ChatGPT's Travel Compass: Navigating New Realms
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ChatGPT is disrupting virtually every industry. So today on the podcast, I wants 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 any time in the year, you know how falling businesses work.

And so when all these technologies is coming out, it's been really interested in seeing how he has been affected by at what areas he's using um to help him argument what he's currently doing. And so today on the podcast, we're gona dive into this and into the exciting world of A I and travel of the bad. I think one of the biggest areas of disruption within travel with chat P T customer service were seen this in virtually every um industry.

But I think that travel companies, particularly and especially airlines, they typically have really large customer service teams um and they have a lot of complaints. They have a lot of booking stuff that they have a lot to sort through as far as customer service goes um and even like going back historically speaking, even over the last you know ten years, travel companies and airlines have typically hosted really massive staff. S I know my dad used to have like twenty people that just answer phone calls and help people book flights back before the internet was quite as prevalent for IT.

And I think that a lot of you know just help in customer service as far as travel bookings go is gonna um is going to be helped and automated. I think that it's gonna let agents, the 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 to book all the flights.

Um and so the the people that are still booking flights today um are people that are booking very complex situations that are connecting dots. They are going and finding charter ships that sell from this island to this island that isn't even on a website. And no, there is definitely still space for them to do a lot more that complex stuff.

Um and so I think it's going to be interesting to see A I come in and automate even to A A higher level of other obviously not onna kill travel agent um you know travel planners altogether because there still lot is 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 weight lines are notoriously long, showed out to delta.

And I think that this is going to be something that can actually help a lot. Now people are just trying to get basic uh information about their trip. They'll be able to go and use different chat bots online, custom service bots online, help get a lot of the basic stuff started out if there's something complex.

So shoot over to a human and agent that can then go help um and sort out the complex stuff. And I think that i'm essentially that's gone. Either let the airlines hire less people for the job or preferably um the people that they do have for the job are going to be able to spend more time to really get problem solved correctly.

And some of them more medial and easier tasks that Normally would you know make the weight times really long take up people's time will be a able to be taking care of by this ai. So another area and 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 fc travelled companies particularly, they're spending like millions of dollars on marketing campaigns.

Um I 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 are going to 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 cruise es or you any any sort of travel hotels, um 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 GPT with its kind of in brand in all that kind of stuff in is going to help with the marketing is really important in the travel industry.

Um I think one more area is going to be just the whole booking process. I think travel companies are going going to start using ChatGPT to provide customers with more custom booking experiences. So whether that selecting flights, hotels or making payments, imagine if you could book a flight on ChatGPT.

But just like talking to that, be like, hey, I would love to go um to visit one of these ten places in the next x amount of time. I have like two weeks off of work. Um would you be able to go and look up like flights and hotels? Like imagine if you could talk to like a traveller and this is completely different right now.

The norm is there's a booking engine and you go and select your date, and you go and select amount of people going and where and like it's pretty rigid. Imagine if I was just kind like this free flowing conversation where you could just say, like basically, I want to go any time 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 the da and all the work that, like a travel planner, would typically do right beyond the book in engine.

Like a travel actual planner can then go start and putting together, like sample literary ideas, different places that you'd go, things that they think that you would like. You can tell them your preferences and types of food and experiences, and they can go look that up. I think it's gonna really powerful, really impact for sadly, you know um I think travel planners will be can be uh replaced on a lot of ways.

But at the same time, uh, I think at the end of the day ChatGPT, I can be pulling the trigger, and people aren't to want ChatGPT pull the trigger and actually booking in some of these experiences. So while they might get IT all planned out, they can still either go book themselves or go to a travel planner, hand over the itinerary and say, like figure this out and also, you know, go find like a charter shift or plain or, you know, experience on an X, Y, Z place to help augment the whole trip. So I mean, I think it's gonna still jobs for everyone.

But I think the same way that booking engines online outsource a lot of stuff, ChatGPT is going to be able to um even start getting something these more complex itinerary 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 and not just like you're not telling IT one thing you want to do. One place you want to go, you give twenty places you d love to go and you know any time the times of the year that that that would be good and will be able to do not find you the best thing. So let's give me pretty crazy um and so that whole area of travel planning is going to be a pretty nailed down.

I think that you know 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 you know lost luggage and flight cancellations. And you know you'll still have to go to the airline to probably cancel that flight.

But I will be able to let you know which airlines have what sort of policies for what sort of things. So overall, I think this has the potential to disrupt a ton within the travel industry. I think it's gonna ve a company's money, and I also think it's gonna be a really productive tool for consumers.

It's going to save them a lot of time um and also save them money not having to spend as much on you like an expensive travel planner. And so I think all in all, you know it's going to be really disruptive, but also I it's definitely not without its chAllenges ChatGPT in the travel industry, I think one of the main chAllenges are just making sure that um accurate and reliable information is provided. ChatGPT is a 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 uh when you find out that you actually trying to do that, the airline isn't the information wasn't accurate. So you will definitely want to fact check what IT gives you. But I think IT IT will be a quick way to get a lot of data, 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.