Journeying into the Future: ChatGPT's Disruption of Travel Planning

0:00ChatGPT is disrupting virtually every industry. So today on the podcast, I want to talk about one in particular, which is travel. Now, for me, this is a really interesting area because growing up, my father had a travel company that I would work in during the summers or just anytime in the year, because you know how family businesses work. And so when all this technology is coming out, it's been really interesting seeing how he has been affected by it, what areas he's using to help him augment what he's currently doing. And so today on the podcast, we're going to dive into this and into the exciting world of AI and travel.

0:35Right off the bat, I think one of the biggest areas of disruption within travel with ChatGPT is going to be customer service. We're seeing this in virtually every industry. But I think that travel companies particularly and especially airlines, they typically have really large customer service teams. And they have a lot of complaints. They have a lot of booking stuff. they have a lot to sort through as far as customer service goes. And even like going back, historically speaking, even over the last 10 years, travel companies and airlines have typically hosted really massive staffs. I know my dad used to have like 20 people that would just answer phone calls and help people book flights back before the internet was quite as prevalent for it.

1:18And I think that a lot of just help and customer service as far as travel bookings go is going to be helped and automated. I think that it's going to let agents, human agents focus on more of the complex issues and complex bookings. And we're seeing this already in a way, right, where essentially online booking engines took over the job of humans that used to book all the flights. And so the people that are still booking flights today are people that are booking very complex itineraries that they're connecting dots, They're going and finding charter ships that sail from this island to this island that isn't even on a website.

1:59And so, you know, there's definitely still space for them to do a lot more of that complex stuff. And so I think it's going to be interesting to see AI come in and automate even to a higher level, although there's, you know, obviously it's not going to kill travel agents or, you know, travel planners altogether because there's still a lot of this really complex stuff. But as far as customer service goes, I think this is going to be awesome. if you've ever called an airline to try to get something fixed the wait lines are notoriously long shout out to delta and uh i think that this is going to be something that can actually help a lot now if people are just trying to get basic uh information about their trip they'll be able to go and use different chat bots online customer service bots online to help get a lot of the basic stuff sorted out if there's something complex they'll shoot it over to a human an agent that can then go help and sort out the complex stuff.

2:49And I think that essentially that's going to either let the airlines hire less people for the job or preferably the people that they do have for the job are going to be able to spend more time to really get problems solved correctly. And some of the more menial and easier tasks that normally would, you know, make the wait times really long, take up people's time will be able to be taken care of by this AI. So another area in the travel industry that I think is going to benefit a lot from ChatGPT is marketing and sales. I mean, I think this is, you know, for every company really, but I think travel companies particularly, they're spending like millions of dollars on marketing campaigns.

3:28I think when you have a product that is like to a large degree, very commoditized, right? Like flying from Vancouver to New York, like you can have a bunch of different airlines that do it, but at the end of the day, like most people are going to go with the cheapest airline. And so what airlines really try to do or cruises or, you know, any sort of travel hotels, what they really try to do is focus on the value of what they're doing, the value of their brand, you know, why their hotel is superior, more luxurious, better. And so I think that that's a big area that ChatGPT with its kind of branding and all that kind of stuff in is going to help with the marketing.

4:05It's really important in the travel industry. I think one more area is going to be just the whole booking process. I think travel companies are going to start using ChatGPT to provide customers with more custom booking experiences. So whether that's selecting flights, hotels, or making payments, imagine if you could book a flight on ChatGPT by just like talking to it, being like, hey, I would love to go to visit like one of these 10 places in the next X amount of time? I have like two weeks off of work. Would you be able to go and look up like flights and hotels? Like imagine if you could talk to it like a travel agent.

4:42This is completely different. Like right now, the norm is there's a booking engine and you go and select your date and you go and select the amount of people going and where and like it's pretty rigid. Imagine if it was just kind of like this free flowing conversation where you could just say like basically I want to go anytime between these areas. I have this much time off. I'd love to go to any of these places. What's the best time of year? What's the, and it's like all of a sudden, all the work that like a travel planner would typically do right beyond a booking engine, like a travel actual planner can then go start putting together like sample itineraries, ideas, different places that you'd go, things that they think that you would like.

5:16You can tell them your preferences and types of food and experiences, and they can go look that up. I think it's going to be really powerful, really impactful. Sadly, you know, I think travel planners will be can be replaced in a lot of ways. But at the same time, I think at the end of the day, chat GPT is not gonna be pulling the trigger and people aren't going to want chat GPT pulling the trigger on actually booking some of these experiences. So while they may get it all planned out, they can still either go book it themselves or go to a travel planner hand over the itinerary and say like, go figure this out.

5:44And also, you know, go find like a charter ship or plane or, you know, experience on an XYZ place to help augment the whole trip. So I mean, I think there's going to be still jobs for everyone. But I think the same way that, uh, booking engines online outsourced a lot of stuff, chat GPT is going to be able to, um, even start getting some of these more complex itineraries and trips and be able to search a ton of different options and really find you the best deals, the best time, the best experiences. Um, and not just like, you're not telling it one thing you want to do, one place you want to go, you could give it 20 places you'd love to go.

6:19And, you know, anytime the times of the year, then it would be good. And it'd be able to find you the best thing. So that's going to be pretty crazy. And so that whole area of travel planning is going to be pretty nailed down. I think that just even coming up with trip information, like restaurants, attractions, that's all going to be done. It's going to be able to give people information about lost luggage and flight cancellations. And you'll still have to go to the airline to probably cancel that flight, but it will be able to let you know which airlines have what sort of policies for what sort of things.

6:50So overall, I think this has the potential to disrupt a ton within the travel industry. I think it's going to save companies money. And I also think it's going to be a really productive tool for consumers. It's going to save them a lot of time and also save them money, not having to spend as much on, you know, like an expensive travel planner. And so I think all in all, you know, it's going to be really disruptive, but also it's definitely not without its challenges, ChatGPT in the travel industry. I think one of the main challenges is just making sure that accurate and reliable information is provided.

7:23ChatGPT is known to sometimes make stuff up, and you definitely wouldn't want it to, you know, make up some sort of details about a cancellation policy, and then when you find out that you're actually trying to do that, the airline, you know, isn't, the information wasn't accurate. So you'll definitely want to fact check what it gives you, but I think it'll be a quick way to get a lot of data, a lot of information through, and so it's going to be interesting to see how this kind of plays out in the future and all the ways that travel continues to implement all of these tools.