Recently, Trip.com Group took centre stage at a travel trade show, ITB Asia, where James Liang, Co-founder and Chairman of Trip.com Group, shed light on the pivotal role of AI in reshaping the travel landscape. By leveraging AI-driven innovation, Trip.com Group aims to enhance customer experiences and contribute to the ongoing advancements in the industry.

Enhancing Travel Experiences with Three Major AI Applications:

Recently, Trip.com achieved a significant milestone by introducing an AI-powered travel assistant called TripGenie. Unlike conventional AI language tools that merely answer queries, TripGenie provides actionable responses and presents high-quality, detailed itineraries for multiple destinations that are tailored and customizable for each travellers. This function has been well received by customers and travel experts, with TripGenie outperforming other AI tools.

Through advanced language models and the ability to seamlessly respond to text and voice commands, TripGenie enhances the user experience by displaying accurate images, providing relevant links, and quickly directing users to the most relevant and accurate results in our app. This saves precious time and effort for travellers when planning a trip.

Since its launch in February and upgrade in July, TripGenie has produced remarkable results. The order conversion rate was doubled, and user retention rates have been improved, which enhanced user engagement and overall service effectiveness.  With the recent updates, TripGenie can now support text inputs in English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese, as well as voice commands in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Japanese. In the future, there are plans to allow a sharing feature and additional options such as upvoting and liking.

The Group’s Co-founder and Chairman, James Liang, said, “TripGenie is quite suitable for our mission, for our goal is to help the customer plan the perfect trip like a genie. In this new era of travel, we are optimistic, forging ahead to enrich their travel experiences with AI and pursue the perfect trip for a better world."

AI has also significantly enriched Trip.com Group's content marketing strategy as it inspires travel and becomes an information hub. For travellers who look for travel inspirations and popular choices, AI-enhanced curated lists available on the Trip.com platforms - "Trip.Trends", "Trip.Best" and "Trip.Deals" - provide customised recommendations. Each list focuses on a different consumer group and market position, catering to users' diverse needs and preferences by capturing real-time information on the latest travel trends, prices, and top-ranked hotels, flights, and attractions. This strategy also opens new ways for partners in the travel sector to highlight their products and services to a captivated audience.

Data shows that the AI-curated recommendation travel lists on Trip.com have proven highly effective, resulting in a 20% increase in traffic and a 10% increase in bookings for over 1,500 hotel partners. This success also demonstrates that these lists are trusted and valued by travellers in their search for recommendations.

What completes the consumer journey is the use of AI to enhance customer service and provide timely travel support. The success of AI integration on Trip.com is evident in the impressive results. In 2023, Trip.com customers can quickly solve over 75% of hotel and flight-related requests via AI chatbot, without speaking to a customer service agent. A comprehensive operation mechanism was designed to leverage AI trainers, technical team and service operation to sustainably drive the AI chatbot’s performance and service quality.

The Human Element in The Emerging AI World

While AI can help to advance the travel experience, Trip.com Group believes in the irreplaceable value of the human touch within the travel industry. The key to successfully revitalising tourism lies in fostering collaborations with local partners, allowing the company to gain insights and customise offerings that perfectly cater to the unique preferences and requirements of each local market.

For example, Trip.com recently launched a collaboration with MasterCard as part of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed earlier this year. The partnership offers travellers across 17 Asia Pacific markets, including Hong Kong and Singapore, discounts on all flights booked through the Trip.com app using any Mastercard World or World Elite Consumer Credit and Debit cards, until 2024.

To cater to the appetite of Hong Kong travellers for short-haul trips, Trip.com also partnered with Greater Bay Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines to offer buy-one-get-one-free air ticket deals for the first time, celebrating the brand’s 6th anniversary this year in Hong Kong. The recent mega sale campaign in September, featuring promotions of Greater Bay Area travel products, was highly loved by customers and generated 12 million HKD GMV in 5 days.

Trip.com Group remains dedicated to customers and partners and will continue to foster communication, innovation and improve the user experience through creating new values for the industry.

Trip.com’s Winter Trip Campaign Click here