Kayak: "We want to change the way you search for travel through AI."

Kayak's chief product officer, Mathias Keller, explains how the company is advancing artificial intelligence with the launch of its first conversational tool for trip planning.

The time spent searching for and organizing a trip online can exceed 30 hours, according to some studies. To streamline this tedious task, online flight search companies are beginning to invest in artificial intelligence tools that, in the future, will be able to book trips with virtually no human intervention.

Moving into this not-so-distant future, Kayak has announced Kayak.ai , a chatbot designed to find flights or hotels using conversational search, built with technology from OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT . “With this launch, we’re looking to bring users into the AI ​​space and actively engage others to help drive innovation across all of our products. Kayak.ai will allow us to learn faster so we can make AI work even better for travelers,” explains Matthias Keller, Kayak’s chief product officer.

For a few days now, users have been able to access Kayak.ai to start a conversation with the company's assistant, who will use natural language to help users plan a trip based on their needs, find out when is the best time to book a flight, or recall reservation details if they have them saved in their account, among other things.

The company will use this platform as an innovation laboratory, allowing it to analyze how travelers interact with the tools, their data, and insights in a conversational manner. In effect, it functions as a parallel website to the metasearch engine, and what works best on Kayak.ai will be transferred to Kayak.com.

Furthermore, although it's in beta, the operation is very intuitive and simple, and the platform is capable of providing accurate results based on the requests made. "Kayak.ai is built from a combination of OpenAI technology with Kayak's intelligence. This means we're leveraging the powerful capabilities of OpenAI's language model and integrating them with our own travel data and real-time pricing information from airlines, hotels, and online travel agencies," Keller adds.

The executive assures that the platform's users trust the use of artificial intelligence, seeing greater receptivity from people searching online for travel. "Building trust in this technology is key for us, and we're doing so in several ways. Unlike other large language models that might rely on cached data, Kayak.ai displays real-time travel information directly from over 400 partners . This way, we can offer the most up-to-date and comprehensive pricing information in a chat-like format that travelers can trust. Additionally, as part of our broader vision, we understand and emphasize the importance of maintaining human validation to ensure accuracy and security, which are also critical to building and maintaining customer trust in artificial intelligence," he asserts.

Kayak, which belongs to Booking Holding, owner of Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda and OpenTable, has increased its commitment to artificial intelligence in recent years, although it has used machine learning since its inception in 2004. Now, this new push is also materializing with the addition of Yaron Zeidman as its new chief technology officer (CTO) , "for whom the development of artificial intelligence capabilities and personalization will be priorities," says Keller.

The executive insists that this is the first step toward a new way of searching for travel powered by artificial intelligence. " We anticipate a future where AI agents will drive smarter travel planning. Users will be able to delegate complex tasks, such as planning multi-city itineraries or comparing accommodation options, to AI agents programmed to manage everything from search to booking and payment within a single interface. Kayak.ai is a first step on this journey."