The Impact of Auto-GPT on the Booking Experience
The Potential of AI Agents in Transforming Travel Planning and Personalization
As you can see, I got very curious about the impact of AI in tourism. I am equally curious about every other technological and non-technological innovation in the sector. My goal here is to brainstorm and run through different scenarios of what the future impact on the sector could be and how we can better tackle this technology and use it to our advantage.
I recently saw Slovenian entrepreneurs talking about Auto-GPT and one of them mentioned something that really shook me and made me think about how this will change the travel industry.
But first, what is Auto-GPT?
Auto-GPT is an experimental AI tool built on the same technology as ChatGPT but with the added ability to make decisions and act autonomously without the need for human prompts. It uses AI agents that operate on a set of predefined rules and goals to perform specific tasks on behalf of the user.
This technology is seen as the first glimpse of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is a type of AI that can perform human-level intellectual tasks. Auto-GPT works by pairing GPT with a companion robot that instructs GPT on what actions to take. The companion robot receives instructions from the user and uses GPT and several APIs to carry out the necessary steps to achieve the desired goal.
Auto-GPT is like ChatGPT, but it has AI agents that can make decisions and do things based on specific rules and goals that are set up beforehand. It's kind of like having a personal assistant that can do certain tasks for you, like scheduling appointments or sending emails, but it's all done automatically by the AI agents without you having to tell it what to do every time.
Read more about it here.
So, in the talk, they said that retailers will soon have to adapt their websites and e-commerce shops to these AI agents rather than humans.
A human gives the AI agent a task to find the products they want for them. AI agent scrapes the internet and recommends products to the human. We can improve the results by giving the agent as much relevant information as possible.
When I heard this, I thought about what can happen to the travel industry and how our booking and sales processes will change.
It's still cute when people experiment with AI and ask it where to go on holiday. Honestly, it doesn’t have a huge impact on our travel decisions yet. We're in a very early experimental phase.
But let us assume that we will soon be selling our services to AI agents and not to travelers. What does this mean for the travel industry?
For the traveler, this will make things much easier. Our agent will immediately scrape the internet and provide us with relevant information. But here I still see how important it is that we provide the agent with the right information. To get the best results, it needs to know us and our travel style (if it doesn’t already).
In the article above, they write: ''If you asked Auto-GPT to plan a birthday party, it could develop a theme, create guest lists, send out invitations, and even shop for gifts, all on its own''.
In other words, if we want a general travel offer, we should just ask the agent to plan a holiday for us, without us telling it what we want or our travel style.
That's fine if you want a general travel offer. But I do not want it to give me a generalized offer, so I have to feed it with the necessary information about me and my travel style.
I have imagined the following futuristic scenario where a human uses his AI agent to book his travel. I predict that some, if not all, of these scenarios, will soon be possible.
Input: I give the agent as much input as possible about my travel style and personality. E.g., I’m a solo traveler, I like nature and mountains, I like to be close to coworking spaces, I’m a foodie and I want to travel responsibly. I want you to give me a full package - transportation, accommodation and activities I can engage with on my 2-week travel across Italy.
The result: The agent will create a unified view (like a table) of all services with descriptions, images, reviews, prices, advantages and disadvantages. With this option, I won’t even have the need to leave this window as everything will be provided for me in the same one. I also won’t have the need to visit different websites. It’s like a meta-search on SkyScanner.
Booking and payment: I will make the ultimate decision on which services to book. Then, I will say to the agent: please book services a, c, f and h. The agent will provide me with the final price, ask me which credit card to use, and pay for all of the services for me.
Pre-travel: Your agent will update you 1x a week about what’s going on at your final destination. What’s the weather like, what’s the safety situation like, etc. It can even post stories on your Instagram profile about the destination you’re traveling to and add a countdown.
Travel time: On the day of your departure, the agent will prepare all of the documentation you need in one place. No need to search through apps, websites and emails. It will provide you with the schedule of your flight, and see what is the best option to reach the airport based on live traffic and price.
At the destination: Here, the options are limitless. It can book restaurants and experiences for you the same way as in the 1. step. It gives you advice on what kind of souvenirs to buy for your loved ones. It automatically buys a digital postcard online and sends it to your friends.
I will say to the agent that I want to avoid tourism hotspots and live like a local. It will look at the data where locals are taking the most photos and give me the locations where to go.
Post-travel: It chooses the best photos you took on your vacation and posts them on Instagram with cheeky text. It will generate a recap of our travels and put it in the story format we can tell to our friends and family when we get back.
On UpWork, we already have people hiring VA to plan their trips. Book flights, hotels and other travel services. This means that many people are already not talking to travel advisors or browsing OTAs. They outsource this to other people. In the future, they will simply outsource it to these AI agents.
I suspect that the first power users of these features will be very busy people, CEOs, i.e. frequent business travelers or digital nomads who travel the world a lot. Some people love to plan their trips manually and browse websites, others do not. These solutions are suitable for the latter.
How will this change the way travel providers need to appear online? Certainly, the way we communicate about our services will change if we no longer sell them to people with emotions. I believe that those who have the clearest and most personal offer will benefit the most.
For example, if I tell my agent that I want to stay in an Airbnb run by a PhD tourism student, it will pull the data from Airbnb's feature where hosts can specify their profession and interests and find the hosts who are PhD tourism students. If you as a host have not indicated this in your profile, your home may not be found.
The lesson for me is to specialize and personalize even more and define your target segment well. Differentiate yourself by what makes you and your service special. Things will be less random and less emotional in these new forms of travel planning.