AI is already changing the way people search for information online and a bigger shift could be imminent. Google this week revealed more details about its vision for AI-generated search results, and some e-commerce companies including Amazon recently released their own AI search assistants.
A new trip itinerary search tool being tested by Seattle-based Alaska Airlines is the latest example of how the trend may affect the travel industry.
The tool acts as a AI travel agent of sorts, letting users find flights by providing general desires for a trip. For example:
- I want to experience a culinary journey in a city famous for its street food.
- I want to book a trip somewhere with a nice hike.
- I want to seek a 7-day relaxing spa retreat in a tropical destination in early December.
- I want to search for a 5-day hiking trip in the mountains during the fall season.
The tool leverages generative AI technology from OpenAI, combining it with Alaska’s e-commerce engine. There are short blurbs for each result, explaining why the AI picked a particular itinerary. It can understand more than 70 languages.
The goal is to provide both a fun experience and also drive revenue by reducing the amount of time people spend searching for a flight, said Natalie Bowman, managing director of product management and experimental design at Alaska Airlines.
“It’s a unique situation where we don’t have to do one or the other,” she said.
The tool can also understand requests for fares based on number of mileage plan miles needed.
“People may not realize how far they can go with their miles,” Bowman said.
The tool, currently available to a subset of users who visit Alaska’s homepage, is certainly not perfect. For example, I tried the same query multiple times and it gave me different results. Sometimes it will surface an error message for basic requests. You’ll also need to have your browser location settings enabled so the tool knows where you’re flying from. And, of course, it only provides options from Alaska or its global partners.
However, the tool won’t hallucinate or provide incorrect information given that it pulls from Alaska’s own data. “It’s really grounded in reality for us, which is really important,” Bowman said.
Alaska is one of the first airlines to release its own AI-enhanced trip planning offering. There are a bevy of similar tools from smaller startups and aggregators such as Seattle-based Expedia, which this week released a new AI assistant called Romie. Travelers can also use generative AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google Gemini to search for trip options.
Bowman said Alaska is working on another “much more sophisticated” AI-related search tool in partnership with Google that incorporates the tech giant’s maps product and other data.
“We like the idea of testing out multiple AI solutions as we understand what guests respond to and what’s going to work and help us drive our business objectives while also driving innovation and trying new guest experiences,” she said.
While AI is being used to enhance the initial steps of a travel journey, one question is whether it can take care of the entire end-to-end booking process — actually purchasing airline tickets and hotel rooms on behalf of the customer, for example.
Bowman, a 7-year veteran of Alaska who previously worked at Microsoft, said that future may be closer than we think.
“It’s very easy to purchase things through e-commerce retail — unless you’re purchasing an airline ticket,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for us from an airline perspective to make booking a ticket a much more seamless, easy experience. Whether AI is what helps us get there faster, I think is still to be seen.”
