Expedia set to compete with Google and Microsoft in AI travel planning

Tech companies leverage AI for service enhancement; Expedia plans personalized travel recommendations to divert users from search engines in vacation planning.

Rajesh Naidu, Chief Architect and Head of Data Management at Expedia, informed The Verge that the company aims to encourage users to organize their trips within a single platform. The system will provide suggestions based on its extensive flight and hotel information database, considering users’ travel preferences.

Naidu stated, “By training expansive language models on our extensive 70 petabytes of accumulated data, we aim to suggest destinations to visit, accommodations, activities, and continuously enhance and personalize these recommendations.”

Apart from offering AI-driven customer service features, the company assists property owners in detailing their residences and hotels. In the U.S. vs Google antitrust trial, Ex-Expedia CFO Jeff Hurst mentioned that, despite increased payments to Google for advertising space, the website’s traffic did not increase after the search engine began displaying flights and hotels.

Google Travel for hotel, fights

Google provides a travel service known as Google Travel, initially launched on Android and iPhones. However, the app has been discontinued and is now exclusively accessible through a web browser. Additionally, Google Search remains a popular platform for checking flight tickets, hotels, and creating vacation itineraries.

Google has integrated generative AI capabilities and introduced the Bard AI chatbot to aid users in accessing information presented in a user-friendly format.

Microsoft’s Bing Travel

Copilot on Microsoft Bing now provides a dedicated section for streamlined ticket and hotel bookings, along with car rental options. Additionally, it offers users high-quality images, videos, and articles from the internet in a user-friendly format.