Tripadvisor launches new AI travel planning features

Tripadvisor is rolling out artificial intelligence-created summaries that are meant to give travelers additional insight on key features as they research hotels.

The news comes on the heels of Tripadvisor’s July launch of its AI-powered travel planning tool and what the company called successful public beta testing of its travel itinerary generator. 

The AI-generated reviews are meant to be "digestible” with a synopsis that will provide a brief overview of each property.

Sanjay Raman, chief product officer at Tripadvisor, said the company has continued to seek opportunities to incorporate AI with the platform’s wealth of review and travel intent data to give their members more valuable guidance.

“We believe this update helps travelers easily discover the most important information about a hotel, enabling them to make faster decisions and ultimately plan better trips,” Raman said.

Currently, a subset of users are able to see a brief summary of hotels and their attributes that have been frequently reviewed. The summaries are what is powered by AI and will include “popular themes and details” pulled from reviews written by travelers who have visited those locations in the past. The feature is rolling out progressively for some users in the United States and in Canada over the coming weeks. 

Tripadvisor also announced a few updates that are currently live to its AI-powered “Trips” planning tool. The updates include the addition of hotels as part of its of AI-powered itinerary recommendations, the addition of activities that destinations are known for in its interest prompt for travelers, itinerary recommendations that are grouped into a day with proximity as a priority in order to minimize travel time between recommended stops and personalized “For You” recommendations based on users’ saves.

The implementation of AI has been on the minds of TripAdvisor execs for some time. In June, ahead of the launch of its trip planning tool at Phocuswright Europe, Tripadvisor chief growth officer John Boris said the company was “in the process of figuring out how we can leverage generative AI on a trip planning basis on our own website. We believe there are great possibilities.”

And all of the AI features go back to supporting Tripadvisor’s purpose, president and CEO Matt Goldberg said in July. “Tripadvisor was built on travelers helping travelers.”

“By harnessing the power of generative AI, we can begin to fully unlock the potential of our platform’s unparalleled review and traveler intent data, allowing us to offer truly unique travel guidance to our members,” Goldberg continued.

And Tripadvisor isn’t alone in its efforts to bolster its business by leaning on generative AI. It’s a growing trend.

In May, for example, India-based MakeMyTrip signed a deal with Microsoft to implement its generative AI technology that was built off OpenAI’s GPT language to introduce voice-assisted booking. And Mondee has implemented an AI-based travel assistant. Plus, Skyscanner unveiled a new ChatGPT discovery tool earlier this month too.