Booking.com's AI travel planner has received an update. How it works

Skift take

Booking.com has taken more time than its competitors to release updates to its AI tool. But there are still some of the same issues that need to be addressed.

Justin Dawes

Booking.com has updated the AI ​​travel planner in its mobile app.

The company released the first version of its AI travel planner in June 2023. At that time, he could only answer general travel questions and search for hotel bookings, but could not answer much more complicated questions.

The company announced Wednesday that mobile app users can now ask the AI ​​trip planner questions about specific accommodations and that there is also an AI tool for quickly filtering results.

To answer property-specific questions, the AI ​​scans the property listing, traveler reviews, and photos. Users can now ask property-specific questions through the general AI chatbot after asking it to perform a general hotel search. Another version will soon be available on individual real estate sites, the company said.

The AI ​​filter tool is located in the Properties Filters section of the results page in the app. There is now a field at the top of this page where the user can simply enter their preferred amenities – like gym, parking or room with a view – and then the AI ​​will automatically check the most relevant filters, eliminating the need for manual filtering.

Next, Booking.com gets AI-generated review summaries, which are designed to provide key insights about a property without the user having to search through the list of reviews.

According to a statement from Joe Futty, vice president of product marketplace at Booking.com, the company plans for AI to play a role in managing travel in the future, such as helping travelers find solutions to flight disruptions.

The AI ​​travel planner is available to users in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. In the coming months, it will be available in local languages ​​to users in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands. A desktop version of the tool will also follow, the company said.

How it works

Booking.com moves slower than its competitors. Expedia announced in May that it would be adding several AI tools, and property valuation summaries have been available for some time. Among other things, HomeToGo has been working on its AI travel planner for some time.

However, all have proven to be cumbersome, which often makes finding bookings the traditional way easier at this point.

Although Booking.com's updates come later than its competitors, the tool is still just as cumbersome as the others.

To test the tool, we started with the prompt suggested by Booking.com: “Hotels in Amsterdam with a great gym, rooftop bar, and canal views from the room.”

First, the travel dates were asked and then several options were offered. No major problems yet.

The object-specific function also seems to work well at first. However, questions about multiple properties are not answered, but only one at a time.

And when you ask object-specific questions, it becomes apparent that AI-powered general search results don't work like magic. One option the AI ​​offered in response to the original prompt (which included mention of canal views) was the Urban Lodge Hotel. However, when the AI ​​later asked a property-specific question about whether the hotel had canal views, it was unable to determine whether this was the case: “The Urban Lodge Hotel does not specifically mention that the rooms have canal views.” The results of the So the original search didn't quite match the original prompt – showing that AI-powered general search needs some work – but then the object-specific answer worked well.

It failed even more when trying to re-run a search by adding to the original prompt: “Find me a hotel with similar parameters that also allows pets.” The first hotel suggestion was Via Amsterdam. The AI ​​then said that the hotel doesn't allow pets and doesn't have a rooftop bar.

The AI ​​filtering tool is pretty simple and seems to work as intended. However, the options are limited because the number of filters is limited. This points to a common problem in the industry, namely that guests are typically unable to filter by certain attributes because the property's data simply doesn't exist online yet. For our test, the text entered into the AI ​​filter field was: “Gym, a rooftop bar and canal views from the room.” The AI ​​then selected the filters for “gym” and “view,” but there are no filter for “rooftop bar” so the user has to search for it manually. And the user would have to ensure that the view is the correct one.

This article has been updated to clarify that the AI ​​chatbot was already able to perform general searches. A Skift test of the Booking.com app's new AI filtering tool has also been added.