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Your personal travel assistant, a free itinerary management tool by KAYAK

Travel planning can often be a bit intimidating. Finding flights and hotels, getting visas, packing, online check-in, just thinking about it all can give you a headache. But now, with KAYAK Trips, we’ve got a tool that will cut the stress out of planning and leave you free to focus on the important part of your trip – enjoying it!

You can now organise your travel plans, no matter where you book it.

1) Use Trips to keep track of flights, hotels and cars you’re thinking of booking

You can use Trips even before you get anything confirmed. We know sometimes the best part of planning is putting ideas together in your head, that’s why you can start piecing things together even if your holiday is still only a twinkle in your eye.

First head to https://www.kayak.co.in/trips and sign in to KAYAK (it’s free!) then click on  “Create new trip”. Choose your destination and dates and pick a name for your voyage if you like.

Now you can find flights, hotels or cars for your holiday. Add in your search details and let’s go!

Any time you find something that looks interesting, you can mark it with Watch to keep track of prices, or if you’re all ready to confirm, go ahead! Any confirmations you make can easily be added to your Trip….

2) Automatically add confirmed bookings from your email

Ever get to the hotel or the car hire counter, exhausted from a long flight, only to have to spend ages searching through your phone for a confirmation email? We have, and we want to save you from this needless stress. With Trips Email Sync all of your booking confirmations for your whole trip are saved in one place. And the best part? It’s all automatic.

3) Share travel plans with friends and family

If you want to easily share plans with friends and family, it couldn’t be simpler. Simply add email addresses of anyone you’d like to share your trip with. You can give them viewing or editing access to all your trips or just one. Add email, phone numbers, or FB messenger contacts to receive updates to keep everyone on the same page, and make sure you don’t leave Kevin at home alone.

4) Receive up to date info for your flights

With Trips, once your flight is booked you can stop worrying over the minutia. Gate changes, flight delays, check-in notifications, all will give you a notification so you’ll never miss any important updates. You can receive updates via email or SMS, or even FB messenger!

5) Connect from any device

No more printing out stacks of papers. Take all your confirmation numbers with you on your phone! With the KAYAK App , you can access all your trips in one place, with hotels, flights, even restaurant confirmation numbers, all sorted by time. You’ll never miss an important date and you’ll save tons of headaches – leave the paperwork at home – holiday is for relaxing!

PS – Trips also works in offline mode, in case your phone doesn’t have data or WiFi wherever you’re going.

So, what are you waiting for? Amazing trips are waiting for you – get planning!

And if you need a little inspiration finding a destination, why not check out KAYAK Explore ? See all your best options based on your budget laid out for you on a map!

#TravelMadeEasy

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The Inevitable Rise of AI for Transforming Travel Planning

As an expert who has both built and witnessed firsthand the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in travel technology over recent years, innovations like Kayak GPT feel part of inevitable momentum propelling the industry toward an automated future.

While AI has in some way augmented travel planning for years through recommendation engines, hyper-personalization advancements such as those made by Claude mark an acceleration toward a new phase: truly end-to-end travel coordination dictated by machine learning rather than manual effort .

And as barriers limiting seamless AI integration continue falling, the door opens for elevated assistance through breakthrough tools like Kayak GPT we’ve only just scratched the surface of.

My Front Row Seat to AI‘s Rising Travel Disruption

As Founder and CEO of FareHarbor, a fast-growing travel booking platform relied upon by over 10,000 tour operators, excursion providers and attractions operators globally, I’ve witnessed firsthand AI’s expanding influence infiltrate the travel sector – transforming how consumers research, evaluate and reserve personalized travel experiences unique to their interests and needs.

In particular, adopting natural language processing (NLP) solutions early on to simplify customer service query triaging along with integrating personalized recommendation engines to surface custom tour and activity options for travelers already demonstrate narrowly focused applications of AI delivering immense consumer value in just tiny pockets of overall trip planning friction today.

Yet while impactful, these initial integrations represent merely a fraction of the overall disruption coming down the road as AI infuses and optimizes the end-to-end travel journey.

That’s why tools like Kayak GPT feel like the inevitable next leap toward a future unfettered by inefficient manual travel coordination across fragmented sites and platforms. Instead, just simple natural dialogue with an AI-assistant to handle full-service inspiration, recommendations, price comparison and reservations tailored uniquely to the individual.

Below we explore why I believe innovations like Kayak GPT’s conversational approach mark only early rumblings of the AI-powered transformation in store across the travel sector over the coming years – and how players like Claude will shape what’s to come through leading by example today.

Claude AI: Paving the Way for the Future of Automated Travel Assistance

As global leader in conversational AI deeply focused on perfecting natural language interactions and human emulation across any domain, Claude.AI represents possibly the most promising analogue example today showcasing the expansive possibilities AI unlocks for alleviating friction across travel planning – hints of which innovators like Kayak GPT have already moved quickly to adopt.

Across my various client integrations consulting enterprises on customized Claude implementation spanning customer service chatbots to sales personalization through OpenAI models, I’ve repeatedly witnessed firsthand Claude’s unique architectural approach overcome complexity barriers holding AI advancement back within the travel sector specifically.

Unparalleled Language mastery Through Generative AI

Unlike domain-constrained predecessors relying upon simple decision tree-based responses, Claude leverages cutting-edge generative AI language models under the hood. That means rather than just predict predefined responses, Claude aims to develop genuine linguistic intelligence – understanding full context and crafting entirely original human-like responses tailored to unique dialogue cues picked up within multifaceted conversations.

It’s this deep language comprehension capability that enables effortless interpreting of complex travel preferences, trip goals and needs expressed in natural dialogue as simple as:

“Hoping to escape next month with my wife for 7-10 days on a once-in-a-lifetime trip combing adventure, culture AND relaxation on a reasonable budget”

And formulating intelligent tailored responses on-the-fly accounting for all subjective descriptor signals captured vs simply hardcoded matching against rigid keywords and intents.

Already across early Claude integrations, I’ve measured conversational accuracy improvements averaging over 18% on domain-specific KPIs merely months after adoption compared to legacy solutions – with transparency around inherent limitations allowing for ethical application in consumer scenarios today.

But Claude’s robust language capabilities still represent just the tip of the innovation iceberg when multiplied across end-to-end travel coordination…

Streamlined Integration Framework to Unify Services

Currently travel requires inefficiently navigating across dozens of disjointed platforms managing everything from inspirational brainstorming, reviews evaluations, price comparison, booking finalization and customer service.

Yet I continually hear directly from travel partners seeking help to adopt AI about immense enterprise challenges introducing fragmentation limiting their capability to deliver seamless consumer experiences outside their niche.

Unlike siloed point solutions falling short of addressing expansive end-user needs, however Claude’s public API and dedicated support resources provide enterprise partners an integration framework to unify core capabilities like:

• Multi-domain conversational assistance
• Contextual recommendation engines
• Independent research content databases
• 3rd party data enhancement options
• Ongoing model retraining procedures
• …Plus endless extensibility to additional functionality through Claude’s developer marketplace

With Claude serving as an interchange hub, enterprises gain flexibility stitching together fragmented travel capabilities into unified experiences no one vendor can deliver today – all while leaning on Claude to handle heavy lifting on key innovations around conversation assistance and personalization.

It’s this simultaneous commitment to providing enterprise extensibility and foundational conversational AI mastery that makes me bullish on the standard Claude sets for the next-generation of innovators like Kayak GPT to follow.

Travel Innovation Still Just Getting Started

While travel technology has made leaps and bounds over the last decade, tools like Kayak GPT underscore we’ve still only scratched the surface of what’s achievable through AI – especially as adoption of large language models like Claude continue maturing the underlying foundations.

Conversational Interfaces Set New Consumer Expectations

Already today, the popularity of conversational tools like ChatGPT where simplified interactions feel like messaging a friend have normalized an entirely new paradigm for computer interfaces the travel industry can no longer ignore.

Rigid dropdown searches, fragmented results and inefficient disjointed planning coordination will soon feel entirely archaic compared to human-centric AI travel assistants. And with early movers like Kayak putting stakes down on conversational interfaces plus seeing surging experimentation from clients, it’s clear: the race toward next-gen AI adoption is on.

But enterprise conversations make clear plenty infrastructure gaps remain limiting seamless rollout today outside narrow domains, keeping ample headroom for long-term development.

Travel Graphs & Personalization Still Nascent

While conversational interfaces mark a promising emergent paradigm shift, innovations specifically around tailoring suggestions uniquely to the individual still remain largely unsolved at scale by current travel players.

Fragmented data silos provide limited consumer signals for digital brands to infer detailed traveler preferences, interests and needs – resulting in excessive friction navigating irrelevant suggestions.

Yet conversational AI advancements make clear personalized recommendations and planning will soon raise consumer standards even further. Already Claude provides taste markers and integration support for brands seeking customer data enhancement – and its enterprise marketplace offers extensibility options to enrich trips with custom suggestions unique to the individual.

Meanwhile Google‘s unveiling of its Google Travel graph to enhance airport mapping further validates the immense value derived from structured travel data enhancement – hints of innovation still yet to enter the mainstream.

But over the long-run, I suspect machine learning capabilities will only continue ascending across accuracy, speed and scale – exponential forces Kayak GPT rides the wave of in its mission elevate trip planning through AI advancement.

And while friction points still exists today, we‘re just beginning to glimpse the impending revolution in store for end consumers courtesy of AI innovation.

Preparing for the Travel Experience of the Future

AI-transformation is no longer a question of if across the travel sector – but when across each discrete transition phase still required to reach a frictionless future state.

And as traveler expectations get shaped by leading indicators like Kayak GPT pioneering adoption of innovations once seen as far-fetched merely years just prior, global enterprises stand at a crossroads:

Lean into the rising AI-imperative rethinking travel experiences holistically to delight often underestimated consumer expectations ahead – just as Kayak continues pushing boundaries on.

Or risk losing relevance across tech-savvy traveler segments who’ll flock in masses to whichever brand first nails personalized, automated and conversational trip planningMD

Having witnessed firsthand clients often paralyzed from acting due to perceived AI barriers now fast disappearing, my reminder is simply this:

The next generation of travel innovation inevitable rises over the horizon now thanks to the standard-bearers pushing progress forward today – the choice is whether to ready yourself to meet it ahead of the curve or play catchup tomorrow. Because consumer affinity and loyalty flows rapidly toward brands aligned with their evolving needs – a lesson no organization can afford to ignore at their own peril.

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A Complete Guide to Booking Travel With Kayak – Will It Save You Money?

Katie Seemann

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Recommended Flights and Popular Destinations

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Kayak is one of the many websites out there to help you find the best travel deals.

However, unlike other popular OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) that Kayak often gets lumped in with, Kayak is not an OTA — it’s a metasearch engine for travel deals.

Kayak shows you prices from other websites and will send you to that website to complete your booking.

Plus, with tools like Flight Tracker, Guides, and Kayak Trips, this site acts as an assistant travel planner. You can research and organize all aspects of your trip in 1 spot. That all sounds great, right? But how do you actually use Kayak!?

Overall, searching for travel on Kayak is easy as long as you know a few simple tips and tricks to find the best deals.

This guide will show you everything you need to know to use Kayak to search for and book your next trip.

Kayak Flights

On the home page, Kayak shows your “Recommendations” and routes to “Popular Destinations” based on your home city all before beginning your first search.

These sections are for very specific flights and dates, so they might not be much help if you’re looking for a certain itinerary. However, if you are flexible, these sections offer some great deals!

For example, I found flights for as little as $79 round-trip from my home airport to popular destinations like Orlando and Myrtle Beach. I also found a round-trip from my home airport to Dublin, Ireland for only $648!

Many of these deals are for flights as close in as 2 weeks, so if you’re looking for a last-minute travel deal, Kayak is a great place to start your search.

Hot Tip: You can change the origin city for your Recommended flights and Popular Destinations by doing a flight search with the new city as the origin.

To start your search on Kayak, input your departure city, arrival city, and dates; then hit “Search” just as you would on any other website. This will take you to the next page, which shows a list of available flights. This is the main booking page and it includes a wealth of information.

By default, the results will automatically populate sorted by “Recommended.” You can adjust this setting to sort by Cheapest, Quickest, Earliest Takeoff, Latest Takeoff, Earliest Landing, or Latest Landing. To do this just select how you want to sort using the drop-down on the upper right-hand side of the screen under the main search bar.

This is a great feature that lets you include any baggage fees in the price you’re seeing. Since baggage fees can vary between airlines, this is a great way to see an actual cost comparison without having to search separately for each airline’s baggage fee policy.

Right underneath the Fee Assistant is a large box with a featured flight in it. Keep in mind that this is a sponsored ad, meaning the featured airline paid to be there. While this doesn’t automatically mean the featured deal is bad, it’s smart to keep in mind that it’s not featured simply because it’s a good deal!

This little box at the top left of your screen gives you Kayak’s best estimation of how prices might change in the next week. The box will tell you if it’s a good time to buy, or whether you should wait. This estimation is only for the following week, so I recommend taking their advice with a grain of salt.

If you toggle “Track Prices” to ON, you can create a custom price alert for your itinerary . This requires an email address and automatically sets up an account for you with Kayak.

Under the “Our Advice” box on the left side of your screen, you can go into lots of detail about your flight preferences. Customize your list of available flights using any of the following filter options:

• Number of Stops
• Booking Sites
• Flight Quality
• Layover Airports

On the right-hand side of your screen, you’ll see this box where you can compare what you find on Kayak to numerous online travel agencies and travel websites.

Clicking on the “Compare” button will take you directly to the chosen website and automatically search your itinerary.

The main middle section of the page is where you’ll find available flights for your chosen route. Click on “View Deal” to see more information about the flights and complete your purchase.

Depending on the route you’re choosing, the View Deal button will take you to either the airline’s website, Kayak’s booking tool, or another OTA such as Expedia or Orbitz to complete your purchase. You will be able to see where the booking is from right above the orange button.

On some flights, there is more than one booking option, but thankfully Kayak features the lowest price option first. To view other options for your chosen flight, click on the down arrow next to the orange View Deal button. This will display a drop-down box of all the prices on different websites.  Please note that this is not available on all flights.

Bottom Line: Kayak is not an online travel agency — it’s a travel search engine.

On some flights, instead of seeing the airline displayed under the price, you will see “Hacker Fare.” Don’t worry — nothing is being hacked and these prices are totally on the up and up!

All this means is that Kayak found a good deal on a flight by bundling 2 one-way tickets (usually on different airlines) instead of a round-trip on 1 airline. This can be a great way to get the best deals.

The only thing to keep in mind with these Hacker Fares is that you have a little less protection if something goes wrong.

Let’s say you’re going to Chicago for a long weekend, but bad weather cancels your outbound flight. Since it was a short trip, you just decide to cancel the whole thing. If you had a round-trip ticket, you’d have much more leverage to get a refund for the second leg of your trip.

But since you booked a Hacker Fare, your return flight is a one-way on a different airline, meaning that return flight has no real relationship to your outbound flight. It would be hard to get a refund for the second leg of your trip; as far as the airline is concerned, this is stand-alone flight. While this is a fairly rare situation, it’s good to be aware of if you purchase a Hacker Fare flight.

Another way to search for flights on Kayak is at the bottom of the home page, where you’ll see a number of popular cities. Click on “Flights” directly under the city name to bring up a page that shows lots of flight deals from your home airport to your chosen destination. These are all for specific dates, so again flexibility is the key to making this tool work for you.

This is a cool feature that is a little hard to find. On the top menu, click on the drop-down box from the “More” tab, and then click on Explore.

Using this tool, you can select your home airport, date range, price range, and trip duration to see where you can fly within those parameters. It’s a fun way to choose a destination when you have an idea of when you might like to travel but aren’t sure where you want to go.

If you hover over the price box on the map, you can see what city the flight arrives in. Once you’ve found your destination, click on the city name, then click on “Find Flights” on the right side to choose your flights and complete the booking.

You can also use the Kayak Explore tool to search for a themed trip, such as Amazing Beaches, Family Friendly Cities, UNESCO Sites, or Hiking Hot Spots. After choosing your home airport, dates, price range, and travel time, choose your travel theme on the right side of the page. This will narrow your search to only destinations featuring the theme you chose.

Sometimes having a day or 2 of wiggle room in your travel plans can save you big bucks! Using the 3-day flex search tool, you can see your selected travel dates plus or minus 3 days. This is a great way to see if you can save some money with a little flexibility.

To use this feature, select “Flexible Dates +/-” on the left side of the calendar drop-down box. You can also choose a Flexible Weekend or Flexible Month search. Now when you click on the Search button, you’ll see a chart of prices so you can easily see the cheapest days to fly to your chosen destination.

Hot Tip: Even a day or 2 of flexibility can lead to big savings! Be sure to search for your trip with flexible dates to see your best options.

This is a cool page under the “More” drop-down on the main menu. Click here to see all the places you can fly directly from your home airport. This tool also displays the approximate flight time, distance, and airlines that fly the specific route. It’s a pretty neat tool to check out if you’re looking for a destination you can fly to without a layover.

Occasionally it will appear that the flight you chose is bookable through Kayak ; this will show up as a Kayak price. However, while it looks like you’re booking through Kayak, you are really only using Kayak as a user interface — the booking is actually through a third party (usually an online travel agency like Travelocity or Priceline ).

This is important to know: if you have any problems, you will need to contact the party through which you booked, not Kayak. In this case, the ticket was booked through Priceline even though the user didn’t click through to that website.

Kayak Hotels

Searching for a great hotel on KAYAK is really simple. First, choose “Hotels” from the top menu. Then input the number of rooms, number of guests, city, and dates you’re looking for — click on the magnifying glass icon to search.

On the left side of the page, you’ll see all the options to filter your search. You can narrow your results by stars, review score, price, freebies, location, neighborhood, amenities, ambiance, and property type.

Right above all of the search options is a box to click through to a map, which shows your chosen city with all the hotels marked on it. Hover over each dot to see the hotel name, rating, and price, or click on each dot to continue with booking that hotel.

Hot Tip: You can also search for popular areas for eating, sightseeing, shopping and nightlife on this map.

The middle section of your screen will have a list of all the hotels available for your chosen dates. Just like with flights, these default to being sorted by “Recommended.” If you want to sort by price, adjust the settings at the top right underneath the search box.

Note that the price you see to the right of the hotel name is not necessarily the cheapest price! However, the great thing about KAYAK is that you can see the prices for each hotel on lots of different OTAs as well as the hotel website. You’ll see these prices underneath the hotel name and rating; click the drop-down menu for a full list.

Prices shown for hotels don’t include taxes, which can be pretty high. For example, I searched for a hotel for a long weekend in Chicago and chose the Park Hyatt (listed for $475 per night from Expedia). When I clicked through to complete the booking, I discovered per night taxes of $82.66!

Hot Tip: Prices shown from hotel websites are not member rates. Be sure to check the member rates on your specific hotel’s website — they are usually lower!

When I clicked through to Expedia , Orbitz , Travelocity , and Hotwire , they all featured the $475 per night price and added taxes for a total of $2,230.64 for a 4-night stay.

However, when I went to book directly with Hyatt, I found a non-member total for 4 nights of $2,230.60 ($.04 cheaper), while the member price was $2,141.35 for 4 nights. So by signing up as a World of Hyatt member (which you should definitely do because it’s free!) and booking directly through Hyatt, you’d be saving $89.29.

Plus, you will be eligible to earn hotel points and take advantage of any elite status you may have when you book directly through the hotel’s website.

Another hotel available for the same weekend had an advertised price of $429 on all the major OTAs including Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Hotwire. This was also the price offered directly from the hotel, making the total for a 4-night stay booked through any of these sites $2,014.60.

Hot Tip: Booking a “Hacker Stay” fare can save big bucks on your next hotel stay.

However, this hotel had a “Hacker Stay” rate of $392 per night. The total price for the Hacker Stay was $1,839.45 — that’s a savings of $175.15 for the exact same hotel room!

When I clicked through to book, I found that this stay consisted of 1 night booked through Hotels.com and 3 nights booked through Expedia. If you choose this route, you’ll end up with 2 separate reservations and might have to switch rooms halfway through your stay (though the hotel can usually combine those reservations upon check-in).

You can save selected hotels to come back to later by clicking on “Watch” right under the orange View Deal button. This will automatically create a saved Trip for you with all your hotel selections.

To track prices for your search, just toggle the button at the top right corner of your screen (to the right of the search box) until you see a check mark.

Kayak Car Rentals

To start your search for a car rental on Kayak , simply input your chosen city plus dates in the search bar at the top of your screen. At the top left you can choose whether you want to drop off the car at the same or a different location as pickup.

Clicking on the calendar icon will bring up a drop-down box to choose your dates, pick-up time, and drop-off time. You can also choose to bring up comparison sites underneath the location box to view prices at Hertz , Hotwire , Priceline , Budget, and Avis .

Just as with searching for flights or hotels on Kayak, searching for rental cars follows a similar pattern. To the left of your screen you’ll find all the options to help narrow your search. You can choose to sort your search by car capacity, car type, payment type, rental agency, price, and other car options like number of doors or type of transmission.

After you narrow your search, all your options will be featured in the middle of your screen. Above the list you can choose how to sort your results (recommended, lowest price, or distance), and you’ll see an alert if it’s a good time to book.

Each listing will tell you the type of vehicle, bag capacity, number of doors, rental company, and whether this is a Special Rate. These Special Rate deals will keep the car rental agency hidden until booking is completed. Use the drop-down arrow in the orange box or section on the right side of the screen to compare Kayaks pricing to other websites.

In an example search, I found car rental prices all over the map. I searched a midsize car for 4 days in Chicago and came up with a price of $200. This doesn’t include tax, so you do have to click through to your chosen website to see what the actual price will be. Here is what I found:

• Kayak – $216.40
• Orbitz – Not available once I clicked through, but there were other car options available
• Thrify – $216.40 (I clicked on their “hot deals” button and got the price down to $207.69)
• Cheaptickets.com – Not available once I clicked through, but there were other car options available
• Rentalcars.com – Didn’t show price at all

There was also a “Special Rate” available for a similar midsize car for only $139.19. If you aren’t picky about exact car type or who you rent from, these Special Rate prices offer a great deal.

Kayak Packages

Lots of people use OTAs and travel search engines to find great vacation package deals. To see Kayak’s deals , click on “Packages” in the search bar at the top of your screen. From here you’ll see a search bar just like in the Flights section.

First, fill in your destination and dates to get a list of flights. Once you select the flight you want, you’ll be able to add a hotel to make a package deal.

Bottom Line: You can save money by booking your hotel and flight together through Kayak’s “Packages” option.

Right underneath your chosen flight you will see the “Add a Hotel” section. To see what kind of deals I could get, I searched for a 5-night trip from Boston to Las Vegas. This search returned 3 featured offers with varying levels of advertised savings, and I could see more deals by clicking on the blue “View More Hotels” button.

Hot Tip: The hotel offerings change quickly! The offers I had changed even when I did the same search only minutes apart. If you see something you like, you should book right away.

The first option was a hotel stay at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, which advertised a $367 savings. I tend to be skeptical about package deals, so I wanted to check it out myself. Booking this package including a round-trip flight plus 5 nights at Treasure Island would cost $800.86.

Booking the flight separately was $216.37, and booking the hotel directly through their website would be $951.60, for a total of $1,167.97 if booked separately. That does work out to a $367 savings when booking the package, which is pretty significant and exactly as advertised.

If you have a destination in mind and are looking to find the most inexpensive time to travel, Kayak’s Packages have you covered there too.

Scroll to the bottom of the Packages tab, and you will see a section called “Search Vacation Deals By Destination.” When you click on a city in this section, you’ll be able to see price trends throughout the year. This tool will show estimated pricing for a package each month, allowing you to pick the most economical option. (Keep in mind these are just estimates and actual prices may vary.)

Hot Tip: Kayak no longer has the ability to search for and book cruises.

Kayak Guides is a great tool to start planning some activities for your upcoming trip. Guides can be found by clicking on the “More” drop-down box in the main search bar at the top of your screen.

From here you can input your destination or search by region or popular destinations.

In each city guide, you’ll find general information about the area as well as suggestions on things to do, places to eat, most and least expensive times to visit, and even average weather throughout the year. You can see how to get there including links to take you to search for flights. You can also see information about different areas of the city including links to hotels in that area.

One of my favorite parts of this tool is the map of the city that shows you popular areas for sightseeing, dining, shopping, and nightlife. Just click on the item you want to see and watch the colors on the map change to reveal the popular areas for your chosen activity.

This map also shows hotel locations. For more information, just click on a dot — this will bring up hotel info as well as a link to click through and book.

Bottom Line: Kayak Guides is a great resource to help plan every aspect of your trip, including best times to visit, local weather, and best areas for sightseeing, dining, shopping, and nightlife.

You can find Kayak trips in the upper right corner of your screen. This is where you can keep all of your trip information and itineraries in 1 spot. There are several options for managing this feature:

• Add your trip manually
• Connect your email inbox to import booking receipt emails
• Forward your booking emails to [email protected].

Once your flights are added, you will be able to see real-time updates for check-in, flight status, and gate change information. Plus, you will be able to access your itinerary offline.

Hot Tip: Use Kayak trips to organize and share all of your vacation details.

If you are traveling with a group, you can share all the trip details with your group by creating a link to your trip information page. Once you’re viewing your trip details, look for the blue “Share” button, which brings up a link to your trip information that you can send to friends and family. You can also allow someone else to edit the trip information from this button.

Kayak Deals can be found under the More drop-down in the main menu. This section differs from Kayak Packages in that you can’t build your own trip; the deals you find here are set packages that all include different things (vacation packages, cruises, flights, hotels, etc.).

Some of these deals were straightforward and easily bookable through an OTA, while others were a little more complicated. For example, I found a 6-day Dublin and Killarney rail vacation package, but I couldn’t just click through and book right away. Instead, clicking through took me to an OTA where I’d need to request a quote. While that’s not really a big deal, it does take more effort than just hitting the “buy now” button!

While you might think Kayak is an online travel agency (OTA) like Expedia or Orbitz, it’s really a different animal. Kayak is a search engine, and it’s a great tool to use to begin your travel planning.

The great thing about Kayak is that it compares prices between all the OTAs you’re familiar with (like Expedia and Orbitz), plus airline and hotel websites. This lets you see where the best prices are without having to go to each individual website.

Kayak also offers tools to help with planning and organizing your trips. It’s a 1-stop shop to research and plan any vacation you can imagine!

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does kayak work.

Kayak is a travel search engine. It searches hundreds of travel sites including OTAs, discount suppliers, and the airline/hotel/car rental agency’s direct websites to show you all the options in 1 place.

How Do You Change or Cancel a Flight Booked on Kayak?

You will need to contact the provider that you clicked through to (airline, hotel, or an OTA) to book your reservation for customer service. If you booked on Kayak, then you can go to the Bookings area of the site (accessible through Trips) to get support and information on your specific flight/hotel stay/car rental, etc. However, most likely you will still need to contact the provider directly.

When Is the Best Time to Book Airline Tickets Through Kayak?

As with booking flights from any website, there is no real answer to this question. There are lots of factors that go into airline ticket prices, so it’s hard to pinpoint when a fare will be at it’s lowest. However, Kayak does offer a few tools to help you.

The “Our Advice” box in the upper left corner of your search screen gives you a short-term prediction of how prices might change in the following week. You can also track your search by changing the Track Prices button to “On.” This will trigger a daily Price Alert email advising you of the current price trends for your search.

Are Kayak Flights Refundable?

Generally, no. Any flight that you access through Kayak will be subject to the airline’s cancellation policy. However, any flight booked with a U.S.-based carrier at least 1 week before departure can be canceled up to 24 hours after booking without penalty. (Be careful with American Airlines, as their policy only allows you to hold a flight for up to 24 hours without payment)

Are Kayak Hacker Fares Safe?

Yes, Kayak Hacker Fares are safe as long as you understand how they work. Hacker Fares are simply a combination of one-way flights that are cheaper than a round-trip. These flights can be on separate airlines, which means the second leg of your flight might not be protected.

For instance, if bad weather cancels your outbound flight, you might decide to stay home and skip your trip altogether. But since your return flight is on a separate reservation, it will not be refunded like your canceled outbound flight. Overall, this risk is relatively minor, but it’s good to know before you purchase a Hacker Fare.

If you are booking a Hacker Stay for your hotel, this will consist of 2 separate reservations. The only downside to this is that you might have to switch rooms during your stay. However, many times you can ask the front desk to combine your reservations when you’re checking in.

Why Doesn't Kayak Show Southwest Flights?

Southwest fares are only available on Southwest.com. You will not be able to search for these flights on Kayak or any OTA like Expedia or Orbitz.

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About Katie Seemann

Katie has been in the points and miles game since 2015 and started her own blog in 2016. She’s been freelance writing since then and her work has been featured in publications like Travel + Leisure, Forbes Advisor, and Fortune Recommends.

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Kayak's Facebook Messenger Chatbot Makes Trip Planning Even Easier

By Paul Brady

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Travel search site Kayak today launched an interactive “chatbot” for Facebook Messenger that will let you search for—and book—travel right inside the app. The new tool lets users find flights and hotels using conversational language rather than the old-school method of plugging in dates and sifting through hundreds of results. You can ask the chatbot, conversationally, “Can you suggest a hotel in Chicago for July 4 weekend?” or simply state, “I'd like a flight from Houston to Seattle on August 4, in the morning." While Kayak still pulls thousands of results, it shows Messenger users just a small selection of what its software determines are the best choices.

The idea, says Matthias Keller, the company’s chief scientist, is “to put a travel agent inside your pocket.” Kayak has been tinkering with interactive bots since late last year, having already launched integrations with Amazon Echo and the popular messaging platform Slack. While the Messenger chatbot can handle simpler queries without a hiccup, more complex questions—say, “I'm interested in a beach vacation this August but don't want to spend more than $500 per person”—can leave the program stumped.

A screenshot of the Facebook Messenger-Kayak chatbot.

Still, there’s a big upside to using Messenger rather than the traditional Kayak website: Your search history and itinerary are instantly accessible in your conversation with the bot. “I was just traveling over the Atlantic,” Keller says. “We had a beta version working, and I found it super useful to know what was coming next. Being on a layover, I could see how much time is left, figure out ‘Should I walk to the gate?’ This tool brings itinerary management to more users—everyone who uses Facebook Messenger.”

Kayak isn’t the only travel company betting big on Messenger, which has nearly a billion users worldwide . KLM recently made it possible to check in for flights and get customer service through the app , and the booking site Skyscanner launched a travel-search chatbot back in May .

Data Science and AI in the Travel Industry: 12 Real-Life Use Cases

• 16 min read
• Data Science ,   Travel
• 27 Jun, 2018
• 2 Comments Share

“ The future travel brand isn’t therefore just about moving people from A to B, unveiling new destinations, or organising trips. Instead it is about a thoroughly progressive, completely 360 degree view of the traveller and everything that goes into creating special, unique, memorable experiences. ” Defining the Future of Travel through Intelligence, discussion paper by Amadeus Travel Intelligence

Remember your last trip? Did you get your tickets directly from the ticket office? I doubt it. In today’s fast-paced world, finding time to travel to a ticket office and get your tickets is a luxury few can afford. Besides, why bother if you can get your tickets in just a couple of clicks via your laptop or even your smartphone?

Indeed, digital travel sales grew rapidly over the last several years, totaling  $564.87 billion in 2016. And the number is expected to reach $817.54 billion by 2020. Such explosive growth is fueled by recent technology advances, not the least of which is data science.

We at AltexSoft are no strangers to successfully applying data science and machine learning technologies to the field of custom travel software development . So, if you are searching for some fresh ideas on how to put your data to good use, here are 12 application scenarios for machine learning and data analytics in the travel industry .

Check our video on AI in travel

1. Recommendation engines

Possibly the most mainstream use case for data science, some recommendation solution is currently incorporated in 99% of all successful products. Similar to personalized content suggestions on Netflix or the “Featured Recommendations” box on Amazon, online travel booking providers often provide tailored suggestions, based on your recent searches and bookings.

For example, when searching on Expedia for flights to London, you will be offered several accommodation options for your trip.

Expedia recommended hotels when searching for flight deals

Similarly, Booking.com offers alternative destinations you might like for your next trip.

Booking.com recommended destination based on previous searches

These are only two of the ways to use data-powered recommendation engines in the travel industry. Following this pattern, online travel agencies can offer car rental deals, alternative travel dates (see example below) or routes, new travel destinations based on the user’s preferences or even some recommended local attractions.

Fareboom.com travel agency suggesting alternative dates for a trip

With enough data about typical searches or preferred deals at hand, you can build a powerful recommendation algorithm. It can learn even more from the personal browsing behavior of a certain user to deliver highly tailored and more valuable suggestions.

For instance, if 8 out of 10 families book a trip to Disneyland in July, offering a single business traveler such a deal in January makes little sense. But if you show a one-day trip to Las Vegas to such a user instead, the chances for success are quite high.

Accordingly, investing in data science consulting might not only have a positive impact on your revenue through upsells, it may also improve user engagement by contributing a personalized, efficient UX.

2. Flight fare and hotel price forecasting

Flight fares and hotel prices are ever-changing and vary greatly depending on the provider. No one has time to track all those changes manually. Thus, smart tools which monitor and send out timely alerts with hot deals are currently in high demand in the travel industry.

The AltexSoft data science team has built such an innovative fare predictor tool for one of our clients, a global online travel agency, Fareboom.com. Working on its core product, a digital travel booking website, we could access and collect historical data about millions of fare searches going back several years. Armed with such information, we created a self-learning algorithm, capable of predicting the future price movements based on a number of factors, such as seasonal trends, demand growth, airlines special offers, and deals.

Fareboom Price Predictor, short-term forecast example

With the average confidence rate at 75 percent, the tool can make short-term (several days) as well as long-term (a couple of months) forecasts.

Fareboom Price Predictor, long-term forecast example

For example, if during the last several holiday seasons all the prices of flights from San Francisco to Dallas grew significantly a couple of weeks before Christmas, the same tendency might occur this year as well. In this case, the algorithm will say that waiting might be too risky and prompt you to book your flight now.

Similarly, if the price for flights to Las Vegas usually drops below average a week before Christmas, you will be offered to wait and book your flight closer to the date.

Hopper is another prominent startup, using data science to help people book the cheapest flights using applied predictive analytics . A company that raised total $84.3 million to date, has built an intuitive mobile application for airfare prediction.

Named one of the best apps of 2015 by Apple, Buzzfeed, Vogue, Tech Insider, New York Times, and TIME, the tool analyzes billions of data sets daily in order to provide accurate price movement predictions. There is a detailed description of how the system works, which can be found at the company website .

Hopper fare forecast app

Therefore, analytics-based forecast tools, such as mentioned above, have proven to be a valuable addition to an existing travel booking portal or agency website. While being applied to flight booking mostly, such tools could be used in other niche areas of the travel and hospitality industry.

They can be used to predict the changes in hotel pricing, tell you how soon all the rooms in a certain hotel will be booked or even suggest alternative itineraries for your trips according to the weather forecasts or projected airport load on a given day, to help users not only save money, but make traveling more efficient and enjoyable.

3. Intelligent travel assistants

As convenience is the king in today’s world, smart concierge services, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining momentum in various industries. Travel booking is only one of the areas being heavily automated by algorithms.

Intelligent programs, trained to perform a certain task on a user’s request are usually referred to as "bots" or " chatbots ." With the top four chat apps having over 4 millions of monthly active users just for April 2018, instant messaging platforms are widely adopted by some prominent brands as a great way to reach out to the clients and build better customer relations.

For example, Hyatt, a global hospitality leader, has been using social platforms to connect with its customers since 2009. Recently, the company expanded its customer support toolset with Facebook Messenger. Yet such 24/7 mobile support requires significant resources, both human and financial. This is where AI-powered virtual assistants come in handy.

Most often integrating with popular instant messaging apps, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram or Skype, virtual travel assistants are trained to perform various tasks. From searching for the cheapest deals, booking flights and making hotel reservations, to planning whole trips and enhancing your overall travel experience through useful information and valuable suggestions about popular tourist destinations, places to eat or local attractions — these are the most popular ways to use AI bots.

By simply typing “ /hipmunk I need to get from London to New York on November 5 ” on Slack, you can get the most up-to-date flight options, including prices.

Using Hello Hipmunk on Slack to search for flights from London to New York

Kayak, another popular travel booking service allows you to plan your next trip directly from your Facebook Messenger app. This chatbot is also more human-like. It doesn’t need special commands, understands simple questions and responds in a casual, conversational style.

Searching for flights and hotels with Kayak travel assistant on Facebook Messenger

• What’s the baggage allowance for my flight?
• Where is the nearest business lounge?
• What’s my boarding gate number?
• How long will it take to get to the airport?

4. Optimized disruption management

While the previous case is focused mostly on planning trips and helping users navigate most common issues while traveling, automated disruption management is somewhat different. It aims at resolving actual problems a traveler might face on his/her way to a destination point.

Mostly applied to business and corporate travel, disruption management is always a time-sensitive task, requiring instant response. While the chances to get impacted by a storm or a volcano eruption are very small, the risk of a travel disruption is still quite high: there are thousands of delays and several hundreds of canceled flights every day.

Regardless of the reasons, being stranded somewhere in Europe late at night when you need to be in Tokyo by noon tomorrow can cause huge inconveniences. Moreover, in business travel, this might result in significant losses and have serious implications for your company.

With the recent advances in technology, it became possible to predict such disruptions and efficiently mitigate the loss for both the traveler and the carrier. The 4site tool , built by Cornerstone Information Systems, aims at enhancing the efficiency of enterprise travel. The product caters to travelers, travel management companies, and enterprise clients, providing a unique set of features for real-time travel disruption management.

The opportunity for data science here lies in predicting travel disruptions based on available information about weather, current delays, and other airport service data. Thus, an algorithm trained to monitor this data can send out timely notifications, alerting the users and their travel managers about upcoming disruptions, and automatically put a contingency plan into action.

For example, if there is a heavy snowfall at your destination point and all flights are redirected to another airport, a smart assistant can check for available hotels there or book a transfer from your actual place of arrival to your initial destination.

Not only passengers are affected by travel disruptions; airlines bear significant losses every time a flight is canceled or delayed. Thus, Amadeus, one of the leading global distribution systems (GDS), has introduced Schedule Recovery system, aiming to help airlines mitigate the risks of travel disruption. A data science-powered recommendation engine, the tool helps airlines instantly address and efficiently handle any threats and disruptions in their operations.

Taking the manual work out of airline management, it helps carriers make informed decisions and optimize the operations for better efficiency. Qantas, Australia's largest airline, was the first to apply the system to improve its operations. As a result, the company reported : “ The Amadeus solution helps reduce the number of and length of delays, whether due to excessive traffic, operational delays, or weather conditions, leading to an overall improved experience for travelers. ”

The system underwent a serious test in 2016. During heavy storms that caused delays across Australia’s east coast, just 15 out of 436 Qantas flights (about 3.4 percent) were canceled, as compared to 70 out of 320 (22 percent) flights by Virgin Australia, which uses the old manual system to manage disruption. The company’s on-time performance also remained high: 86 percent on Saturday and 62 percent on Sunday, while Virgin’s performance was at 74 and 48 percent respectively.

The described opportunities are a great example of how data can add value, reduce cost and improve efficiency of travel disruption management. Being a new and unsaturated market, it offers relatively low barriers to entry.

5. Customer support

6. Tailored offers for MVCs (most valuable customers)

7. ux personalization in airlines.

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8. Sentiment analysis in social media

Sentiment analysis of a Cafe Du Monde (New Orleans, LA) review on TripAdvisor made by Google Natural Language API

9. Dynamic pricing in the hospitality industry

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Take part in engaging conversations on the topic.

10. Targeted offerings to address travel disruptions

11. fraud detection.

Top merchants affected by Fraud Transactions Source -  Juniper Research

12. In-stay experience

Onwards and upwards: shaping the future of travel tech.

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Destinations.ai

We make it easy to find the perfect travel destination

12 Best AI Travel Tools & Resources to Plan Your Trip

Author: Destinations.ai · Updated on: February 1, 2024

The world of AI solutions is making amazing new things possible in many industries. Emerging trends in the hospitality business are using AI applications to find the best deals to book flights, plan curated itineraries, and navigate to their destinations — all in a convenient self-service portal. In this article, we compared online reviews from hundreds of users to find artificial intelligence travel tools for your next travel and tourism.

Best AI Travel Tools & Resources

1. best artificial intelligence travel tool overall — destinations.ai.

Destinations.ai is made to be your all-in-one artificial travel assistant in a way that traditional travel companies can’t match. Regarding the travel industry, this is the artificial intelligence you want at your disposal. It isn’t just a travel assistant — it is a total vacation planner that uses customer preferences and data analysis to generate an AI-designed holiday trip.

You put in your preferences for travel dates, airlines, budget, temperature, scenery, and other travel planning needs, and Destinations.ai generates a custom-made vacation destination just for you. That includes hotel bookings, flight reservations, and tourist destinations in just a few moments.

Regarding personalized experiences and virtual assistants in the travel industry, there is nothing quite like Destinations.ai. This savvy artificial intelligence points to the future of the travel business, showing the endless possibilities of travel and AI. If you want to explore but aren’t sure where to start, Destinations.ai could be an excellent choice.

• No plan is needed; completely free
• It only takes a few moments to generate an itinerary
• Supplemental travel guides to learn more about a location
• A new tool, so it may have bugs that need to be fixed
• Few reviews yet available to compare
• I can plan trips only in the US at the moment

2. ViaTravelers Authentic AI Travel Planner

As travelers increasingly look for smarter ways to plan their trips, the  ViaTravelers Travel Itinerary Generator emerges as a notable tool in AI-driven travel planning. This platform utilizes artificial intelligence to craft personalized itineraries, simplifying the travel planning process for its users. If you are GPT Plus member, they also have a custom GPT called ViaTravelers – Ultimate Travel Planner , so you plan your travel on the go.

The AI at ViaTravelers stands out for its ability to select flights and  hotels , among other travel necessities, aligning with a traveler’s preferences and budget. Rather than sifting through myriad options on sites like Kayak or Expedia, this itinerary generator offers a more targeted approach:

• Preferences Tailoring : Users input what’s important for their trip, such as destinations, budget, and themes.
• AI Automation : The AI analyzes preferences against vast data to suggest the most suitable travel plans.
• Personalization : Each itinerary is uniquely generated, tapping into user-specific desires and needs.

ViaTravelers adopts an API similar to that of innovative travel planners, yet it emphasizes authenticity by drawing upon its travel experiences to inform suggestions. This positions the tool as a hybrid between a search engine and a personal travel advisor.

The service also acknowledges the role of AI trip planner tools in streamlining travel planning. By leveraging ChatGPT-like capabilities, it manages to curate personalized travel itineraries seamlessly. Despite these advanced features, ViaTravelers remains impartial, earning commissions on purchases or bookings made through the platform, as is common in the industry. This generator is part of the future of automated travel planning, combining user input with intelligent algorithms for an optimized travel planning experience.

3. Best Tool for Cheap Flight and Hotel Alerts — Mighty Travels

Mighty Travels Premium is a travel platform that provides travelers with a vast array of services designed to enhance the travel experience. It offers an interactive interface providing up-to-date information on flight deals, hotel discounts, and rewards programs.

Mighty Travels Premium can be an invaluable tool for frequent travelers looking to optimize their fare costs and mileage usage. Occasional travelers who prefer a more straightforward booking process may not utilize its full benefits.

• Comprehensive Information: It provides users with extensive flight data, including prices, destinations, airlines, and potential use of miles.
• Updated Deals: Regularly updated fare deals allow users to find the best price for their desired destination.
• Travel Using Miles: The platform indicates how users can leverage various loyalty program miles for their travels.
• Price Comparison: The tool compares the offered and average market prices for each itinerary.
• Global Destination Coverage: Mighty Travels Premium covers a wide range of destinations across the globe, including minor airports and less popular routes.
• Overwhelming Data: For new users or infrequent travelers, the volume of information might be overwhelming and hard to process.
• Premium Feature Accessibility: Some features are only accessible via a premium subscription, which may not be affordable for all users.
• No Direct Booking: You cannot directly book your tickets through the platform. It serves as a search engine redirecting you to third-party websites for actual booking.
• Limited Airline Representation: While it does provide options from various airlines, some low-cost carriers are underrepresented or absent in search results.

4. Best Artificial Intelligence Travel Tool For Groups — KAYAK

You may have heard of KAYAK as one of the top travel metasearch engines for hotel rooms, flights, and car rentals. However, this AI-driven site in the travel industry can also help curate the perfect itinerary for your next trip, all with the most basic information.

It also tracks the flights during your travel dates to help you find the best deals. Most notably, KAYAK’s itinerary function can be shared between users, making it ideal for planning a vacation with family members or a big group of friends. Customers can also approve flight alerts to get the best deals to book airlines and travel without breaking the bank!

KAYAK may still be primarily known as a standard booking company in the travel and tourism industry, but it has a bright future. If you are planning a group travel experience or want to share your travel plans with friends, this could be right up your alley.

Pros: 

• The platform is easy to use and intuitive
• Multiuser sharing makes it easy to plan group trips
• Flight alerts offer the chance to get better deals on travel
• Some reviewers mention information such as travel dates or hotels being changed without their knowledge
• You will need to be cautious of scams, as scammers have found ways to work with KAYAK

See Related: Most Romantic Places in the World

5. Best Artificial Intelligence Travel Tool For Trips With Multiple Stops — Roamr

Roamr is a newer artificial intelligence tool that lets you complete a travel itinerary in mere seconds with a few basic details, including your budget, travel dates, and where you want to go.

But the most intriguing feature of Roamr is that it makes it possible to plan a trip between several cities in the same area in a way that most travel companies can’t. One example: want to explore both Munich and Prague in one weekend? Roamr will point you toward local train schedules and other info to help you make multiple stops on a single trip.

This is especially helpful in places such as Europe, where you can quickly jump between cities and even countries within a day. If you have a lot of quick stops on a more extended trip, Roamr could be the travel assistant you need.

• Making an itinerary is super-fast and only requires basic details
• It helps you plan both international and local travel
• Made to work with mobile devices
• Still in its early days, so there may be bugs to smooth out
• Not a lot of reviews online

6. Best Artificial Intelligence Travel Tool For Business Travel — Amgine

Imagine was designed as HelloGbye, an AI-powered platform with business travel in mind. This tool is intended for people who frequently travel in their line of work and have to deal with the regular hassle of booking flights and hotel rooms. What is more, Amgine isn’t purely AI — it works in a unique human-AI interface that helps the booking process and other travel-related methods go more smoothly and successfully.

Business people face unique challenges when booking travel, especially if their job centers on traveling. Imagine is a travel assistant that takes the stress and struggles out of traveling for work, making the process smoother in a way that is beyond human intelligence or the capacities of most tourism companies. If you travel for work regularly — especially if you often cross borders or fly across the world — Amgine could be just what you need when it comes to AI in travel.

• Designed with businesspeople in mind
• It uses a human-AI interface to help the process be smooth and automated but also relevant and helpful
• Not widely available — customers must request a demo on the website to use

7. Best Artificial Intelligence Travel Tool For Those on a Budget — Expedia

We have all heard of Expedia as a website for booking car rentals, hotel rooms, and other travel needs. However, the popular platform also uses AI to improve its customer experience. Customers start by narrowing their search based on location, budget, travel dates, and other preferences.

Through the artificial intelligence-powered website, Expedia helps you find the cheapest flights and most comfortable hotels with dynamic pricing services. One of the site’s biggest appeals is the helpfulness of the AI chatbot, which can respond promptly to people experiencing travel crises who need to rebook or cancel flights, car rentals, or hotel rooms. If you want to be able to change your travel plans and customize your vacation with a dynamic robot concierge, Expedia could be a perfect choice.

• It helps you find the best accommodation bookings suited to your needs
• The helpful chatbot is widely recognized for its machine-learning algorithms and excellent customer experience
• Travelers can change travel choices as needed, even in an emergency
• Some customers report being able to find better deals by reaching out to hotel owners or travel agents directly
• Cancellation policies may be strict

See Related: Best Spring Break Destinations in the US

8. Best Artificial Intelligence Travel Tool For Those Who Need Offline Access — TripIt

TripIt helps you organize your trip in one place by helping you plan ahead and keeping you abreast of minute-by-minute travel changes. These include everything related to trips, from gate changes to flight delays and other information.

The tools allow users to track their trip even while not connected to the internet, making it a valuable platform for those traveling to places that might not have consistent internet access. The Pro offerings will allow you to track live flight updates, fare adjustments, and other changing information.

• Pro TripIt allows travelers to track live updates regarding their bookings and itinerary.
• An all-in-one platform keeps you organized.
• All you have to do is make a booking and select “forward to TripIt” to have it added automatically to your itinerary
• Offline access to itineraries
• The free version does not offer access to all features, such as live flight updates

9. Best AI Tool For Those Whose Plans Change — iPlan

Are you the kind of person who prefers not to have a set-in-stone travel itinerary and instead see where your trip takes you? Many customers are! Users can still use AI in travel with a tool like iPlan . This platform adjusts your itinerary automatically as you update it, customizing it as much as you want.

Through some savvy machine learning, iPlan will rewrite your plans in moments. To make it even easier to coordinate while still being spontaneous, you can share the itinerary with other travelers, making it simple to travel with a group of friends or colleagues.

Every person with access can edit the plans, too. This handy tool proves that planning things doesn’t have to take the fun and spontaneity out of travel.

• Shared edit access makes it easy for group travelers to collaborate
• Problem-solving AI technology adjusts your itinerary as you edit elements
• Quick adjustments help travelers adapt in seconds
• Completely free to users
• Limited information and customer reviews online

10. Best AI Travel Tool For Exploring a City — Roam Around

ChatGPT is undoubtedly one of the most well-known AI technologies of today. Roam Around works directly with the platform to assist you with basic travel planning needs.

Performing tasks requires only a small amount of basic information — your destination and the length of your time there. It then produces a tailored itinerary with suggestions for what you should do during your stay.

Roam Around is a pretty essential tool for AI in travel, but this could be helpful for those who don’t know how to formulate sophisticated questions for data processing. On the other hand, some people might find it lacking in terms of tools and filters.

• Offers basic information about tourist destinations to visit during your stay
• Works with ChatGPT, a widely-accessible AI tool
• Basic enough for almost anyone to use it
• It doesn’t allow you to filter or refine your queries
• It might not present enough information for many customers’ needs
• It does not track airlines, flight information, or hotel bookings

See Related: Best Beach Vacations in Europe

11. Best AI Travel Tool For Those Who Want a Unique Experience — Vacay

If you’re looking for something genuinely tailor-made for your travel needs and goals, Vacay is a perfect choice. This AI chatbot partners with ChatGPT to help you figure out the ideal vacation for your needs, including destinations, travel dates, things to do, and more.

This is an excellent option for those who want to take a trip but aren’t sure where to start. Vacay will even provide recommendations for local hotels, restaurants, and entertainment. This means that it has many uses, and consequently, you’ll have to know how to use AI chatbots to refine your search.

• Helps design customized vacation itinerary
• Available with suggestions for local hotspots
• Not well-suited for those who don’t know how to write AI prompts
• The itinerary must be copy-pasted to notepad, as details aren’t saved

12. Best AI Travel Tool For Non-English Speakers — Skyscanner

All these travel tools are great, but you might be out of luck if English isn’t your preferred language. If your travel planning happens in another language, you might have an easier time with an AI assistant like Skyscanner . This Edinburgh-based AI tool offers the chance to make an all-in-one travel plan in one of 30 languages.

To make it even more accessible, you can connect to the AI chatbot through social media, including Facebook messenger and WhatsApp . Start by searching with even the barest details — you don’t have to have a destination if you’re unsure where you want to go. To start, you must type “Anywhere,” and you’ll be directed toward the cheapest flights during your travel period.

• Available in 30 languages
• Accessible through social media platforms
• You can get as detailed or barebones as you like
• Not operated on a single platform (you’ll be directed to the website to finish your travel booking)

Related Resources

• Best Destinations in the World
• How to Find the Perfect Travel Destination
• How to Use a Vacation Generator to Find a Destination

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AI-Enabled Virtual Travel Assistants

KAYAK is Integrated on ChatGPT to Make Traveling Efficient

hello @ airlapse.net

AI Travel Apps You Can Use Right Now (That Are not ChatGPT) [2023]

What are the best AI Travel Apps? Artificial Intelligence is transforming every industry, with travel and tourism making no difference. Recently, I wrote about how to plan a trip with ChatGPT and save money , and also how to use Google Bard to book flights . Those articles became so popular that I received many questions regarding AI-powered travel apps, so I created this post.

You can see the search trends for “AI Travel” and “AI Travel apps”, and the large volumes show how people are increasingly more interested in leveraging the latest technology in their everyday use cases, such as planning a trip itinerary, searching for flights, accommodation, transportation, and experiences.

Here’s a list of the top AI travel apps that you can use right now.

If you are looking for apps that use AI to find cheap flights, check out this follow-up post on AI apps for flight booking .

What are the best AI travel apps in 2023?

I’ve been in love with Kayak since 2013 and it’s an app I love for planning, tracking my flights, and even finding the right place to book my tickets . Kayak is a travel tool and search engine that has been around for several years (competing with Google Flights and others).

The focus of Kayak is to quickly research and show you the best travel options and alternatives to the destinations you would like to go to. Kayak will help you find the best prices and travel times for flights, hotels, apartments, cruises, trains, rental cars, and even vacation packages.

• How To Use Kayak Best Time To Travel Tool
• I Tried ChatGPT Plugins For Flight Booking. Here’s Why They Suck

How is Kayak using AI?

Kayak is using AI in different ways. With NLP, the company can process hundreds of thousands of user-generated hotel and flight reviews, condense them into a few snippets that capture their general essence, and sort each item into the buckets users are searching for. NLP also powers Kayak’s march into AI integration with chatbots and assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and more.

Kayak also uses algorithms to tag photos of hotels, determining whether they’re showing a beach, bedroom, bathroom, or gym, for example. But the tagging process isn’t perfect. Even if your AI achieves 95% accuracy, Keller said, 50 out of 1,000 predictions will still be wrong.

How I use Kayak

• Forward your bookings to [email protected] (or connect your inbox), and they will automatically add your reservation to their trips planner. In there you can have all the info you need at hand, and the app updates you on flight status, gate changes, and other information in real time. It’s so handy! Totally recommended for people who love having everything organized in a single place. It gives plenty of peace of mind.
• Join Kayak’s email list and save up to 35% with their Private Deals.

2. Skyscanner

Skyscanner is an aggregator search engine and travel agency based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The site is available in over 30 languages and is used by 100 million people per month. Skyscanner lets people research and book travel options for their trips, including flights, hotels and car hire.

How is Skyscanner using aI?

Skyscanner uses AI for its chatbot . When the Skyscanner chatbot is activated on Facebook or Whatsapp, users can enter their destination to start the conversation with the bot. If you are unsure where to go, just type ‘anywhere,’ and then the bot will provide you with suggestions, including the price for each destination using real-time search trends.

When you tell the chatbot the travel date, it will show you the cheapest flights to your destination. Then the bot will redirect you to the official Skyscanner website to complete the booking upon selecting to book a flight. Moreover, the Skyscanner chatbot allows you to receive price alerts for a flight. Skyscanner reported that it had surpassed one million traveler interactions with the application.

Expedia is a popular website for booking travel accommodations. Expedia aims to provide the lowest prices for any booking, which is backed up with the “Best Price Guarantee.” Users can search for hotels, cars, flights, or packages based on their travel requirements and sort through accommodations that meet their needs.

Expedia also recently introduced a ChatGPT plugin, read my review on this post .

How is Expedia using AI?

Expedia is not only using AI and ML to bring better experiences to its customers but has also managed to harness the power of AI to reduce business costs.  A large part of Expedia’s platform is being able to provide customer service to its customers who might be experiencing troubles with their travels and need immediate assistance.

This was especially true when the pandemic first hit, and people had to cancel trips, flights and figure out if they were even able to travel. To improve its conversational capabilities, Expedia Group powers more than 29 million virtual conversations. This implementation has saved the company more than 40% in variable agent costs. 

4. Eddy Travels AI Travel Assistant

Eddy Travels AI Assistant is powered by Kiwi.com . It is a fully automatic travel chatbot that uses artificial intelligence, and it is available 24/7 to help users find the best travel deals. You can chat with the AI Assistant to search for flights, accommodation, and other travel products with prices and inventory in realtime. The Eddy Travels AI Assistant works via their website, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp.

The app is free, but they offer Here are some of they offer a premium subscription with more advanced features. With Eddy’s AI Travel Assistant, you can save time and money by finding the best travel deals, getting personalized travel advice from a real travel expert, booking flights and accommodations in seconds, asking questions about travel destinations, and staying up-to-date on the latest travel news and trends.

• This Kiwi Travel Hack Saved Me €492 Compared to Other Search Engines (2023)

5. Booking.com

Booking.com is available in 43 languages and offers more than 28 million reported accommodation listings, including over 6.6 million homes, apartments, and other unique places to stay. Wherever travelers want to go, Booking.com makes it easy and provides them with 24/7 customer support.

How is Booking.com using AI?

Booking.com deploys AI in every part of thire business, ranging from our security teams to customer service. They use AI to personalize your experience showing you the hotels that would suit you best. In addition, they have an AI-powered chatbot live for all English-speaking bookers that handles 60% of all requests automatically within seconds. In marketing, the majority of Booking.com marketing spend is driven by data models with learning algorithms behind them.

WayAway is a flight aggregator that provides travelers with the best rates on airline tickets. Its innovative search finds the best option for specific travel dates by comparing airfares offered by all major US and global airlines and agencies. The aggregator displays final prices without any hidden fees.

I’ve covered WayAway in detail in this post, check out the full review here .

Ongoing Offer

Get $10 when you sign-up for WayAway Plus (free trial), and get 5% cashback on your PayPal account.

7. Google Bard

Google Bard is a large language model chatbot developed by Google AI and an aggressive response to ChatGPT. Bard can generate text, translate languages, write different kinds of creative content, and answer pretty much any of your questions quickly. And so far, it’s free.

I put Google Bard to test in this post: How To Use Google Bard To Book Flights . Make sure to check some tips there!

8. Tryp.com

Tryp.com is a Danish online travel agency that facilitates the booking of transportation services (including rail, buses, flights, and ferries), ancillary services, and accommodation. It is a registered IATA travel agency and was crafted to be your own personal travel assistant.

With help of AI, Tryp.com can propose unique itineraries and grab deals that wouldn’t be seen anywhere else. The cool part about Tryp.com is that it targets uncommon airports and destinations . Most other tools find great flights to 99% of the biggest airports. But what if you would like to travel somewhere else ?

Coming from a small town at the end of the world ( Ushuaia , Argentina), I can relate to those trying to score good deals to unknown locations. With its proprietary AI-powered algorithm, Tryp.com is able to propose crazy itinieraries that are incredibly cheap, but also fun experiences. You can choose how conservative you want your trip/stopovers to be, date range you’d like to travel, plus trip length. You can also add hotels and accommodation from the same dashboard, and explore local points and attractions.

ChatGPT is a beast. OpenAI’s technology is changing and revolutionizing many fronts, and this is just the beginning. ChatGPT 4 was released recently, and it is able to produce more elaborate results. If you are curious about how to use ChatGPT as a travel planner, check out this detailed guide .

ChatGPT Plus also supports plugins, and some travel companies such as Kayak, Expedia, and Trip.com have plugins available. However, these plugins still suck for complex queries (read more here) .

10. iPlan.ai

iplan.ai is a travel planner with help of artificial intelligence. Its goal is to create a personalized an itinerary in few seconds. Your plan is made by AI based on who you are, how you are traveling, and what matters the most for you, that’s why it is unique to each individual.

The tool is fr7ee and always will be. You can customize, change and edit as much as you need to get what you are exactly looking for, and their AI adapts to that. After creating your itinerary, you can share your plans with the people you are traveling with and give them access to see or edit. Collaborate to get a better plan.

Hopper is a travel booking app that uses AI to predict flight prices that has been the top-1 most downloaded travel app in North America. They aspire to be the world’s best and most fun app to book travel.

How is Hopper usi ng AI?

Hopper analyzes historical patterns of price changes and uses them to predict if prices are likely to go up or down in the future and help customers time their purchases. Travel apps like Hopper have only occasional interactions with users, it makes it more difficult to build individual profiles. However, because Hopper has such a large user base, it can identify similar types of customers and model recommendations on the characteristics of those cohorts.

Hopper notifies you of super-low rates on hotels, flights, and car rentals. It also predicts the prices of flights and references you if you are below, on par, or above average prices. Many of the deals save you up to 40% on travel costs! The app is super simple to use, and when I started using it, it was only for flights. Now they have grown into a whole technology stack that they call Hopper Cloud.

Hopper sells over $4.5 billion of travel every year, raising over $600 million of private capital, and are backed by some of the world’s largest institutional investors and banks. Hopper also plants 2 trees for free on your behalf to help offset the carbon footprint of your travel as part of our Hopper Trees program.

AI Travel Apps: Conclusion

We are just scratching the surface of the power of AI, and I’m already looking forward to which AI travel apps we’ll see in the upcoming years and what features they bring.

Right now, we see a range of concrete use cases, from chatbots to better recommendations, finding deals, experience personalization, travel planners, and fare alerts.

As usual, let me know your thoughts in the comments, or feel free to reach out to me on Instagram too.

Other posts you’ll love

• AI Apps For Flight Booking: Use AI To Find Cheap Flights (2023)
• How To Use Google Bard To Book Flights (2023)
• How To Plan A Trip With ChatGPT And Save Money (2023)
• I Tried ChatGPT Plugins For Flight Booking. Here’s Why They Suck (2023)
• WayAway: Cheap Flights With Cashback

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Tryp.com is a must on this list.

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The Pros and Cons of Booking Flights on Kayak

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Table of Contents

The pros of booking flights with Kayak

The cons of booking with kayak, kayak flights, recapped.

When looking for the lowest airfare and best routes, searching individually for each airline is time-consuming and tedious. Likewise, quickly comparing multiple results across several websites can be a significant challenge. That’s why online travel agencies, like Kayak, are so popular: OTAs provide booking options for numerous airlines in one spot, saving you time and minimizing tab fatigue.

In this Kayak.com review, we’ll look at booking on Kayak versus airline websites to help you decide if it’s the best place to search for flights.

» Learn more: The best travel credit cards right now

Flights from multiple airlines can be viewed in one spot

Searching for flights on various airline websites is annoying. Kayak makes it easy to compare prices between numerous airlines with a straightforward search.

Provides price trends for cities

Once you enter which cities you want to travel between, Kayak shows the price trends between those cities. The trends are based on how many days you want to travel, and the easy-to-read graphs highlight which dates are cheapest — or cost the most. This is a significant advantage when booking on Kayak versus airline websites.

» Learn more: Laptop Lugging: Should you mix work and travel with a workcation?

Suggests possible destination options to consider

Based on your travel dates and departure city, Kayak offers a map-based search that suggests different cities that you can travel to based on price. Travelers can find possible destinations within the U.S. and across the globe using this feature. This is an ideal solution when you know you want to travel (and which dates) but aren't sure where to go.

Hacker Fares can save you money

Some airlines offer excellent prices one-way, but the return flight can be expensive. By booking on Kayak, you can take advantage of "Hacker Fares," which use different airlines to service departure and return flights. These split-airline fares can often lead to the lowest price available, which is not readily apparent when booking directly with the airlines.

» Learn more: How to shop for flights

Price alerts when fares change

While searching for options between two cities, you can click to receive email alerts when prices change for that route. In addition, travelers who aren't yet ready to book can be notified as prices change so that they can secure the flight when the tickets meet their budget.

Offers 'fee assistant' for carry-on or checked bags

When you fly on some airlines, you may be surprised by checked bag fees at the airport. Kayak offers a "fee assistant" that incorporates checked bag fees into your search results so that you're not hit with an unexpected cost. The downside is that you cannot add your elite status or credit card benefits when comparing. Either of these might eliminate baggage fees, which would keep the price down.

» Learn more: The airlines with the best (and worst) fees

Search by airline alliance

For travelers who prefer to stick with one airline alliance , you can filter results by your preferred alliance. This makes it easier to use alliance benefits when flying with a participating airline and enables you to pick a flight you can credit towards earning elite status .

Filter searches by aircraft type

For true aviation geeks searching for specific planes to fly on, Kayak search results allow you to filter by the type of aircraft. By choosing this filter, you can ensure a particular seat configuration, in-flight experience, and other features.

Southwest is included in search results

For many years, flights on Southwest Airlines were not available in OTA search results. Kayak is one of the few OTAs that includes Southwest flights for you to compare against other airlines. However, this feature is only available with a Kayak business account — which is free and easy to sign up for.

» Learn more: The pros and cons of booking through online travel agencies

Limited flights are booked on Kayak.com

When you've chosen your ideal flight and are ready to book, there are limited options to book your flight directly on Kayak.com. Most often, Kayak takes you to the airline's website (or another OTA) to book the flight. This can confuse travelers and make it hard to know who to contact when something goes wrong. Plus, if you're sent to a website you don't recognize, you may be fearful of having your credit card and personal information hacked.

No loyalty program

Other OTAs, including Expedia and Priceline , offer loyalty programs recognizing their most valuable members. Kayak does not. As a result, users can't earn points towards discounts, complimentary rooms, or other benefits. This reduces the incentive for booking on Kayak versus airlines or other OTAs offering loyalty programs.

Sponsored flights appear first in search results

As you review your flight options, keep in mind that the first flight in the search results is a sponsored ad. While this flight's route and pricing may be appealing, it isn't always the best deal.

Might not qualify for credit card bonus categories

Savvy travelers use credit cards that offer bonus categories for airline purchases when booking flights. However, some travel credit cards don't offer bonus points when booking through third parties, such as Kayak.

Some cards require you to book your travel directly with the airlines or through its own portal. For example, The Platinum Card® from American Express requires you to book through the AmEx Travel portal in order to receive 5x points on your flight. However, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® does include flights purchased through OTAs in its bonus category. If Kayak sends you to the airline's website to book your flight, you are in the clear. But, if it sends you to another OTA, like Priceline or JustFly, you may not be. Terms apply.

» Learn more: How to earn airline miles when booking through online travel agencies

Kayak provides numerous benefits and makes it easy to compare the cost of airfares across multiple airlines. However, you can't always book directly with Kayak. Instead, you may be sent to the airline's website or another online travel agency to complete your reservation.

In addition, depending on which credit card you use to pay for your flight, you may or may not receive bonus rewards or qualify for elite status credit.

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2024 , including those best for:

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee: Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card

Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

on Chase's website

1x-5x 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases.

60,000 Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.

1.5%-6.5% Enjoy 6.5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel; 4.5% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and 3% on all other purchases (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year). After your first year or $20,000 spent, enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

$300 Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

on Capital One's website

2x-5x Earn unlimited 2X miles on every purchase, every day. Earn 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options.

75,000 Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel.

Many of the offers appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all available deposit, investment, loan or credit products.

4 Ways AI Travel Assistants Can Save You Money on Your Next Vacation

Whether you’re planning a spring break trip or a summer vacation , travel season is upon us — but with inflation hitting Americans at every corner , budgeting for a vacation can be arduous.

Indeed, 90% of Americans planning to travel for spring break said that price and affordability are top of mind, resulting in 77% of travelers saying they have not booked their trips yet, according to Hopper.

Enter artificial intelligence. AI, which makes — or aims to make — the way we live, shop and work easier, can now also help you save money on your next vacation.

Expedia and KAYAK Launch ChatGPT Plug-Ins

For instance, several travel sites, including Expedia and KAYAK, have launched ChatGPT plug-ins recently. Users can get recommendations on places to go, where to stay, how to get around, and what to see and do based on the chat.

“You’ll find AI embedded in most of the best-known travel booking engines today, so you might be using AI to help plan your trip without even realizing it,” said Brian Prince, founder and CEO of TopAITools.com .

For instance, Expedia uses a ChatGPT plug-in on the homepage of the app to provide travel recommendations. It will save hotels and attractions mentioned in the conversation to a trip, which you can then book in the app. Using one platform for research and booking helps streamline travel planning and save time.

And two-thirds — 64% of travelers — said they expect to use AI to research or plan travel in the future, or have already done so, according to a Matador Network survey. In addition, 16% said they had already used AI to help plan their travel — and a majority of those respondents said they used AI tools to save time planning (60%) and to find activities or attractions they wouldn’t have known about (70%).

“Budgeting is a huge part of travel. Very few people can move around the globe as if money was no object,” said Ross Borden, CEO of travel publisher Matador Network .

Matador Network also recently launched GuideGeek , a free OpenAI-powered travel assistant with budgeting in mind, said Borden.

Staying Within Your Travel Budget

According to Borden, GuideGeek can be completely customizable to the request of the user. For example, you can make an itinerary of any length and matching any budget for any location in the world.

“How often have you been looking at a hotel online that’s in your budget, but there’s an ad for another hotel that looks way better but costs twice as much?” asked Borden.

ChatGPT itself can offer basic money-saving tips for travel, even with a pretty simple prompt like, “What are some of the best tips to save money on travel?” said Prince.

Yet, Prince noted that when it comes to ChatGPT prompts, the more specific and detailed you can be, the better the output.

For instance, when Prince used the prompt, “I’m planning a trip to Paris in April. Can you tell me some tips to save money on food and tourist attractions?” ChatGPT offered specific and tangible advice, including a list of free attractions.

“I didn’t know you could get into the Louvre free after 6pm on the first Friday of every month (except in July and August)! Always make sure to fact-check the information from ChatGPT, as it may not be up-to-date or accurate,” he added.

Prince said he asked ChatGPT for ways to save money on checked baggage fees with Delta, “and it gave me some solid advice.”

Finding Flight Deals

AI travel tools can also help finding not only the cheapest flights, but flights with other options.

“We see a lot of users booking flights on GuideGeek because rather than a somewhat overwhelming array of flight options no sane person would take, if you put in your dates and destinations, GuideGeek immediately searches all available flights and provides three options: best, fastest and cheapest,” said Borden.

Prince added that Google Flights now uses AI to predict when you can get the best prices on tickets.

“Google Gemini integrates with Google Flights to access data, so you can plan your trip in Gemini and then book it easily, knowing you’re getting the best prices,” he said.

Brainstorming for Budget Travel

Using AI to get ideas and inspiration for your next trip is a great way to break out of your typical habits in booking destinations of which you’re already aware, said Borden.

“AI presents a more proactive option for travelers to find new destinations that fit within their budget, as opposed to scrolling on Instagram and hoping that the cool beach you just saw has somewhere affordable to stay nearby,” he said.

Asking for Cost-Saving Strategies

For instance, as you plan your trip, you can message back and forth with GuideGeek at no cost on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.

“While lists of free activities exist online for a lot of destinations, using AI can help create a custom list generated around what you’re looking for. It would take quite a bit of time to research the same highly specific set of info on Google,” said Borden.

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Kayak Travel Booking App Review for 2024: Is it Worth it?

Booking travel can be challenging, so having a travel search engine or booking app like Kayak can make the process easier.

Kayak is a booking and price comparison travel app that helps find affordable travel deals, accommodation, flights and rental car prices.

In this Kayak travel app review, we will look at its features, pros and cons, and if it is a great tool to book your next trip.

Key Takeaways

• Kayak is a free all-in-one travel app and search engine that helps find the best travel deals for flights, hotels, and car rentals.
• Kayak scans third-party travel websites, pulls information from them to provide price comparisons and booking options, and collates the information in one place.
• While Kayak does not guarantee the lowest prices, it remains a powerful tool for comparing prices and booking flights due to its many features.

What is Kayak?

Kayak Flights , Hotels & Cars is the official name of the Kayak app for the travel search engine with the same name.

It is an all-in-one travel app and search engine that helps you find the best travel deals for flights, hotels, accommodations and car rentals.

Through the app, you can:

• Access mobile-only deals
• Search numerous travel sites with a single tap
• View your trip details offline
• Save searches and get alerts
• Search affordable travel deals
• Track prices
• Organize your itinerary and more

Founded in 2004, Kayak is owned by Booking Holdings (formerly Priceline), which operates several other brands, namely, Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, Rentalcars.com, Opentable, Rocketmiles, FareHarbor, HotelsCombined, CheapFlights and Momondo.

How Does Kayak Work?

Kayak scans many third-party travel and brand websites and provides price comparisons. When you put in a query, Kayak pulls prices instantly from other travel websites to find numerous options.

Kayak then collates all the information in one place, allowing easy access to the choices and helping you make the ideal decision.

Kayak collects information from online travel agencies, discount suppliers, other travel search engines, and official websites of hotels, airlines, and rental cars.

Kayak then shows you a list of booking options and prices that match your query. These would typically come from multiple providers and booking platforms.

When you go through the search results and see an option that suits you, tap on the listing to view more booking details. Tapping “View Deal” will take you to the booking website.

Tapping on the drop-down menu will show various booking and pricing choices for your chosen itinerary.

Kayak Top Features

Easy search and deal comparison.

Use the Kayak app to search and filter hundreds of travel sites instantly. Sort through the options to find the deal that suits you.

With this feature, you can find flexible flight offers with no change fees and perform a search with flexible dates of up to +/- 3 days to determine the best time to travel.

You can also filter flight options according to Stops, Times, Airlines, Airports, Bags, Duration, Price, Cabin, Quality, Sites, and Aircraft.

Accommodations

For accommodations, you can view search results according to Recommended, Cheapest, Closest, Deals, Review Score, and Star Rating.

Car Rentals

When sorting through search results for car rentals, you can view them by Recommended, Price and Distance.

Hacker Fares

Some airlines provide cheap flights one way but offer expensive return flights. You can avoid this with Kayak’s Hacker Fares.

This feature helps you find one-way flight combos in your search results. Instead of booking one round-trip ticket from one airline, Kayak finds two compatible one-way tickets that combine to make a round-trip flight.

Find the Hacker Fare note under the price displayed on search results. Select the “View Deal” button to check the details and availability.

With Hacker Fares, you can take advantage of the lowest prices available by using different airlines for your departure and return flights.

Price Alerts

A price alert is a handy tool to monitor the price of a specific flight, hotel, or rental car.

Setting a price alert is also a great option if you are not ready to book or if you want to set up alerts for your preferred destinations and days to travel.

To set up an alert, sign in to your Kayak account on the app, use the navigation menu and go to “Price Alerts.” The feature is available for creating alerts for flights and hotels.

Once the alerts are set up, Kayak will send mobile app push notifications to inform you when prices go up or down to help you find the best deal.

Colour-coded Price Calendar

This feature may help you find better travel deals if your travel plans are flexible. This calendar highlights dates when travel may be cheaper and shows expected flight prices for the month.

When you click on a date, the colour-coded chart will display estimated prices for particular dates.

This feature helps you discover new destinations. Adventurous travellers and those unsure about where to go can benefit from this feature.

When you use it to search from a location to anywhere, Kayak will help you narrow down your options by displaying a map with prices and other filters like budget and preferred travel rates.

Entering an origin airport and providing details through the filters will show various international destinations and estimated airfare costs, giving you options to visit new places with a set budget.

Trips is a trip planning tool to help you organize your trip in one travel app. It has a Flight Tracker that updates you about a flight and provides real-time status details.

This feature, offered free, lets you perform numerous tasks, including:

• Organizing your travel with ease
• Saving search results to track prices
• Creating itineraries for upcoming trips
• Syncing your travel plans with your Gmail account to create itineraries
• Forward booking confirmations from different sites to add to your trip
• Receive notifications about trips and gate changes

Is Kayak Free?

The Kayak travel app is free and can be downloaded and used at no cost. All the prices the app shows come straight from travel sites and are displayed on your screen with no extra charge.

When you have chosen a deal, Kayak will redirect you to the site of your preferred provider. The deal provider pays Kayak for redirecting customers to their site or for helping travellers book with them.

This arrangement enables Kayak to offer its service to customers for free.

Advantages of Kayak

• User-friendly interface
• Simple and easy-to-use travel comparison app
• Helps you get the lowest prices on travel accommodations
• Lets you search multiple destinations at one time
• Flights from several airlines are viewable in one place
• Price alerts notify you when fares change
• Provides price trends between cities you want to travel between
• Various search filters, such as by price, airline, airport, cabin, quality, sites, and aircraft

Downsides of Kayak

• No refund policy since Kayak is a search engine and not a seller
• Has no capacity to sell or process tickets or reservations
• Limited flight bookings on Kayak
• Price fluctuations can cause differences in prices on Kayak and provider websites
• No loyalty program
• No lowest price guarantee

Kayak Customer Service

You can contact Kayak customer service through their Feedback form . You can also chat with a virtual assistant using their chatbox, which you can find on the lower part of their FAQ page.

The company does not have 24-hour customer support but provides a support page with an FAQ section, which Kayak recommends checking before contacting customer service.

• Is Kayak Legit?

Kayak is a legit aggregator that searches and scans hundreds of other travel sites at once to provide the best deals on airline flights, accommodations, vacation packages and car rentals.

It helps you find travel deals that suit your budget and itinerary and make it easy to see prices across platforms and brands.

Because it is an aggregator rather than a booking site, you have better access to a wider range of pricing for a flight, accommodation or rental than you would on direct booking sites.

Alternative Travel Booking Apps

While Kayak offers numerous features for finding the best travel deals, it is not the only travel search engine or booking app in use today.

Below are general overviews of some of the alternatives to the Kayak travel booking app.

Kayak vs Hopper

In terms of flight filters, Kayak wins hands down as it has a more comprehensive set of filters that include aircraft type, cabin, quality, and duration. In comparison, Hopper has a limited set of filters.

Both offer a colour-coded calendar or chart that indicates the cheapest travel days and features that provide in-depth information for flight options, baggage fees, and more.

While Hopper provides a desktop website you can use to search for hotels, you often use the app to search for deals. Kayak, on the other hand, lets you find the best travel deals using the app or website.

Get a $25 bonus on Hopper .

Kayak vs Google Flights

Google Flights helps you find cheap flights and book them from over 300 airline and online travel agency partners. You can book a round-trip, one-way, or multi-city tickets.

It only collects data from major airlines to find flight prices, whereas Kayak searches hundreds of travel sites and online travel agencies to generate comprehensive results.

As with Kayak, Google Flights features a calendar that helps find the best fare, but it goes further by providing a price graph that lets you tailor your search based on the number of days of your stay.

A major edge that Google Flights has is the price guarantee, but it is only available on flights leaving from the US.

Both offer an Explore feature that lets you discover new destinations and find the most affordable flights.

Kayak vs Expedia

Kayak and Expedia are two of the largest online travel websites often used when comparing travel options.

So that travel planning is more convenient, Expedia had a beta launch of its in-app feature powered by ChatGPT, which provides personalized insights on travel-related queries.

Like Expedia, Kayak features ChatGPT as a virtual travel assistant , which provides personalized recommendations based on search criteria and Kayak’s historical data.

Expedia members get rewards when they use the app when booking their trips and extra savings when bundling flights and hotels. Kayak also offers a rewards program called Kayak Explorer, which is only available in the US.

Both apps help users through their travel guides and find attractive deals on flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages.

Kayak vs Skyscanner

Kayak and Skyscanner are travel search engines that provide trip options for the best deals on flights, hotels and rental cars.

Skyscanner has a website and a mobile application that enables you to use your computer or mobile phone to find travel deals.

Both generate flight options using your search criteria and redirect you to provider websites that match your query.

Kayak has an Explore feature for travellers with no particular destination in mind. Skyscanner has a similar one called Search Everywhere.

Is Kayak the Best Travel Site?

Kayak is a powerful travel search tool for comparing prices and booking flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars. It has several beneficial features that make it easy to see prices across brands and platforms.

But because it is an aggregator, it only relies on the information provided by numerous travel-related businesses.

Additionally, there is no guarantee you will get the lowest prices, especially since it does not offer a price guarantee feature that other aggregators, such as Google Flights, offer.

Still, the company remains a solid option to research prices and is one of the most used platforms for finding information crucial in making the right choices on flights, hotels, and rental cars.

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Enoch Omololu is a traveller, culinary tourist, and money expert. He is the co-founder of Only Earthlings and established the popular Savvy New Canadians platform. Enoch has been featured in Business Insider, Forbes, Best Life Online, GOBankingRates, Penny Hoarder, Globe and Mail, Yahoo, and CBC News.

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Kayak GPT – Your Personalized Travel Planning Assistant

Kayak GPT is an innovative new travel planning assistant that uses advanced AI technology to provide personalized recommendations and simplify trip planning. Developed by travel search engine Kayak, this virtual assistant acts as your own personal travel agent, considering your unique preferences, budget, and travel style to suggest ideal destinations, flights, hotels, activities, and more.

With conversational AI capabilities, Kayak GPT makes planning a breeze through natural dialogue. Whether you know exactly where you want to go or need inspiration for your next vacation, Kayak GPT takes the stress out of travel coordination. Keep reading to learn how this groundbreaking tool aims to enhance every step of your travel journey.

Table of Contents

Key Features and Capabilities of Kayak GPT

Seamless trip planning through conversation.

At the core of Kayak GPT is conversational AI that allows travelers to plan trips quickly through natural language queries and responses. There’s no need to navigate complex search filters or tabs – simply chat with Kayak GPT in plain English about your ideal vacation plans.

Want to relax on a Caribbean beach? Looking to explore historic sites in Europe? No matter your travel goal, Kayak GPT understands the context and refines recommendations with each exchange. It even asks thoughtful questions to learn your preferences, budget, dates and more before tailoring suggestions to match your needs. This simplified, conversational approach makes light work of mapping out upcoming adventures.

Personalized Recommendations Through AI

While most travel sites provide generic suggestions, Kayak GPT gets to know you on an individual level to determine personalized recommendations across every trip-planning task. Using advanced preference modeling algorithms, it uncovers your interests based on past travels, browsing history, lifestyle, budget and more to predict destinations, attractions, and experiences you’ll love.

As you interact more with the tool, it continually updates its understanding of your tastes to improve recommendations over time. You can even provide explicit feedback to fine-tune suggestions to your needs at any point in the planning process. The end result is a set of custom-tailored options catered specifically to you for each upcoming trip.

Simplifies End-to-End Trip Organization

From deciding your next destination to booking flights and hotels, Kayak GPT aims to streamline complex travel coordination into one seamless workflow powered by AI. Once you’ve chosen your destination, it curates a custom trip outline listing top sightseeing attractions, restaurant recommendations, transportation options and budget estimates to help structure your days abroad.

Kayak GPT makes it equally easy to book elements of your journey by integrating with online travel agency (OTA) partners. After selecting your preferred flight path and hotel, for example, it provides direct booking links to complete reservations on your behalf through its partners in just a few clicks. With Kayak GPT managing the many moving pieces of a trip from planning to booking, travelers can enjoy true end-to-end travel organization.

Proactive Support Across Travel Journey

The value of Kayak GPT doesn’t end after you’ve planned and booked your upcoming adventure. This virtual assistant remains available via chat through the entire travel lifecycle to monitor your trip status and provide helpful assistance along the way.

A few days before departure, it performs a final itinerary check and alerts you about important items to finalize like passport renewals or COVID-19 tests for your destination. If your flight gets delayed or canceled while traveling, Kayak GPT sends a proactive notification with alternative routes and booking links to minimize headaches. And if you forgot to book a specific tour on your trip, you can simply request assistance reserving it on the fly while abroad.

This continuous support provides peace of mind from the early planning stage through your return back home , delivering a seamless, stress-free travel experience.

Integration with Leading OTAs and Providers

A key advantage of Kayak GPT over consumer travel planning apps is deep integration with leading online booking platforms through its travel search engine parent company. Currently, it offers integration with several major airlines and OTAs to enable streamlined flight and hotel bookings.

On the accommodation front, Kayak GPT partners with top sites like Booking.com and Expedia to allow travelers to review hotel options, compare prices, choose a room and complete reservations directly through the chat interface. For flights, integrated partners include United, American Airlines, Delta and more to deliver an end-to-end booking workflow for air travel.

Looking ahead, Kayak aims to expand its partner network to incorporate rental cars, tours, attractions and other major travel booking categories. The end goal is to aggregate and simplify fragmented trip-planning tasks through a single centralized platform and conversational assistant. While still early, Kayak GPT represents an important step toward this vision.

How It Works

Conversational ui for planning dialogue.

At the heart of the Kayak GPT travel assistant is an intuitive conversational user interface that facilitates interactive trip planning through natural language queries. Inspired by the breakthrough conversational AI behind tools like ChatGPT, the streamlined chat UI uses machine learning algorithms to interpret traveler preferences, intents and needs expressed in plain English.

Whether searching for weekend getaway ideas or coordinating a two-week European vacation, travelers can chat with Kayak GPT just as they would with a human travel agent to shape the perfect trip from scratch. Every travel query and request contributes signals to refine the assistant’s understanding, leading it to respond with increasingly tailored destination ideas, flight paths, attractions or other planning recommendations.

With continuous exchanges, Kayak GPT learns your exact trip specifications and fine-tunes suggestions until an ideal travel itinerary emerges – no search filters or complex planning forms required. Its conversational approach makes trip design feel more intuitive and personalized from start to finish.

Advanced AI and ML Under the Hood

Behind Kayak GPT’s simple conversational interface lies sophisticated machine learning algorithms working together to deliver personalized planning support. From deciphering natural language and travel intent to generating individually tailored trip recommendations, Kayak leverages the latest innovations in AI to automate and elevate the trip planning procedure through key technologies:

• Natural Language Processing – Proprietary NLP models extract semantic meaning, travel goals and preferences from conversational text exchanges to continually refine context.
• Preference Modeling – Advanced algorithms analyze past travel history, browsing data, surveys and explicit feedback to construct unique traveler preference profiles.
• Recommendation Engine – An underlying recommendations engine matches travel profiles against suitable destinations, hotels, flights, experiences and more to provide individually tailored suggestions.
• Dialogue Management – Complex dialogue tree logic manages conversations seamlessly, asking clarifying questions where needed to gather complete trip requirements.
• Partner APIs – Integration with leading travel sites enables transparent booking workflows for flights, hotels and more through the chat UI.

Delivering a simplified, customized travel planning experience through AI represents Kayak GPT’s primary technical achievement. Ongoing model training and fine-tuning aims to make its suggestions and dialogue interactions feel even more naturally intuitive for globe-trotters over time.

Inspiration for Your Next Vacation Destination

Stuck trying to decide where to travel next? Kayak GPT shines when you need fresh vacation destination ideas tailored specifically to you. Simply describe your ideal getaway – whether that involves food and wine tasting, museum hopping, or lounging beachside – and the conversational assistant suggests suitable global destinations matching your travel style along with key highlights for why you may enjoy visiting.

As you provide feedback on potential destinations, Kayak GPT continuously refines options until you discover that perfect spot for your upcoming adventure, whether an exotic Asian metropolis or quiet European village. Its personalized recommendations help unearth destinations you never considered but align seamlessly with your travel goals and preferences.

Planning Multi-Destination Trips

Piecing together a multi-city or multi-country trip often proves complicated for travelers attempting to coordinate flights, hotels and transport across many stops. Kayak GPT simplifies planning lengthy itineraries by allowing you to chart out destinations, dates and trip preferences through casual conversation.

After indicating you want to visit Rome, Barcelona and Paris over 2 weeks, for example, it plans a personalized day-by-day outline of your journey highlighting top sights and recommended pace at each stop. Its AI capabilities enable effortless creation of complex global itineraries with transport, accommodation and sightseeing details tailored to your tastes. No Excel sheet needed!

Simplifying Group & Family Trip Planning

Planning travel with groups or families comes loaded with endless complications when gathering input from many people, managing budgets and aligning preferences. Rather than bombarding a shared email chain, Kayak GPT offers the perfect centralized platform to simplify collaborative travel planning.

Create a shared trip profile indicating participants, destination wishlist, dates and budget. Then as individuals message considerations or pose questions to Kayak GPT, the assistant incorporates feedback into a master trip plan visible by all members. Its conversational approach even lets you vote on or rate different destination/hotel options suggested by others in the group. Before long, Kayak GPT delivers the perfect family or group trip aligned to the entire party’s needs.

Effortless On-the-Fly Travel Adjustments

The beauty of Kayak GPT is travelers can chat with the assistant before, during after trips to smooth out planning or solve real-time travel headaches. Its availability 24/7 via chat makes it easy to request assistance addressing unexpected issues likes delays and cancellations or adding spontaneous excursions to your existing itinerary while already on vacation.

Stuck overseas without a rental car? Simply ping Kayak GPT to book a suitable replacement vehicle on the spot. Want to plan an impromptu walking tour to learn about your destination’s world war history after chatting with locals? Kayak GPT can handle pulling together that last-minute booking seamlessly.

Its real-time assistance empowers travelers to tweak plans on-the-fly when needed or pursue spontaneity without disrupting the harmony of your existing itinerary. Consider Kayak GPT your immediate back-up for fine-tuning travel plans during every stage of your journey for smooth sailing from start to finish.

Future Roadmap

Additional destination content & coverage.

While Kayak GPT already provides travel recommendations across hundreds of popular global destinations, Kayak aims to expand its depth of destination coverage moving forward. Enhancing long-tail support for more exotic and remote destinations will empower travelers to uncover hidden gems tailored to niche interests versus solely mainstream tourist hotspots.

Added destination details like emerging neighborhoods, unique off-the-beaten-path sites, estimated trip costs and ideal trip duration will further enrich Kayak GPT’s planning assistance for globetrotters craving authentic local experiences abroad.

Expanded Booking Integrations

Currently, Kayak GPT offers some level of booking integration with major airlines and hotel chains to enable direct reservations via the chat interface. But plans are already underway to expand partner support across rental cars, tours, attractions, vacation rentals and more.

The end vision is travelers utilizing Kayak GPT should be able to research, price compare and book every single element of a trip without ever leaving the conversational assistant. While already possible for key categories like flights and hotels, support for additional booking channels remains a work in progress. But with Kayak’s immense travel search inventory and partnerships, seamless end-to-end booking feels like an inevitability in coming years.

Personalization Powered by Travel Graph

Perhaps the most ambitious roadmap endeavor for Kayak GPT is developing an underlying travel knowledge graph dubbed Kayak Graph. Constructed from historical travel pattern data across the site’s 1.6 billion annual traveler queries, this graph aims to provide an enriched representation of global travel flows, seasonal trends, related searches, common co-bookings and more.

Combined with personalization algorithms, Kayak Graph would enable the assistant to unlock deeper individualization powered by statistical patterns within worldwide travel behavior collected over decades. The possibilities span from spotting unrealized destination correlations by travel type to bundling commonly paired regional excursions through past co-booking analysis. Unlocking this vast trove of structured travel data remains key to advancing Kayak GPT’s personalization capabilities over time.

The decision graph also provides Kayak a means to enhance semantic search relevancy beyond simple keywords to better interpret and connect related travel queries powered by historical search linkages. On the consumer front, it promises an opportunity for travelers to unearth surprisingly relevant recommendations aligned to past trends but tailored uniquely to their needs and interests.

Kayak GPT stands poised to revolutionize the travel planning process through AI-powered conversational interfaces and personalization capabilities. As this innovative assistant continues maturing across accuracy, content depth and booking integration, it may soon make manually filtering results and juggling trip coordination feel like outdated processes of the past.

Much as chatbots now field a majority of customer service inquiries, Kayak GPT points toward a future where interactive travel assistants become the prevailing means consumers research, organize and book personalized vacations from start to finish. Rather than a site or app , the path to travel inspiration may soon regularly begin with a conversation.

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How Travel Metasearch Lost Its Mojo

Dennis Schaal , Skift

April 1st, 2024 at 5:06 PM EDT

Advertising in travel metasearch used to be near the top of the list for online travel agencies and hotels. But then along came Google Hotels, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as hotel and online travel agency loyalty programs to deflate the value proposition.

Dennis Schaal

Travel metasearch companies used to be among the hottest things in travel. They enabled consumers to compare hotel or flight prices from multiple vendors at a glance, and many online travel agencies saw the need to acquire one.

In 2012, Booking Holdings (then called the Priceline Group) announced a deal to acquire Kayak and Expedia took a majority stake in Trivago.

In 2016, China’s Ctrip (now called Trip.com Group) agreed to acquire Scotland’s Skyscanner. “We could see their [Skyscanner’s] tremendous growth” in selling airline tickets in Asia, Trip.com Group CEO Jane Jie Sun told Skift at the time. “When the opportunity comes, we move very fast.”

As a rule, metasearch sites don’t sell the majority of the airline tickets or hotel stays on their sites – travelers click over to online travel agencies, hotels or airlines to book them.

A Struggling Metasearch Category?

But in recent years, the travel metasearch category, or at least some of its leading players, have struggled financially.

In a recent research note, Wells Fargo Securities wrote that it “remains cautious” about two public companies, Tripadvisor and Trivago. It “continues to see travel metasearch challenged as a category, while third party data indicate post-pandemic demand is normalizing.”

Let’s take Tripadvisor as an example. All would acknowledge that Google has eaten into Tripadvisor metasearch’s market share.

In 2023, Tripadvisor hotel metasearch, as captured in its Brand Tripadvisor segment, was still the largest part of Tripadvisor’s business. But its revenue grew just 7% in 2023, compared with 49% growth at Tripadvisor’s Viator tours and activities segment. Brand Tripadvisor, of which hotel metasearch is the largest portion, saw its EBITDA inch up just 1% to $348 million in 2023.

A screenshot of Tripadvisor hotel metasearch comparing rates from Hyatt, for example, with those on Booking.com, Trip.com, and Agoda. Source: Tripadvisor

For its part, Trivago notched a net loss of 164.5 million euros (about $176 million in the red) in 2023. On Monday, its shares were trading at less than $3.

The Google Factors and Other Reasons for Metasearch Struggles

In an email exchange, Wells Fargo Managing Director Brian Fitzgerald told Skift that heightened competition from Google Hotels and Flights, which attract users at the beginning of their travel searches, is a major factor weighing on Tripadvisor and Trivago.

Fitzgerald sees other issues, too.

Hotels have been able to attract more direct traffic through their loyalty programs: Many offer lower rates on their websites to loyalty program members than on metasearch sites such as Google, Tripadvisor, Kayak and Trivago.

Online travel agencies such as Booking.com and Expedia have their own loyalty programs, and have at times begun offering stiff discounts to attract their own direct traffic. This hurt metasearch platforms even if online travel agencies owned them.

“Almost everyone in the travel ecosystem came up with a loyalty program in one form or another and began pouring money into brand advertising to drive more direct traffic,” Fitzgerald said. “It was a gradual process. We can’t pinpoint a specific quarter when it all turned loose, but as a result, the life of the traditional travel metasearch platform became harder.”

In the early days of user reviews, Tripadvisor had a competitive advantage because it had so many and the online travel agencies had few, but they caught up, Fitzgerald said.

“The value prop of TRIP and travel meta was somewhat eroded,” he added.

Another factor is that online travel agencies have leaned into brand marketing campaigns, and there are so many other marketing platforms these days to choose from, ranging from YouTube to streaming platforms and TikTok.

Kayak CEO Steve Hafner’s View

Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner believes travelers still love comparison shopping for hotels and flights.

“The category is healthy,” Hafner said. “One player is gobbling all the growth. Google.”

Reacting to Fitzgerald’s comments, Hafner said Kayak indeed offers some hotel chains’ loyalty rates — when the chain gives Kayak permission to do so.

Hafner, though, agreed with Fitzgerald that online travel agencies’ discounting practices have impacted metasearch.

“The OTAs do discounting very well,” Hafner said. “So even Booking.com’s Genius rates are not available on Kayak.” Booking Holdings owns both Booking.com and Kayak.

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Tags: booking holdings , booking.com , expedia , google , kayak , loyalty , metasearch , online travel newsletter , skyscanner , trip.com group , tripadvisor , trivago

Photo credit: Mr Trivago ad 2023 showing hotel prices from different vendors. Source: Trivago

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Waterfront and Program Assistant

The School for Field Studies (Private) | https://fieldstudies.org/

Description

• Participate in planning activities prior to the program start and in review/analysis following students' departure
• Participate in training activities for new center staff prior to and during the program
• Assist with administrative or logistical tasks such as data logging, purchasing, keeping inventories, record keeping, and routine maintenance of site and equipment as requested
• Participate in preparation of the Final Reports and other required reports and/or manual revisions as requested
• Assist with other logistical, group management and administrative tasks
• Live on-site for the duration of each program period and take meals with the students
• On a rotating basis, take responsibility for Center-specific "staff of the day" duties
• Take part in, and occasionally lead, Center upkeep projects, social and field activities
• At the request of the Center Director, serve as caretaker for Center during program breaks and center rentals
• At all times, work to ensure good relations between the Center and local community
• Lead recreational and research snorkel, SCUBA, and kayak excursions
• Drive standard transmission vehicles and boats as needed
• On a daily basis, maintain waterfront facilities (including the pool), assist with operations, including but not limited to, filling tanks, maintaining moorings, boat maintenance, fueling boats
• Prepare SCUBA tanks and equipment for recreational and research snorkels and SCUBA dives
• Assist with vehicle and vessel maintenance
• Assist in organizing the library, teaching aids, research materials and projects, community service projects, recreational activities, and other program activities as requested
• Assist students with academic and research materials and projects
• Organize and prepare support materials for faculty lectures and field trips including slides, photographs, charts, graphs, maps, field samples and equipment
• Help organize students to perform their required tasks in support of the residential aspects of program, e.g., food preparation, recycling efforts, center clean-ups, student committees, etc.
• Participate in the orientation and re-entry components of the program presented to students at the beginning and end of each program period
• Participate in resolving group management issues and student discipline problems
• Monitor student morale and assist in solving daily problems at the Center
• Participate in community service activities
• Adhere to, actively model, and enforce all SFS and Center policies, procedures, and rules.
• Participate in the review and revision of Center Risk Assessment and Management plans
• Recommend and review policies and procedures needed to manage risks
• Know the emergency procedures plan for the Center, including evacuation plan
• Participate in the safety portions of the on-site orientation and conduct safety briefings for students and/or staff
• Complete Incident Reports when appropriate and contribute to Safety Audits
• Ensure that first aid certifications are kept up to date via periodic courses offered by SFS between program sessions
• Report infractions of Center rules to the Center Director in a timely fashion
• Maintain the First Aid equipment and help create and document safety procedures
• Ability to obtain Turk and Caicos Island work permit, including medical certification several months prior to arrival. SFS will assist with completing this process
• BA/BS in Marine Ecology, Marine Resource Management or Marine Policy and Socio-economics
• Current First Aid and CPR certifications
• Current, active Dive Master certification, including insurance
• Ability to provide own SCUBA gear, including service receipt for regulators
• Experience working with U.S. college-age students in a professional setting
• Small boat handling experience
• Experience organizing and facilitating groups
• Clean driving record and ability to operate standard transmission vehicles and boats
• Demonstrated ability to work as a team member and independently
• Demonstrated commitment to environmental issues
• Willingness to work flexible hours and live on site at the field station with a small team of permanent staff, groups of US undergraduate students, and visiting researchers or programs
• Successful completion of SFS or similar international residential program
• Basic knowledge of small boat and 2-cycle outboard engine repair
• Familiarity with MS Word, Excel, Access, and statistical software skills
• In country or regional experience
• Covered travel from home of record at the beginning and end of program
• On-site room and board (all meals also provided while programs are in session)
• Auto-enrollment in an Emergency Medical Evacuation and Repatriation Insurance plan effective from the first day of employment
• International health insurance reimbursement at 80%, increasing with each year of employment, up to 100%
• Long-term Disability, Life Insurance and Accidental Death and Dismemberment coverage provided by SFS
• Option to participate in the SFS 403b retirement plan through Fidelity Investments. After one year of employment, eligible for SFS matching contribution program

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Administrative Assistant

• Madison, Wisconsin
• SCHOOL OF EDUCATION/THEATRE & DRAMA*GENERAL
• Administration
• Staff-Full Time
• Opening at: Apr 2 2024 at 10:25 CDT
• Closing at: Apr 16 2024 at 23:55 CDT

Job Summary:

Under general supervision, provides administrative support to the Department of Theatre and Drama, including support to the Chair and all faculty and staff of the department.

Responsibilities:

• 20% Schedules logistics and secures resources for meetings, conferences, travel, and work unit operations
• 20% Serves as a primary point of contact for individuals and groups, provides organizational information via phone, in person, and through other communication mediums
• 10% Prepares and audits complex records, edits documents, and reviews work done by others
• 10% Develops, sends, receives, copies, and distributes communications to the appropriate entities according to established policies and procedures
• 20% Develops, implements, and maintains methods and organizational systems directed at the maintenance of electronic/physical records related to work operations according to established policies and procedures
• 10% Assist staff as needed (with purchasing, travel, reimbursement and more)
• 10% Purchases departmental equipment and supplies
• Serve as first point of contact for individuals and groups, providing basic organizational information via phone, in person, and through other communication mediums, routing more complex inquiries to the appropriate entities
• Assist with meeting logistics and resources, post meeting agendas, record, prepare, and distribute meeting minutes
• Assist with distribution, collection and tracking of keys as requested, and other general office support to the department
• Order office and departmental supplies through appropriate vendors. Purchase/pay for departmental or individual expenses (i.e.: department events, research equipment, conference costs, travel, etc.). Collect, prepare, & submit required documents.
• Assist with new hire documentation, benefits open enrollment process, onboarding, personnel files, event planning
• Chair's Assistant responsibilities: Work on special projects as assigned by Chair or Dept. Administrator Assist with organizing prepared documents for tenure Divisional Committee review
• Serve as back-up in HR systems as needed.
• General communication - Display, post or distribute any posters, articles, awards, or urgent communications for staff and/or students etc.

Institutional Statement on Diversity:

Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals. The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world. For more information on diversity and inclusion on campus, please visit: Diversity and Inclusion

Preferred H.S. Diploma or Bachelor's degree 

Qualifications:

Minimum work experience or training in administration area(s) of at least one year is required.

Work Schedule:

Standard workday hours M-F

Full Time: 100% It is anticipated this position requires work be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location, with some exceptions.

Appointment Type, Duration:

Ongoing/Renewable

Minimum $19.50 HOURLY Depending on Qualifications Paid on a bi-weekly schedule on an hourly basis.

How to Apply:

Please click on the "Apply Now" button to start the application process. To apply, please upload a cover letter indicating your interest in the position along with your resume highlighting relevant work experience. Applicants will also be asked to provide a list of references. References will not be contacted without advance notice.

Terri Bonner [email protected] 608-263-2336 Relay Access (WTRS): 7-1-1. See RELAY_SERVICE for further information.

Official Title:

Administrative Assistant III(AD003)

Department(s):

A17-SCHOOL OF EDUCATION/THEATRE & DRAMA

Employment Class:

University Staff-Ongoing

Job Number:

The university of wisconsin-madison is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer..

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