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oneworld® Alliance (home of American Airlines, British Airways, Alaska Airlines, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Iberia, Japan Airlines, and others) has partnered with artificial intelligence company Elemental Cognition to roll out an AI-driven booking tool for Round the World (RTW) tickets.
When planning a #RoundTheWorld trip, where to begin? Our state-of-the-art #AI booking tool powered by @elementalcog combines the power & flexibility of the best human agents with the convenience & efficiency of a self-serve tech solution.
Try it now: https://t.co/rmMbyGV5C1 pic.twitter.com/cTnboMAHTN
— oneworld Alliance (@traveloneworld) May 23, 2023
Round the World tickets are multi-destination airline tickets on a single itinerary. These include flights from various member airlines within an alliance. Because of their complexity, these are generally still booked by an agent and not online.
oneworld® worked with Elemental Cognition to build a tool that offers the skills of the best human agents with the convenience of a self-serve solution. Elemental Cognition’s breakthrough AI has “reasoning, natural language understanding, and dialog capabilities. The solution understands a customer’s needs, helps them weigh options and trade-offs while proactively warning them of potential issues. All while navigating the complex product rules and ever-changing flight availability.”
When customers access the oneworld® Alliance Round the World booking tool, flight plans are created through an AI chat feature. It begins by asking basic questions about the customer’s trip criteria. Users type using natural language and tell the tool their departure city, travel dates, preferred trip length, and desired destinations. The tool then searches for and proposes itineraries.
Proud to announce an update about our partnership with @traveloneworld!
oneworld and EC's AI make booking your dream “Round the World” trip easier than. Read more about the impact of EC's AI on complex logistics and travel!https://t.co/NbIHrTt8vu
— Elemental Cognition (@elementalcog) May 23, 2023
Initial tests are looking good as customers using the new tool are four times more likely to create bookable itineraries.
Elemental Cognition CEO, Dr. David Ferrucci, said,
We are excited to partner with oneworld® to deliver a transformative digital experience to its customers. Accommodating customer preferences while navigating complex product rules and ever-changing flight availability is a perfect demonstration of the power of our AI technology. It is great to see it help Oneworld’s customers transform their travel ideas into their dream trip.”
The tool includes a few constraints. Itineraries can have up to 16 flights and must start and end in the same city within 12 months. Trips must also cross both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans while continually progressing east or west without backtracking (itineraries should also include at least three continents).
The new tool is live and can be tried out here.
Anthony’s Take: This is a cool tool and a great use for AI. I’m sure Star Alliance and SkyTeam will come out with their own versions. Booking Round the World tickets has always been a complicated task and this might be the best way to get one ticketed.
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
