Travel Agency Priceline To Adopt Google AI

Travel agency Priceline is to use Google’s generative AI to add to its customer-facing efforts as well as for its own staff, as the ChatGPT-style technology continues to attract intense interest from investors and the public.

Google said Priceline is developing a customer-facing travel bookings system using Google’s chatbot technology that would be able to answer complex natural-language queries and carry out bookings within the chat.

The system is intended to provide a concierge-like service that’s able to find hotels based on proximity to local attractions, restaurants and activities, the companies said.

Priceline said the system would be able to handle quations such as “What are the best four-star hotel options in midtown Manhattan within walking distance to Central Park?” or “Can you help me extend my hotel reservation for an additional night?”

AI travel agent

Priceline is also planning to use generative AI technology for its marketing to customers, with Google’s Vertex AI system that can, for instance, generate descriptions of cities for Priceline’s email marketing campaigns.

The travel agency said it also plans to use Google generative AI to create imagery and text for its online ads.

Within the company Priceline said it would use Google search to allow employees to more easily track down information held in dispersed documents and databases across the corporation’s internal networks, such as guidance about how to update bank information for direct deposit payments.

Google’s AI-powered code generation tool, Duet AI, is to be used to help Priceline’s programmers create code.

Not just ‘novelty’

“Priceline is charting a course to transform the novelty of generative AI into lasting value,” said Priceline chief technology officer Marty Brodbeck in a statement.

The deal is a win for Google’s cloud infrastructure division, which has long trailed Amazon and Microsoft in the sector.

It also boosts Google’s AI offerings, amidst an upheaval triggered by the public release of ChatGPT late last year by OpenAI – backed by Google arch-rival Microsoft.