The efficient utilisation of artificial intelligence by travel industry leaders has become more important than ever before. While AI-powered tools have been around for a while, the rise of AI and machine learning is now revolutionising the travel industry, making it more popular amongst consumers to the point where it can longer be ignored by businesses. We are entering an era whereby efficient AI tools are now the expectation of the consumer, and no longer a ‘nice to have’ element of the purchasing journey. This means companies who do not embrace the AI revolution risk being left behind.
But if AI is now becoming the norm for travel booking companies, is there space to create a service which creates cut-through appeal for customers and bats away the competition? Enter ‘conversational AI’.
The launch of HotelPlanner.ai – the world’s first AI powered call agents
As a leading travel technology company and hotel booking platform combining proprietary artificial intelligence and a 24/7 global gig-based reservations and customer service network, the latest developments in the AI space have long been central to our expansion plans.
In November 2024 we officially launched HotelPlanner.ai, an extension to our existing HotelPlanner.com website and the world’s first end-to-end global team of AI powered hotel booking assistants fielding calls from customers around the world for reservations across more than one million properties.
The AI agents, currently available in 15 languages with more coming soon, have been programmed to offer humanised conversations with customers using cutting-edge algorithms to deliver tailored recommendations for every type of traveller. The agents have been trained based on over eight million recorded calls with HotelPlanner gig-economy travel agents around the world, allowing the agents to answer complex enquiries, deliver information on the hotel and surrounding region and engage in friendly two-way conversation with users. Within two weeks of launch, the HotelPlanner AI agents went from fielding an average of 10,000 calls a day, to 50,000 calls a day.
The journey
We first launched a ‘gig economy’ call centre during Covid, allowing employees to process calls from their own location around the world instead of being based in a call centre. This not only gave our gig economy agents the desired flexibility in the hybrid world that we now live in, but also the opportunity for customers to be connected to agents with firsthand knowledge of the areas they are selling.
Whilst this has been incredibly successful with over 7,000 active salespeople, the number of available agents limited our growth. We wanted to find a way to remove the limitations that come with staff time and capacity, and with AI there are no such barriers. The same AI ‘character’ could be processing 1,000 calls at the same time, for example.
We looked back over the highest rated calls from the past four years and programmed our AI agents based on those. This platform wouldn’t be possible without working with the best partners in the business – for example the best partners for large language modules, voice recognition and more. Getting these companies to work together seamlessly enabled us to put the data from our gig agent calls to the best possible use.
It was important that we kept our data as clean as possible, in order to ensure that the AI technology could continue to develop, running like a well-oiled machine. We use customers behaviours on the site pre-call, and then during the call we use the audio and transcription for analysis. There are cleanup phases to each of those to make sure it is accurate.
Why has conversational AI been so well received by customers in the travel industry?
The AI booking agents can be seen as a significant evolution of the online chat bot, not only answering queries but offering tailored booking suggestions to suit independent needs. The fact that customers can interact with the agent using their voice as though they were on the phone, instead of typing in a chat, instils a new level of confidence in what they are purchasing. Customers are keen to engage with AI, but there is still a level of resistance against moving away from human interactions completely – so conversational AI goes some way to bridging that gap and providing the closest possible thing to a human discussion. The only difference? The AI agent doesn’t need to keep the customer on the line for five minutes whilst they research the answers to a question on a location.
The agents are even trained to recognise the tone of the customer. For example, if they are seemingly in a hurry or less interested in small talk, there will be less conversational dialogue and quicker process to the end booking. Whereas, if the customer appears to be more laid back and inquisitive, the agent will offer more detail about the surrounding area of the hotel and things to see and do.
How does it fare against online bookings without AI?
Instead of sifting through pages on booking sites, users can now interact with AI agents that understand natural language, tailor suggestions in real time, and streamline the journey. At the core of this revolution is the ability of AI to learn user preferences, predict needs, and handle tasks like a human travel agent—only faster. From providing dynamic recommendations based on past trips to alerting users to price drops or weather disruptions, conversational AI brings a level of proactive service that traditional booking interfaces can’t match.
The AI agents are currently competing against our regular agents, converting bookings at around a fourth of what our human agents are – but the goal is to have the AI agents converting bookings at a similar average rate to our gig-agents
Is conversational AI here to stay?
For HotelPlanner.ai, or any AI platform for that matter, to truly stand the test of time, it must surpass the convenience of simply using your thumbs on a touchscreen. That means going beyond scripted interactions and delivering responses that feel genuinely helpful, intuitive, and instant. Voice-based interactions, in particular, must become as reliable in noisy environments as they are in controlled ones.
Ultimately, the longevity of conversational AI in travel depends on how effortlessly it can blend into daily life. If it can anticipate user needs, reduce cognitive load, and outperform traditional mobile browsing in both speed and clarity, it will become the default way we plan, book, and manage our travel experiences.
It’s important not to cut corners with the service providers needed to make a platform like this function to its optimal capacity. It would be easier to find a single partner who provides the data analysis for each different aspect of the AI programme, but you get out what you put in – and if that means investing in the best in the business across every element of the programme, then so be it.
What does this mean for human employment?
I think there will always be a need for human intervention behind these complex technological systems. I don’t see an immediate future where we would rely completely on AI agents, but with the rate that AI is developing, you can never say never.
With AI now able to handle the majority of the legwork and less advanced requests, it means that our human agents are much less stretched, and able to pick up a greater volume of more advanced booking queries and requests. This means that with the combination of the AI agents and human gig-economy, our booking platform is running more efficiently than ever, serving the highest number of customers we’ve ever seen, in the shortest about of time. It’s revolutionised the way we work at HotelPlanner, and means that our employees are able to use their time more effectively than ever.
