Good Sunday afternoon from Seattle . . . Our weekly Online Travel Update for the week ending Friday, March 13, is below. Given everything else going on the world (none of which is very helpful to travel), it was a relatively quiet week in online travel. Much was written about Amazon’s preliminary victory over Perplexity early in the week, but little else gained much attention. Enjoy.
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- Hilton Introduces AI Trip Planner While Marriott Plans Launch of Conversational Search. Hilton announced this past week that it was beta testing a new AI enabled trip planner (“Hilton AI Planner”) that would allow users to use conversational tools to search destinations, hotels and amenities across the entire Hilton portfolio. The beta version is currently available to select users of Hilton.com. Hilton expects to gradually expand the rollout as it improves the platform based on early beta interactions. Marriott plans to rollout similar technology to its website and mobile app in pilot form in the next months and then a wider rollout later this year.
- Amex GBT Share AI Enabled Efficiencies. During Amex GBT’s fourth quarter earnings call this past week, Amex GBT CEO, Paul Abbot, shared details about the TMC’s increasing leverage of AI. Some key takeaways:
- 83% of the TMC’s total transactions are now digital transactions with that number expected to increase with the increasing reliance on AI
- Amex GBT expects to launch Egencia AI next month, which will allow users to use natural language queries for both bookings and travel management (all in accordance with applicable travel policies)
- Egencia’s current average booking time is 3 minutes, with that number expected to go down as fewer bookings require human intervention
- Amazon Claims Early Round One Victory in Ongoing Agentic Lawsuit Against Perplexity. This past week, a U.S. federal district court issued an order temporarily enjoining Perplexity’s Comet web browser agents from accessing certain password protected sections of Amazon’s systems to complete purchases on behalf of Perplexity users. According to Amazon, Perplexity’s failure to disclose its agents’ activities on behalf of shoppers and subsequent failure to stop the activity when asked by Amazon constituted computer fraud. The court’s order is only temporary, however, while to the two sides continue to argue over the legality of Perplexity’s actions. Perplexity has vowed to appeal the order, the effect of which was suspended specifically to allow Perplexity to file an appeal. For those of you interested in the recent order, we’ve linked to a copy of the court’s order below.
Have a great week everyone.