The travel industry’s new trip

In brief

• Majority of travelers are overwhelmed with trip planning experience and find it to be complex, stressful and disjointed.
  
  
• The power of gen AI can reinvent travelers’ experience, enabling convenience and simplicity across travel inspiration, planning and booking stages.
  
  
• Travel executives recognize the value of gen AI and the need to implement it at scale.

Travelers are looking for simplicity and convenience

Today, travel requires a lot of careful planning, where travelers tend to start early, often spending up to six months for an international trip. The overall experience is time-consuming, stressful and disjointed across three stages: inspiration, planning and booking.

We surveyed 8,000 travelers from around the world and 300 C-suite industry executives and complemented those surveys with a crowdsourcing exercise involving 200 travelers from four countries, and an AI-based cluster analysis of their views. The report is based on insights gathered in the research.

At each step, travelers face a myriad of options. Multi-tabbed browsing, bookmarking websites, offline spreadsheets and detailed notetaking can become complex, often travelers aborting a purchase decision.

We looked at the struggles that travelers face today across the three stages.

Travelers want it simple and easy

Travelers’ views are remarkably consistent regardless of age or income. They are looking for convenient and simpler ways to get benefits such as personalized trip planning, the best deals and curated itineraries.  

Some of their top wishes from tomorrow’s travel experience includes: 

• A one-click process  
• Intuitive search 
• Intelligent live support for booking and other inquiries. 
• Automatic, personalized suggestions (schedule, itinerary) – mimicking a local travel guide 
• Simplified view of offers (with points, miles, redemption) 
• Clear cancellation/modification process and procedures and safety advisory 
• Automatic prompts to the best spots and hidden places 
• Journey assistant for live reminders.

Gen AI can reinvent traveler’s experience

A gen AI-powered solution can make travelers' experience better, offering them personalized, one-stop, integrated access to a wide range of travel services. And travelers are ready to accept and use it. A related Accenture study, The Empowered Consumer, found that over half of consumers are open to using conversational AI solutions. 

During the inspiration stage, gen AI tools can prevent the overwhelm arising from a lot of choices. It can take each traveler’s unique needs and motivations to filter out the noise and focus on the most relevant, appealing and rewarding choice. At the planning stage, the tools can personalize a trip, simplify, manage and track travel details. For booking, which is by far the most complicated stage of a journey, it can offer a simple, more centralized view of options such as payment, offers, rewards and itinerary.  

Gen AI can change the way travel businesses work. It can help them maximize revenue by analyzing data of travelers' needs and preferences and responding to the booking patterns in real-time.  

Are you ready to grasp this opportunity?

Across travel industry, leaders are increasingly recognizing the value that generative AI can bring to their consumer-facing and internal operations. Almost three-quarters (73%) of travel leaders are focused on adopting gen AI for cost savings and greater efficiency, while more than 60% of leaders are also looking to use it to improve top-line growth and enhance brand perception. However, almost all of them recognize that to fully realize the benefits, they’ll need to implement gen AI at scale—across the enterprise and value chain. 

Unlocking the transformative power of gen AI requires committing to certain principles. For example,  

1. Assess every move in the context of the value chain 
2. Prioritize data and AI readiness 
3. Embed responsibility 
4. Continuously evaluate what a successful working experience is, and how to support it 

The transformative potential of gen AI within travel is immense. Travel companies have an opportunity to mobilize its power to simplify and streamline the complexity travelers face at every stage of their trips today. Embarking on a data and AI reinvention journey mirrors a demanding expedition. It will require commitment to invest in advanced technologies and to lay the groundwork necessary to unleash potential. But the resulting ability to improve and enhance customer experiences will be well worth it.