Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more
When people started to talk about AI agents and assistants, the number one use case revolved around travel. Could someone be watching a video about the Maldives and direct their AI agent to start finding flights and hotels, and book these seamlessly?
We‘re inching closer to a similar future as the travel industry begins to embrace agentic AI. Kayak and Expedia, two of the largest companies in travel booking, said during VB Transform that personalization and changing search patterns mean travel companies can rely on agents to make travel inspiration a reality.
Matthias Keller, chief product officer at Kayak, said the company has been experimenting with this idea for a couple of years, even taking advantage of a partnership with Amazon’s Alexa. Kayak no longer launches on Alexa, but that hasn’t stopped the company from offering different search modes for customers.
“We are striving for this vision of a travel agent that is always available, that is agentic and powered by AI,” Keller said onstage at VB Transform. “In April, we launched our new testbed for agentic travel booking called Kayak AI; it’s a fully chat-based agentic experience that puts together the power of ChatGPT and many different tools. One is web search, but we also offer tools specifically for flights or hotels.”
Keller said Kayak is “working towards our vision of having this fully personalized experienced that does all the heavy lifting for you when you plan travel.”
While the idea of an agent proactively guiding potential travelers makes for efficient trip planning, Expedia CTO Ramana Thumu noted that there is a delicate balance to strike.
“More and more customer expectations will revolve around a seamless experience, from search to completing transactions,” Thumu said. “But the most important thing, and the shift I see happening, is asking for the balance between the control the traveler has, and the control we give to the agent.”
From social media feeds to reality
One reason this balance becomes essential is that, increasingly, consumers find travel inspiration everywhere. For one of its AI projects, Expedia decided to capitalize on the growing influence of travel influencers who post their trips on Instagram.
... continue reading