Travel, artificial intelligence conquers tourists of all ages

Planning a trip in front of a computer screen (or a smartphone) is a habit that is 'infecting' more and more Italians, and as they rely on digital tools to choose their holiday destination and book flights and accommodation, artificial intelligence is making an increasingly decisive appearance. This is a well-known trend and one that a study by eDreams Odigeo, one of the world's leading booking platforms and active on the AI front for the past 10 years, clearly certifies. The change in user behaviour and expectations is evident, and the survey (conducted globally on 9,000 adult respondents, including 1,000 resident in Italy) tells us how the younger generations, aged between 18 and 34, are the main drivers of the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence to support a travel that wants to be hyper-personalised.

On the whole, one in four users rely on AI, including those who have used this tool for the first time, and even among the more advanced demographic groups, interest is widespread: 58% of Italian respondents over the age of 55, for example, said they had turned to algorithm technology in the last twelve months and this percentage is lower in Europe only than in Spain (61%) and Germany (73%). In general, and this is perhaps the most important indication to emerge from the study, travel planning and booking tops the list of areas where consumers of all ages are taking advantage of AI to support decision-making. Forty-five per cent of respondents, in particular, elect it as the most useful solution for researching flights and offers and for recommending unfamiliar destinations. Other data collected by the survey clearly reiterate how intelligent personalisation, i.e. the way in which platforms such as that of eDreams anticipate travel needs by making billions of daily forecasts, is also becoming a must in order to satisfy a precise and well-established demand: to reduce the effort and time required to complete a booking, avoiding obstacles represented by suggestions that are not aligned with preferences and the need to re-select options and (more generally) the inefficiencies of traditional booking methods.

The travel industry is therefore changing its skin, and fast, and the game between the various digital platforms is being played on the level of adoption and development of artificial intelligence technologies and the ability to transform the user experience through specific data insights. The AI systems of eDreams and Opodo, just to give a practical example, are designed to process over 100 million daily searches and generate something like 6 billion forecasts and 3.8 billion itineraries. Dana Dunne, CEO of eDreams Odigeo, is absolutely convinced that relying on artificial intelligence for travel planning is already the norm, and he says this by recalling how this technology in his company is now extended to the whole organisation and not just the IT teams. "From the consumer's point of view," the 62-year-old British manager explained to Sole24ore, "the relationship with AI has radically changed, because artificial intelligence helps travellers throughout their journey, ensuring a more fluid, flexible and intuitive 360-degree experience. And all this is possible thanks to the predictive and personalisation capabilities provided by the proprietary technology we have developed'. What makes the difference, in short, are the functionalities of a tool that is becoming increasingly indispensable for finding low-cost flights (49% of Italians resort to AI precisely for this need) or for discovering travel destinations or experiences that users would not otherwise have identified on their own (a habit that concerns 33% of domestic holidaymakers interviewed).

"AI in travel," Dunne added, "has multiple use cases, but one of the most obvious ones for travellers is the ability to offer them exactly what they need, when they need it and how they need it. If we look at the benefits, the driving force behind this technology is undoubtedly its ability to save time, simplifying the planning process and eliminating the time-consuming and stressful research stages'.

It goes without saying that, in order to increase their competitiveness and respond to the further evolution of demand, companies in this sector, as the CEO of eDreams also points out, will not be able to avoid investing (and substantially) in innovative technologies to keep up with the market. "Our platform," Dunne concluded, "is based on algorithms capable of evaluating billions of data points and consequently building the proposition travellers need in a fraction of a second, automatically filtering out options that might seem irrelevant to the user and delivering results in line with preferences. All incoming requests are processed by proprietary AI algorithms and the systems are designed to continuously learn from our customers'. To do this, and ensure the necessary scalability, you need a reliable IT infrastructure and real-time data processing capabilities behind you: for millions of people, travelling is (also) a technological issue.