Airbnb scoops up stealth ai company GamePlanner for $200M

The news just keeps coming in hot on the ai front. This week Airbnb made its first acquisition as a public company by jumping in and picking up the pre-product stealth startup co-founded by one othe the original founders of Siri. This looks like a “get the people on the bus” type move from Airbnb. Talent of this caliber isn’t thick on the ground and so this seems the type of move that will bring in exceptional talent and figure things out from there.

This follows on from Airbnb adding James Manyika, Google's “AI ambassador,” to its board of directors, which we reported on back in September.

Airbnb founder Brian Chesky is a well know fan of “magical” experiences and has deep knowledge of companies like Disney & Apple, which are also places he likes to hire from for key roles. AI certainly brings the magic via the UI possibilities so it will be fascinating to watch what Chesky and the team dream up & then bring to life.

Actually it isn’t a big secret. Brian told Fortune the week prior to the acquisition that “the holy grail is to become an ai travel agent”. What this might mean in practice however is a not yet clear but for sure, it will involve closing the gap on the experience one might get from their regular human travel advisor, who just knows things about you and therefore can present the right options they just know you’ll love. This then can manifest itself to “present users with travel and booking suggestions, without necessarily having to enter information into a traditional search box”. The future it seems, will be unboxed. (Unrelated sidenote: I wish the future of Youtube also had a lot less unboxing too.)

Brian Fogel also thinks the way forward is to mimick the human travel advisor

I think we are moving from a pattern to a trend as Booking boss Brian Fogel also is quoted this week as saying “That's the ultimate goal, and that's what we're driving to," when discussing how AI could make travel planning as personalized and easy as it can be with a human travel agent.

Of course we are still a way off that with the AXIOS article also quoting a lift in usage of human travel advisors including many people who have never used one before. Mind you, that was based on 2021 data and we aren’t in 2021 anymore.

Ultimately the article summised “..Until improvements arrive, AI travel chatbots are better suited to inspiration and fantasy armchair travel — that tantalizing sport of envisioning the perfect vacation experience without having to endure the crowds, wait times, and an airplane full of other people's pungent foods, fussy toddlers and emotional support French bulldogs.”

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The best ai is invisible.

This is the core takeaway from a great piece filled with practical advice by Purple Communications Director James Brown for the Moodie Davitt Report.

Speaking with a lens specifically towards retail travel, Brown tells us that “, more than 5,000 AI tools have been launched in 2023”. At that was prior to when OpenAI made it possible for anyone, anywhere to make their own tool last week. I think I’ve seen about 5000 news ones this week alone. Hell, I’ve created 3 myself. And used at least another 3 that didn’t exist 7 days ago.

Brown gives the following practical advice to those in the board room wondering where or if to start:

• Unique to your business

• Feeling frictionless

• Drives efficiency

• A silent partner

The final point is the most salient of all: “Have fun: There is a good reason why ChatGPT has over 180 million active users – it is inherently fun, intriguing and thought provoking.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. If you are denying yourself of taking the first step, you are actually missing out on probably the funnest thing to come into the workplace since photocopying your butt was all the rage. Here are 10 tools you can have fun with right now.

Speaking of all the new “GPTs”

I’ve got a poll running to understand if anyone cares or is paying attention to the latest round of innovation from OpenAI. Great news is that one of the optons is “What are you talking about?” which I’m sure no-one who reads this publication could ever claim……………….. right?

Bill Gates on travel planning. Really.

Last week it was the mega brains at OpenAI using travel for their big demo. This week - Bill Gates! 

“Imagine that you want to plan a trip. A travel bot will identify hotels that fit your budget. An agent will know what time of year you’ll be traveling and, based on its knowledge about whether you always try a new destination or like to return to the same place repeatedly, it will be able to suggest locations.”

The article also takes us back to Bill bragging about Clippy, that animated paperclip thing that used to bounce around your screen in the old days. It is a bot, not a agent and Bill takes us into the difference between those two.

I’m not sure if Bill uses a travel agent. It didn’t sound like it when he finished his brief sojourn into the travel realm with “If you want this kind of deeply personalized planning today, you need to pay a travel agent and spend time telling them what you want.” I wonder however if his EA uses one………..

84% are satisfied with ai recommendations

An in depth look into the leisure travel market by Oliver Wyman uncovered this startling statistic, amongst others, via a “a survey of nearly 1,100 leisure travelers in the United States and Canada.”

Other stats include:

• 44% already trust generative AI throughout the booking journey

• 38% of travelers would use generative AI tools to book non-core elements of it like car rentals, activities, and experiences

• More than a third of surveyed leisure travelers recently used generative AI for travel inspiration, planning, or booking

• half of those who used it booked all or most of the recommendations they received

These numbers give further weight to the admittedly more tangible outcomes that Trip Advisor reported last week in their earnings call.

The Oliver Wyman report also found “AI has gotten particular attention from elite airline, hotel, and cruise line loyalty members, whose 48% usage rate is more than double that of non-members” and in terms of the overall market “global generative AI market is expected to grow to approximately $52 billion in 2028 from $11 billion in 2023”.

The shiniest of nuggest however came from this snippet: “if travel suppliers adopt an aggressive approach to generative AI and develop superior capabilities, we believe they could capture booking share from OTAs and save on commissions.”

All indicators I can see however point to that not happening. Pity.

A list! (not the A list, just a list)

WebInTravel gave us a 9 point list this week. Here is the skinny. The Thinktank identified 9 main possibilities and corresponding hazards of generative AI for the travel industry, as well as the responsibilities and recommendations for various stakeholders to address them. These are:

• Addressing over tourism:

• Pricing and load optimization

• Use in talent

• Empowering the long tail

• Turbocharging product innovation

• Deep personalization

• Building the connected trip

• Inclusivity

  You can download the full report here.

ai is like teenagers & sex

Cassie Kozyrkov, CEO of Data Scientific and former chief decision scientist at Google put everything in to a much clearer persective this week by breaking it down for us in a way we all understand:

“Implementing GenAI at scale in the enterprise is like teenage sex Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, and everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.” The former chief decision scientist at Google says she isn’t an expert at ai. Not sure where that leaves the rest of us……….. which of course is the point.

Cassie goes on to explain “It's not about 'having' it, but why and how you use it……. Can someone with no experience login ask their business question and be shown the answer by GenAI? Otherwise, what's the point?” And that of course, is the point.

Hat tip to Steve Jackson who shares lots of good stuff like this on his Linked In.

Paytm eyes travel fueled super app status in India

Speaking of trends - a few weeks back we talked about Super.com (US) and you can also think of Revolut (UK) in a similar vein. This week we see Indian fintech Paytm partnering with Amadeus and heavily utilising the power of ai to take a similar position in their part of the world.

Somewhat predictably the promise is to “deliver hyper-personalised recommendations and dynamic pricing.” Watch this space.

Meanwhile Amadeus also told us this week that “The next generation of Gen AI-powered customer service will be delivered with greater patience and empathy, reducing the workload of employees to deal with the bulk of after-sales servicing and customer review management, giving them the bandwidth to provide the human touch on more specialist issues.” Interesting to see the use of the word empathy when it comes to ai given that is moat of the human agent currently.

It was practically a hall of fame week for travel planner reviews this week. One sent to me by multiple people was the humourusly titled: A two-hour walking tour with ChatGPT: ‘I’d not suggest that to my worst enemy’. It seems to run a bit contrary to the trust surveys mentioned above…

The AXIOS report already referenced above was actually called “AI chatbots are currently unable to do travel planning just yet” and took a number for a spin in the article. One was recommending hotdogs for breakfast.

TourismNT also released one with an influencer I’d never heard of who apparently called everyone “Gorg” when speaking to them. Here was my test:

I know it might seem I delight in travel planner fails. That isn’t really the case. I actually believe an incredible and transformative change is going to come over travel planning and organising in a way where we can actually shelve technology whilst we are travelling & soak in more of our surrounds in the moment, except for those few moments when it is helpful and enhancing.

What we’ve seen so far actually opened up the possibility for that vision to become clearer, but I don’t really think brands should be jumping in with a public facing chat bot running over the top of what has already be shown to be a bit sub par. But up to them really.

Most clicked last week was the link the OpenAI Dev Day video - and fair enough too! 2nd most clicked was people checking and trying out HandbookFM.com - so thanks for the support there!

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focussing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think