What’s new in Booking.com’s GenAI innovations, App & business model Q3’23
In this series we’re looking at anything new in the Apps, GenAI innovations & Business Models of the best Digital Technology Companies.
Since Apps & GenAI innovations are really the frontend to a business model, we always have to look at both: the frontend (the App) and the backend (the business model & why certain innovations & updates have actually occurred).
Here’s what happened lately at Booking.com.
1. Strategic Priority: Connected Trip
Before we get into their GenAI and App updates, we need to first understand one of Booking’s most important strategic priorities of the last few years: Connected Trip. It will help us to understand the other aspects better.
So what is Connected Trip?
In essence it is Booking’s attempt to sell and manage all aspects of a customer’s trip including all the changes (including external induced one, ie disruption management),
With that Connected Trip boils down to:
- Cross- & upselling other elements of a trip (on top of the hotel rooms that they are dominant in)
- Enhanced (big) data opportunities by understanding the holistic picture of their customer’s trip
- Managing disruptions, such as late flights, rebooking, etc
- Move from the traditional pre-packaging offering (like Expedia did from their early days) to personalised packaging (including the bits in between)
Now let’s look at 2 different ways that Booking Holdings have implemented AI solutions in the broader context of the Connected Trip.
- In their (main) subsidiary Booking.com via a front-of-funnel Gen AI Trip Planner
- In their Priceline subsidiary Priceline via an end-of-funnel GenAI “Penny”
2. Generative AI (Gen AI): Booking.com AI Trip Planner
Trip Planner is at the front of the funnel before a user books a hotel or a trip and is aimed at helping to plan the different aspects of a trip, hotel, flight, rental car, things to do at the destination.
It was rolled out in the mobile App in Q2 in the US to their Genius customers.
It leverages Booking.com’s existing machine learning models & recommendation algos and adds a conversational experience.
In their AI interface Booking have embedded their known digital properties, such as:
- visual list of destinations and properties
- live pricing information
- deep-links to view more details on the options
- Allows completing the reservation via a tap in the interface
Hence, it is one of the most powerful Gen AI interfaces from a revenue-generating perspective that we’re aware of.
3. Penny: Priceline’s end-of-funnel Gen AI assistant
Penny was revealed in Priceline’s App Summer Release 23.
It is their generative AI travel assistant at the “end-of-the-funnel” on the checkout page. Thus, it can be for cross- / upsells as well as trip and travel questions.
It’s a conversational Gen AI that allows making bookings directly from the chat interface (let’s say someone wants to look for flights, rental cars or other things related to their hotel booking that they just made).
The questions are helping Priceline to gain insights into what users a concerned with and have also led to a reduction of contact centre calls, increasing productivity and reducing cost,
Learn more
As always, there is more to it than the eye can see. You can check out our videos on What’s new in Booking’s Business Model …
Learn more about the whole biz model (including finance & economics) watching the entire video or jump to the App & business model update sections if you are more interested in the App updates and what’s behind it.
Learn more about all aspects of Booking.com’s biz model here.
Very fascinating — isn’t it?
