Travel companies are using AI to better customize trip itineraries
When Kim Bennett founded her travel company, AtlasGuru, the idea was that travelers could plan vacations themselves with the help of recommendations from a community of well-versed travelers. It was 2019.
By 2023, she realized that users didn’t need to physically sift through hundreds of long-form articles and curate content themselves. Artificial intelligence could do it for them. Last August, Bennett launched her own generative AI product that forms highly customized travel itineraries, complete with maps and links, using a variety of variables and her encyclopedic body of content.
“You create a one-of-kind itinerary in seconds that’s tailored to your specific interests, and it leverages our crowdsourced itineraries to power the AI-generated itineraries, even providing links to these related itineraries,” says Bennett, who serves as AtlasGuru’s chief executive officer. “This automation gives travelers the speed and magic-like personalization of generative AI, with the human touch that instills confidence in users that their trip will be amazing.”
AtlasGuru is just one of several travel companies looking at generative AI to assist in the travel planning and booking process. For AtlasGuru, it’s about rethinking user-generated content from long-form reviews written by members of its community. Travel booking services like Expedia and Tripadvisor have launched their own itinerary-building products based on reviews and hotel pages, and Virtuoso, a network of luxury travel advisors, is also leaning on AI to help them personalize luxury vacation experiences.
