What do you get when you
pair Artificial Intelligence with travel agents and customer service
specialists? You get a more organic and convenient travel booking experience
for both business and leisure travelers. Or Lola – the latest offering from
Kayak co-founder Paul English’s stable.
Currently being touted as “an
intelligent travel agent in your pocket” Lola is a Mobile-only application
currently only available for iOS. An android version is planned soon. While it
is only available in the USA as of now, forthcoming launches in 2016 include
Australia, Canada and the UK. None of its features are available on the
desktop.
This makes perfect sense
in a rather intuitive way. Most travel research by digitally-savvy audiences,
as we’ve seen in earlier posts, starts on mobile devices. Now when you add
artificial intelligence, natural language processing and a hand-picked team of
15 travel agents and customer service representatives to curate and present
content to you, you simply cannot fail!
I haven’t had the
opportunity to review the App personally. However a detailed review by Business
Insider (available here) offers a screen-by-screen explanation. The App seems to use messaging and filtration
to determine the most suitable choices for an individual customer and throws
back bespoke, non-touristy options for restaurants and things to see and do.
The App is currently
available only through invitation – meaning only current users can invite
others to try it out. This will be the case through 2016. Hopefully next year
it will be available publicly though the grapevine says it is likely to be
membership-based. Stay tuned for more!
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