Technology is evolving at an incredible pace. It was only a couple of years back that mobile apps for making travel bookings were an in-thing and all the major OTAs invested heavily mobile apps. Come 2016 and most users accept mobile apps as a given and many in fact prefer to use apps to book flights and hotels.

Thanks to advancements in Big Data and Predictive analytics, AI has been making big strides in travel. The latest example of it is Chatbots, which use AI to mimic human interaction, just like a customer service representative would.

Technically, they’ve been around for quite a while now but are now more sophisticated than ever before.

Just imagine that your customer’s flight gets cancelled, and he gets notified about it on his phone. Your chatbot immediately comes into action and asks the customer if he would like to be booked on the next flight, instead of simply sending a sorry text.

For OTAs, chatbots can serve as a virtual guide and will engage in an interactive conversation with your customer which will be more than a Q&A session. It will ask them for their preferences regarding destinations, hotels, activities and offer suggestions like a travel agent would. By analysing user behaviour over time, bots will eventually become smarter and automate the entire planning and booking process for the end user.

It’s easy to see that chatbots bring immense value to customers by making their online experience smoother and swifter. It will also offer customers a more interesting way to interact with travel brands rather than just apps and social media.

Moreover, spending time and money to train a human, your chatbot can work 24/7 and be programmed to interact in any language to offer customers a more personalized experience.

It is being predicted that in the near future chatbots will not only answer queries but will also respond to emotional responses just like humans. In short, aligning AI with human interests will prove very useful to tap into a new customer base and maximize ROI.

Airlines can use chatbots to make the booking process more intuitive as well as offer smarter in-flight entertainment based on customer preference, operable from their smartphones.

Hotels can use concierge chatbots to enhance customer experience through welcome and goodbye notifications as soon they arrive or leave the hotel, provide room information and location, set the room temperature and lighting and offer meals based on customer preference as well as suggest local sightseeing spots and arrange local transportation.

Many startups, particularly those operating in the trip planning space can use chatbots to help customers plan their trip more efficiently by offering suggestions based on their preferences and history. For startups, it will be a big investment but one that will set them apart and bring huge cost and time savings.

It’s safe to say that chatbots have marked the beginning of a new era in travel technology after the app boom and are definitely here to stay.

Author: TravelCarma is an experienced Travel Technology brand with expertise in equipping Travel businesses worldwide with state-of-the-art, mobile enabled Online Reservation Systems, Back-Office and Mid-Office Systems, Corporate Booking Tools and Access to Global Inventory via XML API Integrations. TravelCarma caters to over 200 Travel and Hospitality companies worldwide, including OTAs, Tour Operators, DMCs, Hotels, Wholesalers, Rental Car Companies and Bus Operators. You can know more about them at www.travelcarma.com and reach them at sales@TravelCarma.com.

The post Should travel brands start exploring chatbots immediately? appeared first on TravHQ.

Google recently launched its new feature, ‘Destinations’, which claims to help users search and plan their vacation more easily. As you enter the destination or a region, you can see cards of suggested locations in the region, suggested itineraries and can even choose your interest and get relevant results. With this feature, Google has promised all the mobile users a smooth experience of travel planning. So, even if you enter a tentative period of your travel, it will return itinerary ideas and the best time to visit when fares are low. It will do the searching and scanning through billions of flights and hotels and return results according to your needs and budget.

Image: Google Blog

There are numerous travel planning apps that are well known and have been around for a while now. Let’s take a look at some of the features of Destinations as compared to other trip planning apps:

• To use Destinations you don’t need to download any app on your phone to plan your trip. Simply go to Google search bar and type ‘XYZ destinations’ and you’ll get cards that will return places of your interest. But you can also do all the searching and planning on websites of numerous other planning apps as well without downloading the app.
• There are suggested itineraries by Google but it does not provide any feature to save your itinerary or even create one. Whereas on apps like TripHobo you can get suggested itineraries or create your personalised itinerary and even save and share it with others in the form of a user generated itinerary.
• Destinations provides filters which help you narrow your search on the basis of your tentative dates, budget or interests. This seems to be quite an appealing feature but as of now it isn’t fully functional.
• Many travel apps provide booking solutions as well whereas Destinations return sites where you can go and book your flights.

Impact on trip planning startups?

So how can Google’s new Destination finder impact apps that provide similar features? By providing the convenience to simply Google any search for travel planning without going to any website or app, the company says it wants people to do all the searching and planning on their smartphones. But this leads us to think, why anybody would spend time to check Destinations on Google if they have to hop on to other websites to create their personalised itineraries and save them which they cannot do on Google!

With its search capabilities and ability of its algorithms to provide results based on consumer habits and preferences, suppliers like airlines, hotels and destination marketers are still looking forward to collaborate with Google but for now, the search giant is not providing any booking solutions and it returns booking portals as search results to make the final bookings because neither does Google wants to forsake ad revenue coming from these OTAs, nor do the OTAs want to snap ties with Google because it generates and brings huge traffic for their businesses. Also, there are snags in Destinations that need to be fixed, so it’s not a be all and end all for all the travel planning needs as compared to other players providing similar solutions to travellers.

Author: TravelCarma is an experienced Travel Technology brand with expertise in equipping Travel businesses worldwide with state-of-the-art, mobile enabled Online Reservation Systems, Back-Office and Mid-Office Systems, Corporate Booking Tools and Access to Global Inventory via XML API Integrations. TravelCarma caters to over 200 Travel and Hospitality companies worldwide, including OTAs, Tour Operators, DMCs, Hotels, Wholesalers, Rental Car Companies and Bus Operators. You can know more about them at www.travelcarma.com and reach them at sales@TravelCarma.com.

The post Will Google’s ‘Destinations’ affect trip planning startups? appeared first on TravHQ.

Wouldn’t life be just amazing if travel became so easy that it would take just a few clicks to book your dream holiday? If you could just get on a site and without even entering your preferences you are shown the best beaches across the globe fitting your budget, airlines that you usually prefer to use, your preferred seat location and hotels of your choice. This indeed is the magic of Big Data!

The ever growing chunks and chunks of user data generated every minute by travellers online is processed by analysis techniques also known as Big Data analytics and is used by businesses for competitive advantage. Not only this, for consumers it brings personalised service at very high speed. In fact, it is going to be the next big thing in the travel industry. Whether it is the airlines, hotels, travel agencies or simply travellers, all are going to reap the benefits of Big Data.

Airlines are betting big time on big data analytics. British Airways already uses a ‘Know Me’ feature to make an in-depth analysis of data for each and every customer to provide personalised results to them resulting in a better look-to-book ratio, boost in revenue and better customer satisfaction. GDSs like Amadeus use features like ‘Extreme Search’ and ‘Featured Results’ that help in improving customer experience. For example, they don’t need to mention a date for travel and they can ask random queries like ‘When are the cheapest flights to Brazil available?’ or ‘Can I go somewhere for 500$?’ and get very specific results.

The hospitality business is another sector that can use big data analytics to offer rooms and services that are the preferred choices of their loyal customers. By knowing their customer’s preferences hotels can send them personalised messages and deals. If you are a hotel and have data about what time of the year your customers tend to travel, how much they like to spend and what they like doing, you can suggest rooms, activities and ancillary services that will go a long way in exceeding their expectations.

For travel agencies, it is going to be a boon because by simply tracking their customer preferences of destinations you can create personalised packages for them, by studying the behaviour of travellers like, which destinations do travellers in the age group 18-35 prefer, make suggestions on the basis of the choices of your customers. Your prompt advice will make a huge impact on the customer decision making and will help in better conversions.

Big data will also help advertisers maximize their ROI through highly tailored marketing messages based on online user behaviour and their search history.

It all revolves around consumer experience but it is a win-win situation for both, business and the consumer. The more personalised, convenient and budget-friendly travel will become, the higher will be customer loyalty and higher will be the conversion rates for businesses.

Author: TravelCarma is an experienced Travel Technology brand with expertise in equipping Travel businesses worldwide with state-of-the-art, mobile enabled Online Reservation Systems, Back-Office and Mid-Office Systems, Corporate Booking Tools and Access to Global Inventory via XML API Integrations. TravelCarma caters to over 200 Travel and Hospitality companies worldwide, including OTAs, Tour Operators, DMCs, Hotels, Wholesalers, Rental Car Companies and Bus Operators. You can know more about them at www.travelcarma.com and reach them at sales@TravelCarma.com.

The post Here is why the travel industry is betting big on Big Data appeared first on TravHQ.