We’re very much in the early innings of the massive transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to have on the global economy, but that doesn’t mean that online travel agencies (OTAs) aren’t taking the opportunity to again declare a new replacement for human travel advisors.
In a conversation with business news organization Quartz, published on Tuesday, Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Booking Holdings, made the argument that AI is on its way to taking the place of travel advisors, an argument that the trade has heard on repeat since the 1990s.
“What we really want is to recreate the effect of dealing with a human being,” Fogel said.
Speaking of its AI trip planner that it rolled out last July, a tool that the company invested heavily in, Fogel said that the aim is to allow its users, booking through its OTAs that include Booking.com, Priceline, and Kayak, to interact with AI to better plan…
