When was the last time you had to spend an hour or so to plan for a travel? Booking flights, arranging hotels, browsing through the price list to find the cheapest and yet a decent option, checking for cabs and still forgetting things to take along in luggage – that’s a norm that almost all itineraries have to go through. Even in the times of travel planners that bring all the information regarding available flights at one place and also provide a gateway to book hotels, tourists and business travelers have to go through the ordeal of checking every piece of information, the suitability of timings, preference for hotel locations, cab availability and places to visit … and still miss a few vital elements in preparation. What if the entire process of travel experience could be made autonomous? I am not saying ‘automated’, I am saying ‘autonomous’ – where everything is done for us by artificial intelligence with a reliable decision-making process.
The future holds a possibility for travel industry to be managed by artificial intelligence systems, where each stage of a journey is taken care of by an autonomous system that looks into our travel history, set of preferences and gets the best options booked for us before being presented as a planned itinerary on a chat window. Are you wondering how the entire journey will look like when planned by artificial intelligence? Well, I won’t keep you waiting. Let’s explore it together!
Travel bookings based on preferences
The smart travel planner of tomorrow will simply ask you for the date of your travel, travel source and destination, and number of passengers. Based on the historical travel pattern you have followed, the smart planner will figure out the best flights for you on the basis of which airlines you have given the best consistent rating, the seat that you have generally preferred to be in and the class as per your travel history. The timing of travel – daytime or night – will again be based on which timing you have traveled the most from the entered location. Even weather forecasts will be incorporated in the process of decision-making, so that you don’t have to travel to or from airport during an inclement weather.
Based on your preferences identified from your accommodation history, the best priced and available hotel will be booked which will also be close to your office or the major tourist places that you can visit – depending on the context of travel. Before finalizing the itinerary with all the travel and hotel arrangements in place, the smart planner will present to you a list of few hot-listed options that fit your budget, timings and other preferences. A single tap will initiate the payment and another tap shall complete the booking. The confirmation may even be enabled through a voice interface, wherein the smart planner speaks out the possible itineraries and you just confirm with a verbal command. It will be that simple and that seamless, with no mental efforts from your side.
Once the flight is booked and a confirmation is received, the smart planner will book a room in a hotel with all details filled autonomously in the online form and booking ID received in a chatbot window.
Cab bookings on the go
The smart planner shall know the time of your flight and will also keep a tab on the weather conditions and the real-time traffic conditions using Maps APIs. It will take its own decision on the right time to book a cab, so that you don’t end up getting delayed to the airport. You will be notified through an in-app notification or a voice command about the time of your departure from home to catch the cab. Once you enter the cab and the cab booking app shows the ride as ‘started’, the smart planner will do an automatic check-in and will keep the boarding pass ready for you in your chatbot window. You will simply need to reach the airport and drop the luggage at the check-in counter.
Smart luggage bag that follows us
That’s another reality which is not far from becoming mainstream. Researchers have already made luggage bags that connect to our devices, like smartphone, and follow us automatically like a robot. They simply connect with our smartphone via Bluetooth and then follow the direction of our walk inside the airport. You may soon have your luggage bag following you like a pet, rather than you dragging it manually using a handle.
The airport authorities may also put a bar-code or a QR code on your bag at the destination airport and map it to your registered smart planner ID. Each time the bar-code or QR code gets scanned at various stages in the luggage arrival section, you will get a message on how far your luggage bag is from being loaded on the conveyor belt and how long it will take to reach you. This will give you complete visibility over your baggage and will help you not get anxious while waiting for your bag.
Quick follow-up on arrangements at destination
The smart planner will keep checking for the flight status and will keep a watch on the boarding time. Close to the time of boarding, if it is found that the flight is on time as per the schedule, the landing time will be checked and accordingly a cab at the destination will be booked for a time around 25-30 minutes later than the landing time, in order to give enough buffer time for deplaning and collecting luggage at the belt.
When you exit the destination airport, you will find a cab waiting for you at the pickup area and you won’t have to struggle with the cab hailing apps to search for availability of cabs and then book the one which costs the lowest. The smart planner will know what you want and will take decisions based on the consumer behavior you have historically displayed. The personalization of travel plan will simply sweep you off your feet.
The moment you board your cab, the estimated time of arrival at the hotel will be calculated by the smart planner and will be notified to the hotel authorities, so that they can keep your room ready. The time of arrival will be estimated based on the type of car, traffic conditions and weather conditions of that day. The smart planner will also know what kind of music, fragrance and temperature suits you for relaxation, and it will communicate the same to the hotel staff so that when you enter your room, you get the best of experience.
Rigorous analytics 24/7
The smart planner will map the entire travel journey and find out points of joy, satisfaction, interruptions and disappointments you faced. This will be based on your short feedback to the smart planner throughout your journey. Analytics engines will be pumped into action to collect, analyze and interpret your travel experience and then feed the inputs to the machine learning models that will improve the decision-making process over the course of time. This will ensure that your travel experience gets better with time and you soon have a travel concierge that you can trust and just delegate your travel plans to.
Final thoughts
Travel is often a part of life that concerns us because of the many activities we get busy with while in the planning phase. A digital concierge will be fantastic companion in the process of itinerary planning and execution. Having someone taking care of all your needs without much of your mental effort is certainly going to be wonders for journeys. The day is not far when our smartphone will be the new travel planner of tomorrow.
