave way to the convenience of travel agencies who would do your booking for you. But over the years, the business of travel has seen even more changes. The travel websites have gone beyond giving you the reservations you need. They have begun applying data analytics and artificial intelligence to bring more useful solutions to the client and also open up new business prospects for themselves. Here are a few ways in which this is happening.
• Assistants: You might find it a bit disconcerting, but AI is allowing travel websites to get virtual assistants to attend to your basic requirements. If you are looking for available flights to a particular location on a specific day, the chatbot will give you all possible options in a flash. These assistants could pop up on a chat box on the website, or even on a messaging service on the social media profile of the travel booking company. This is allowing them to reduce workforce requirements for attending to standard queries. Some companies also provide this service when you are travelling, helping you find the correct boarding gate or the nearest lounge.
• Disruption Management: Taking off on that idea, many companies go beyond simple ticketing services. Often a traveller faces issues during travel. Many travel service companies are helping predict likely disruptions due to weather, traffic, political disturbances etc. They also come up with suitable alternatives in case a disruption takes place, like helping find a cheap hotel for the night or helping book an alternate onward flight.
• Custom Offers: If you are a valued client, then AI helps the travel company design a solution specifically for you. Based on your earlier travel history and choices, they can tailor a package that is best suited to your tastes. For example, if you have shown a liking for Changi airport, they could schedule an itinerary from Delhi to Jakarta via Singapore instead of via Bangkok, with an attractive discount thrown in, just so that you can enjoy your favourite airport.
• Social Media: It is very common for travellers today to share their experiences on social media. AI helps travel companies to track such reviews of their customers and use analytics to provide solutions in line with the sentiments expressed on social media. Such analyses also help in improving current offerings for future customers.
• Recommendations: This is the most common use we see of artificial intelligence. As soon as you submit your search, your previous search and buying behaviour is analysed to provide suggestions to you for other aspects of your trip. It could be the names of suggested hotels, or it could be an additional destination based on which destination you are looking for. Depending on the destination and the duration of your trip, you could also get recommendations for car rental services.
• Prior Alerts: Instead of waiting for a customer to log on and search for a particular trip, many travel companies are using analytics and AI to forecast which are the most likely destinations for specific customers, and send them alerts whenever some flash sales become available. AI allows these companies to plough through thousands of data points going back several years, based on which they can provide alerts which are most likely to attract customers based on their travel history.
• Efficient Service: Even routine customer service has begun to use smart technology to reduce the waiting time. The massive number of algorithms available for the AI tools make it possible for replies to be provided in a fraction of the time it earlier took.
• Dynamic Pricing: This is a pricing technique that has now been adopted by airlines, hotels and cab aggregators. To be able to this, a considerable number of data points need to be crunched, and this is possible only with an efficient AI system in place. Analytics helps to forecast and assess demand and supply correctly and then set the correct pricing level accordingly, to ensure that customers are not lost.
• Geographical Awareness: Most machines, especially mobiles, are location sensitive today. That helps in local searches for restaurants or museums. Travel companies have also taken advantage of this to provide a pointed recommendation based on past travel history and current location.
Thousands of travellers worldwide prefer to arrange their trips online instead of physically going to travel agencies. Data science has completely changed the way the travel industry operates in. Some might look upon it as an intrusion of privacy, but the fact remains that most travel companies are entirely aware of where, how and even why we have travelled, and are using artificial intelligence and intense data analytics to provide more useful solutions.
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