OTA Kayak launches suite of artificial intelligence tools

U.S.-based OTA Kayak has announced a new suite of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that it says will help customers make travel planning faster, easier and more intuitive.

The innovations are the result of extensive training of ChatGPT's AI model on Kayak’s proprietary database of billions of consumer travel queries.

At the forefront is Kayak’s “PriceCheck,” a new patent-pending price comparison tool.

Anyone with the Kayak app can upload a screenshot of a flight itinerary from any site, and Kayak will quickly check hundreds of sites to verify they're getting a great price.

READ MORE: How four travel pros are using AI to improve their operations & save time

"With today's launch of Kayak PriceCheck, we're the only leading metasearch brand letting users compare prices using only a screenshot," said Matthias Keller, chief scientist and senior vice-president of technology at Kayak, in a news release. 

Also launching is “Ask Kayak” – the company's latest AI-driven innovation designed to improve and personalize the search experience.  It lets travellers use simple text entries to search and refine their results.

Travellers will also see a chat box in the results page where they can input their specific hotel, car or flight requirements.

For example, they can enter "United, nonstop, morning departure, <$500" and quickly see their results.

Ask Kayak starts rolling out today March 5) and will soon be available to all users in the U.S., U.K. and Canada with more markets to follow.

"We're diving deeper into solving complex travel issues more quickly and simply with the launch of Ask Kayak," said Keller. "The addition of free form search to apply filters makes it easy for travelers to get personalized results for their next trip."

The company is also introducing new ways to make travel planning easier:

Check the scores. A Provider Quality Scores gives travellers greater confidence when booking a flight by rating providers against a set of quality factors (like price accuracy, customer service, fee transparency and customer satisfaction). Scores are for Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) only.

Compare ticket options. View all options more easily, like what is and what is not included in your flight ticket, when deciding between a basic economy, economy, premium economy or business class ticket for your U.S. domestic flight.

Kayak Trips - now with live updates. With a new simplified itinerary view, Kayak Trips keeps all travel plans in one place no matter where they are booked. Now, not only can customers build an itinerary through automatic inbox syncing, but they can also get real-time travel updates on your home/lock screens (on iOS).

Passwords are so 2023. Passkeys are a more secure and user-friendly way to sign in to Kayak. Since implementing passkeys and ditching passwords, Kayak reduced the average time it takes users to sign-up and sign-in by 50 per cent.

The latest in AI

It’s the latest in how artificial intelligence is impacting the travel industry.

Ever since the 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a natural language chatbot that assists users with tasks like writing emails, essays, code (and even sonnets) in a human-like way, AI has been disrupting the sector in never-before-seen ways.

As PAX has previously argued, artificial intelligence is no match for the personalization and service that a human travel advisor provides.

Still, travel advisors are discovering new and exciting ways to use AI-powered tools to improve their workflow and save time.

Click here for some real-world examples of how artificial intelligence is being used in the travel trade.

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