The Future of Personalized Search for Travel

Once upon a time, in a small town, a tractor trailer got stuck under a railroad bridge. All the town leaders: the mayor, the police and fire departments, and the town engineers came together to solve the problem. After hours had gone by and much discussion, the group were no closer to a viable answer when a small child, excited by all the hubbub, strolled by. “Why don’t you let the air out of the tires?” she said. And thus the problem was solved.

The moral of the story is that the simple answer isn’t always so obvious. For a long time companies have been chasing this holy grail of “personalization” in travel, trying to show the right offer to the right traveler at the right time and, yet, nobody has succeeded. Some have tried inferring future preferences from past choices. But, most people don’t travel often enough to have a large enough data set to make accurate predictions. And, for that small set of frequent travelers, it turns out that preferences change depending upon with whom, when, where, and why they are traveling.

Sometimes we just need to think about the issue from a different angle. Recent advances in AI and the leveraging of large language models have led us to a simple answer to solve the problem. Instead of trying to divine what we think the traveler wants, what if we just let them ask us?

We’re entering a new phase of technological capability in the world of AI that allows for multi-modal search functionality where search can be both visual and textual—where search can be more human. Search can now be contextualized within a particular moment in time and a person’s particular desires. By listening to travelers and understanding the intent behind their search, brands can then deliver what the customer wants, specifically for that individual, in that particular time, for that individual trip.

The Three Box Problem

Go to any travel site, whether an airline, hotelier, or OTA and what will you see? Three boxes. The current, and completely insufficient, way that trip planning happens. It’s the classic situation you’re familiar with where you are forced to start a trip plan by picking a destination and defining your start and end dates. These three boxes are so ubiquitous that you almost don’t notice them when you fill them out, but they work best when you know when and where you’re going. Because your customer, the traveler, now has to find information to fill those boxes, they then leave your site and go to other places like Instagram, Google, Tiktok, etc. to do their trip research.

Intent Driven Search

At Mobi, we call our answer to this problem Intent Driven Search. We’ve created a new way for a traveler to find what they’re looking for based on when, where, with whom, and for what purpose they’re traveling. Intent driven search can answer a question from a customer like, “Can you find me an all-inclusive resort with a great kids club and scuba diving, where it will be warm over New Years, which I can reach with a non-stop flight from Boston, using my points?” Our solution allows any brand to leverage AI, and specifically LLMs, for what they’re good for: using natural language to understand what a customer wants, while using the rest of our AI platform, with its deep understanding of time, place, and points of interest (POIs), to find the right place in the world to achieve their dream trip.

Research has shown that people want to feel seen as individuals and receive personalized offers from companies. Companies are trying to provide that, but so far it hasn’t been done particularly well. Even Netflix, praised for their ability to suggest options based on your past viewing habits, often disappoints when you are looking for something new. However, when done well, personalization has the power to build emotional loyalty in the customer. Delivering experiences that fundamentally touch your customer’s heart can create memories so positive that it binds the traveler to your brand in an unbreakable way. And with each new search you’ll actually learn more about customers as you reinforce their trust in you—leading to better likelihood of a successful booking.

Personalization should start with answering personal questions. Every person is unique and has specific desires that they want to see reflected when they’re conducting a search for travel. Using Collaborative AI and Intent Driven Search empowers our partners to learn a traveler’s intent and can deliver truly personalized results that build emotional loyalty. Intent Driven Search—have we found the “holy grail?”