A ‘significant new step’
Some in the industry worry that as systems like ChatGPT improve, they could put travel consultants out of business, said Chad Burt, co-chairman of external agents, a Jacksonville, Fla., company with 8,000 advisors in its network. But, he said, “travel agencies have always been predicted to be imminently demise, and every new technology is a tool to use.” He recently gave a technical tips seminar for his advisers and is compiling a list of pointers that his advisers can use to get the most out of the software.
Mr. Burt, who has been experimenting with ChatGPT, has used it to create over 100 itineraries. The result is a great starting point and “may save some basic legwork,” he said, “but a good agent still needs to test and refine it.” For example, he explained, only a human being can tell what travelers say they want from what they really want. The software gets “70 or 80 percent, but we’re not aiming for a C grade,” he said.
Expedia, one of the world’s largest online travel companies, has been using AI for years to personalize recommendations and schedule its online virtual advisor, but ChatGPT is a “significant new step,” said Peter Kern, Expedia’s chief executive. .
His company is considering the new technology as a possible way to give customers a more conversational way to interact with Expedia, Kern said, for example, by speaking or typing questions instead of pointing and clicking. Expedia could also work with ChatGPT to better personalize recommendations by combining your data with the two types of data your business tracks: customer purchase history and the most current prices and availability of airline tickets, hotel rooms, and rental cars.
Aylin CaliskanA professor of computer science at the University of Washington who studies machine learning and how society affects artificial intelligence, predicts that other travel companies will follow the same path, adding their own data and programming to generative artificial intelligence systems like the ones that They are creating Google, Amazon and OpenAI, to perform specific tasks.
