# 6: A.I. & Sustainable travel

Concept map and notes on Artificial Intelligence and Travel

This week as we began the experience design project, I was part of a lot of our discussions and ideas which were around Artificial Intelligence, travel and tourism for families. So I decided to map it a little and this write this post to share my notes.

The cusp of the third era: AI & travel We know how we book and experience our travel, has evolved in a few years. In this age of accessibility and globalization, travellers seek to be independent in their decisions and gone are the days where we search for travel agents and read guidebooks. We are posting our photos on social media platforms and possibly entering an age where a social media app is all we need to book ourselves a holiday. So what's making it possible?

It is Artificially Intelligent Chatbots!

A travelbot can help the user save time, organize the trip and make suggestions. The power of AI is its ability to learn, based on which, it is catering to user driven needs which could be like: being available when I need help, being in my language, recommend me hotels based on my preferences, direct me to easily book my flight tickets and stay and then send me details of the itinerary on my mail and messenger.

For the back stage operations or platform for service design, chatbots could be very useful as several common responses can be automated. According to a recent study by Retale, 60% of their users are open to using chatbots and are comfortable as long as they know they are talking to a bot.

A report suggests that by the end of 2017, KLM Dutch Airlines was dealing with 50% of all its enquiries using AI. Its service bot was introduced even for its backend teams to work seamlessly. Presently, their chatbot has 13 languages and it was built from the need to improve and simplify customer service.

In a typical week, KLM has to respond to 15,000 social conversations in a dozen different languages. Consequently, they started exploring new ways to provide a great, personalised but at the same time fast customer care and that’s why they opted to implement a chatbot. In first month, their volume of Facebook messages jumped 40 percent. KLM said 1.7 million messages have been sent on Messenger by over 500,000 people.

Dutch airline KLM was one of the first to implement the use of bots and chat apps, sending their passenger boarding passes and flight information via Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber and other chat apps.

Ana Brant who serves as the director of global guest experience and innovation for the London-based luxury hotel, having previously served as the quality manager for The New York Palace and the area director of quality for The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air writes for HBR about how data analytics can help them take personalized action for their guests without intruding their privacy. Its helping them move from what they think is important to what the customer thinks is important.

Lola travel management app, launched by travel innovators of Kayak, pivoted themselves to serve the unmanaged corporate travellers from leisure travellers last year based on their focussed group responses. Lola's primary platform remains traveler oriented and built around personal preferences and loyalty program affiliations as drivers behind business travel bookings. While Lola has sophisticated AI to produce relevant search results for travelers, the majority of its chat interface and personal service relies on human agents supported internally by AI. Co-founder Paul English explains that the decisions are by design.

Mezi is another very interesting analogous app for travel booking. Its a shopping chatbot that can help you book your flights! Recently acquired by American express, the company seems to be gearing up to specialize more in travel.

Chatbots are still on a very nascent stage and we need not extend our designs completely this way. However, as travel and tourism companies continue to test and release more chatbots and do more with AI, we’ll gather more insights about how and when customers want to communicate with chatbots. These are going to become more and more refined.  

Many travel and tourism businesses are using customer social media feeds to promote destinations, setting up chatbots to make booking easier and taking giant leaps forward – those that don’t adapt will be left behind as businesses or even users.

As the technologies become more advanced, combining AI with intelligent personalisation, could mean companies are predicting what holiday you’re dreaming of before you have any idea. The chatbot of the future will already know your preferred airport, dates, times, mode of transport and who you’re travelling with from your emails, Facebook, Twitter and calendars – if you grant them access, of course.

Few more interesting blogs on how to work with CUI:

https://www.webcredible.com/blog/conversation-starter/