Tripadvisor has announced a significant upgrade to its trip planning product, Trips, with the introduction of a new AI-powered travel itinerary generator.
This new feature, currently in the public beta phase, creates personalised travel itineraries utilising OpenAI’s generative AI technology, which is behind the now famous ChatGPT. It leverages human insights from over a billion reviews and opinions of the more than 8 million businesses listed on Tripadvisor, delivering guidance from its community of real travellers.
To create an itinerary using AI, travellers are prompted to enter their destination and travel dates, who they’re travelling with and the types of activities they’re interested in. In just a few seconds, they’re presented with a personalized, day-by-day itinerary, which they can save, edit and share with travel companions.
Tripadvisor was built on travellers helping travellers. This launch represents an important milestone in Tripadvisor’s strategy and is just one element of our plan to drive deeper engagement with travellers on our platform.
Matt Goldber, Tripadvisor’s President and CEO
“By harnessing the power of generative AI, we can begin to fully unlock the potential of our platform’s unparalleled review and traveller intent data, allowing us to offer truly unique travel guidance to our members”, said Tripadvisor’s President and CEO, Matt Goldberg.
As travellers progress through the trip planning process, they have opportunities to engage and interact with the breadth of Tripadvisor’s travel guidance content, from reviews and opinions to experiences and photos from the community. Travellers can then save all the content they interact with to a Trip as they build their travel plans.
“We know our community is passionate about trip planning, so we wanted to thoughtfully build something that would enhance that experience, not replace it”, explained Sanjay Raman, Chief Product Officer at Tripadvisor. “Personalized results and recommendations from fellow travellers are two of the most important elements of the planning process and generative AI has helped us bring them together in a way we think will be really compelling for travellers.”
During the beta phase, the AI feature will only be accessible to users in the United States via desktop and mobile web, with a focus primarily on experience, attraction and dining recommendations. Tripadvisor plans to make the feature available in more markets and on native app platforms as the beta progresses. “Over the coming months, we’ll continue to upgrade our Trips product – improving the personalization of AI-powered itineraries and expanding the suite of travel planning tools we offer”, added Raman.
Generative AI is being increasingly used by travel platforms to enhance the user experience. In April 2023, Expedia launched a ChatGPT powered travel advisor, while Booking followed suit in July with its own AI trip planner using large language model (LLM) technology from OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
