AI Developments in Travel: Skift Timeline

Travel companies have been using artificial intelligence for years, but the emergence of generative AI — which gives it the ability to create text, images, audio and video — opened the door wide open to a range of new possibilities.

More than two years later after the public launch of ChatGPT, the vision is still taking shape. There have been incremental developments, with the industry working to use AI to deliver personalized recommendations, marketing, and customer service. Many of the applications so far are working behind the scenes.

Here's a timeline of the biggest announcements and advances and their impact on travel:

February 2023: Microsoft-Owned Bing Relaunches Around ChatGPT

Microsoft's Bing search engine released a chatbot could simplify how people could search for travel planning on search engines. One difference with ChatGPT is the annotations to the sources, and suggestions on further queries.

March 2023: Google Releases Bard

Google announced that it would launch Bard, its rival to ChatGPT. Travel Technology Reporter Justin Dawes wrote that it appeared to operate similarly to ChatGPT, except that it responds to prompts with more than one answer.

Dawes added the technology has big implications for the travel industry, with brands like Booking.com and Expedia exploring how it can be used to power the future of travel planning and booking.

April 2023: Expedia Releases ChatGPT-Powered AI Chatbot on Mobile App

Expedia released the first version of a travel planning chatbot on its mobile app, becoming the first prominent online travel agency in the West to do so. (Trip.com, based in Singapore, released a chatbot earlier in 2023.)

Dawes reported that Expedia users could use the tool — a separate chatbot from the virtual agent that the app already had — to assist during travel planning by asking general questions about a destination or trip ideas.

A demo demonstrated how the tool automatically saved hotels the chatbot recommended. A user could go to the "Trips" tab within the app and click on the saved items to see availability for booking.

May 2023: Google’s New Generative AI Tools for the Travel Sector

Dawes reported Google Search was getting an update with generative AI from Bard, meaning a search prompt for travel could be more detailed upfront. In addition, the top of the results page will incorporate a fuller picture of information, including a shorter answer generated by AI.

Google Maps was getting an update that would provide users a bird’s eye view of a route, which Google CEO Sundar Pichai said could be useful, for example, for cyclists looking for a scenic route with a bike trail. That user would be able to check air quality, traffic, and weather, as well as how that might change over the next several hours.

June 2023: Priceline Releases New AI Platform and 'Penny' the Chatbot

A day after sister company Booking.com unveiled an AI trip planner to U.S. members of its Genius travel rewards on its mobile app, Priceline announced it was launching a series of 40 new booking and upgrade tools developed using Google Cloud's Generative AI App Builder. One of those tools is an AI chatbot named "Penny" that runs across Priceline's entire hotel network and can be used as a local guide, help desk contact, and 24/7 concierge.

October 2023: Meta, Microsoft, AWS All Unveil Travel-Related AI Projects

Dawes wrote that three big tech companies — Amazon Web Services, Meta, and Microsoft — had recently made big product releases related to generative AI. 

Amazon Web Services launched Amazon Bedrock, a platform that allows travel companies to build AI tools and apps that access their own proprietary data, which Dawes noted is needed to make a tool useful. Meta released a generative AI chatbot called Meta AI, which uses the company's proprietary generative AI model to answer questions similar to ChatGPT, which Dawes wrote could include questions about planning trips, booking flights, and more.  

And Microsoft said it was working with IT company Accenture to pilot a travel assistant in partnership with Amadeus. For example, a user can ask Microsoft 365 Chat to find a flight that matches certain requirements, and the chatbot responds with flight options.  

March 2024: Kayak Says New AI Tool Can Read an Airfare Screenshot to Find A Lower Price

Kayak released a tool called PriceCheck that it said can read flight fare information from a screenshot and then search for a better price. Although Kayak issued a warning within PriceCheck urging users to check for accuracy before booking, Dawes reported a Skift test showed the tool got everything right: the dates, times, airline, and the airports. And it found a lower price.

March 2024: Google's New Travel AI Tools Want to Plan Customer Trips

Google said it would add several new tools designed to help travelers plan trips and explore destinations. The tech giant also added an experimental AI-based itinerary creation capability to its traditional Search tool for users to opt into. Users could prompt Search for an itinerary for a certain destination, and they would receive flight and hotel options in addition to suggestions for attractions and dining.

May 2024: ChatGPT Is Getting a Major Update

OpenAI unveiled a group of updates that Dawes wrote could result in travelers having a robotic voice translator in their pocket. Upgraded translation capabilities were part of the new GPT-4o model, which OpenAI said is much faster than the previous version and better at interacting with voice, photos, and video. 

OpenAI said in a blog post about the update that a user could now snap a photo of a menu and ask ChatGPT to translate it, as well as provide cultural information about a dish and make recommendations about what to order. 

May 2024: Google's Next Step in AI Trip Planning

Google announced that Gemini Advanced, the paid version of the Gemini generative AI chatbot, would be able to build travel itineraries with a simple prompt in easy-to-understand language. Sissie Hsiao, Google's vice president and general manager for Gemini experiences, used a travel example to demonstrate how the chatbot is taking a step closer toward the goal of being a “true AI assistant.”

Hsiao said Gemini Advanced could create a personalized vacation using multiple sources of information for a family planning a weekend trip to Miami, where the user's husband was looking for places to eat fresh seafood.

June 2024: Apple's Siri Gets Better AI

Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference that its digital assistant Siri would soon be able to help users plan trips. While Dawes wrote that Siri wouldn't be able to perform complicated tasks at that moment such as booking flights, Siri would be able to pull information from across Apple-owned apps.

For example, a user could ask for details on an upcoming booked flight, and Siri would cross-reference flight information from an email or text with real-time flight tracking info to provide the most updated arrival time. Siri could also find plans for a lunch reservation made via text, and then inform the user how long it would take to travel from the airport to the restaurant. 

September 2024: The New iPhone 16 Camera Button Integrates with AI

Apple announced that the newest iPhones would come with an easy way to ask generative AI about real-life visuals, which would provide travelers with easier ways to navigate new cities. Dawes notes the iPhone16 and iPhone 16 Pro both activate a tool to ask AI about visuals through the camera. For example, when pointing at a restaurant, the iPhone pulls up a window with hours, ratings, and options to view the menu and make a reservation through OpenTable.

October 2024: ChatGPT Advanced Voice: The Future of Travel Booking or the Death of OTAs?

Thomas Reiner, a partner at Altimeter Capital, wrote that ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode could represent the future of travel booking. He provided an example of asking ChatGPT to search for a hotel in Puglia that met specific criteria, and he received tailored answers that he believed would take far longer to piece together manually on Booking or Expedia.

While Reiner wrote that it's uncertain if online travel agencies will adapt or become obsolete in the era of AI, he added that consumers stand to benefit from more personalized, efficient, and even cheaper travel planning provided by AI.

October 2024: Anthropic’s New AI Feature Resembles Human Travel Agents

Anthropic, a generative AI startup and competitor to OpenAI, unveiled an early version of a feature meant to perform computer tasks — including making travel plans — the same way a human would. Dawes reported that the new tech showed an early version of how an AI-powered travel agent could operate.

A more advanced version of Anthropic's tech could eliminate the challenges of manually navigating options, comparing prices, and making reservations. Improvements in the technology could drive users to bypass online travel agencies to turn to AI to find better deals.

October 2024: ChatGPT Becomes a Travel Search Engine

Executive Editor Dennis Schaal wrote that ChatGPT becoming a browser-based search engine with real-time links, maps, weather, sports, stocks and news had plenty of implications for travel. He noted simply asking ChatGPT.com to plan a trip along California's Pacific Coast Highway produced a 5-day itinerary from San Francisco to Santa Barbara that pulled information and links from a wide variety of sources.

November 2024: Airbnb Says AI Chatbot for Trip Planning Not on the Horizon

Dave Stephenson, Airbnb’s chief business officer, said the company’s efforts to incorporate AI in its app wouldn’t include a chatbot for trip planning anytime soon despite working with OpenAI to develop one for users.  

“I think the tools in the interface right now — using chat as a method to plan a trip — we just don't think it’s actually sufficient, and it didn't actually meet our design criteria," Stephenson said during the Phocuswright conference in Phoenix.

January 2025: ChatGPT Can Self-Book Restaurants and Events

OpenAI announced that it was releasing a digital assistant that can complete online searches and purchases for travel, events, restaurants, and more. OpenAI says it has partnered with a number of companies to make sure the tool — known as Operator — can access data from websites, including travel brands Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Priceline.

January 2025: Emergence of Deep Seek

DeepSeek, a new generative AI model based in China, could upend Silicon Valley and the travel industry. The startup's rapid rise — which it says came at a fraction of the cost compared to rivals OpenAI and Google’s Gemini — caused AI stocks to drop. Travel brands working to adopt AI could be big winners in the long run if DeepSeek helps lower the cost of the technology.

February 2025: Tripadvisor Gets Boost From Perplexity Partnership

Tripadvisor began a trial in January to power some travel-related answers on the AI search engine Perplexity — a partnership that focuses on sharing Tripadvisor data that’s largely unavailable to third-party search engines, including information about its users' habits. Tripadvisor CEO Matt Goldberg and Chief Financial Officer Mike Noonan both said the following month the partnership with Perplexity — Tripadvisor's first with an AI search engine — has been a boon for business.