The truth about why AI can never compete with travel agents
Yes, ChatGPT is great for sifting through information, but it can’t replace the human touch when it comes to booking a holiday
I did a strange thing last week — I used ChatGPT to plan a trip. I was bound for mainland China and was trying to make sense of the 144-hour visa-free transit pass. The translated Chinese was hard enough to unscramble and various travel agents I spoke to were as bamboozled as me. I knew that I was in trouble when the best source of information I could find about how the transit pass worked was Reddit threads. Then I had a brainwave: why not bung all the information into ChatGPT and get it to do the sifting for me? Unbelievably, the tool gave me the clear answers I was looking for in seconds and I took off for Beijing without sweating that I was going to be turned away at the border.
It’s no surprise that travel — a fragmented industry spanning geopolitics and various countries’ laws and airspace — is looking to artificial intelligence for help, whether that be in-destination recommendations for museums and restaurants (Expedia), finding cheap flights (Kayak) or even taking bookings via an accommodation platform, which HotelPlanner says has taken £150,000 worth of reservations since it launched in October.
I’m no stranger to booking flights and hotels online, storing boarding passes in my Google wallet and using airline apps to track my status points, all without speaking to a human. So, feeling like a turkey calling for Christmas, I thought I would give artificial intelligence a go.
I spoke to HotelPlanner’s “Olivia”, a blue-eyed, flame-haired chatbot in “London” that I asked to help me with booking a stay in New York. “Which area of Manhattan?” it asked. Midtown, near the Empire State Building, I told it. There was some eerie office background noise and fake keyboard tapping. I only realised that I had been cut off after several minutes of silence — doing a search at Booking.com and picking the hotel at the top of the list would have been quicker and more fruitful.
I then called “Cassandra” in “New York” to ask whether it could help me to book a tour of Sri Lanka. It demurred, saying that it “special-a-lised in hotel bookings only” and “I recommend contacting a travel agent”. Right.
I’m not against AI planners in principle — a fully trained bot might indeed be more helpful than an agent for a simple request. But for anything that involves layers of complexity and thousands of pounds in expenditure it pays to outsource to an expert. It sounds so basic, but wouldn’t you rather book a holiday with a person who has experience in doing so?
Travel is multifaceted, complicated and frequently a logistical challenge to make the eyes water. Stuff goes wrong; flights are cancelled and hotels are overbooked. Your consumer rights are usually the least-considered aspect, but often the most important, and are rarely explained by airlines or tour operators. It’s all well and good having Olivia or Cassandra book you into a faceless New York hotel if all you need is a place to sleep for a night, but a holiday should be so much more than that. It sounds mawkish, but no bot can parlay our hopes and dreams for a holiday into a real booking.
This sort of stuff can come only through emotional connection and human recommendation. How can I tell a computer that I go to Paris so often because I love the woman I become when sitting wrapped up outside a brasserie? That when I go to Hong Kong I want to feel the sort of soul-spiking headiness that comes from being in this boiling pot of energy? That I want a once-in-a-lifetime family holiday to India to meaningfully bring us closer together?
I was impressed with ChatGPT when it came to evaluating the information on my visa for China — sifting large amounts of data is where AI can add value — but less so with the bookings. Research from the industry body Abta shows a small rise in the number of people using a (human) travel agent to book a holiday — in the 12 months to October 38% reported that they had used an agent, up from 34 per cent in the same period a year earlier. Independent agents belonging to the Advantage Travel Partnership report that such bookings are up 6 per cent year on year.
I’m still planning to book that Sri Lanka tour and — very millennial of me — I’m looking forward to speaking to an actual person to do so.
Source: The Sunday Times UK
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