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CNET
a day ago
- CNET
I Tried AI for Finding Cheap Flights, but It Was a Bumpy Ride
If you're planning s summer vacation, you've probably thought about using an artificial intelligence chatbot to help save money on flights. Hunting for flights is all part of the summer travel adventure, but it can quickly take a turn for the worse when I feel like I'm playing cat and mouse with Google's algorithm. Log out. Turn the VPN on. Use an incognito browser window. Switch between my MacBook and iPhone. These days, any strategies often fall short when you try to "trick" the algorithm so that it doesn't hike up the cost of the flight after seeing your repeated interest in that route and those dates. Google Flights is my favorite booking platform, so I wondered if I could use Google's AI, Gemini, be the new most underrated travel hack for 2025? With the price of flights these days, I sure hoped so. Gemini was released in March 2023 (when it was known, briefly, as Bard) and is one of the biggest AI models on the market. It's free to use if you have a Google or Workspace account with admin-enabled access to Gemini. There's also a paid version, which is $20 a month, with a two-month free trial. See also: Traveler's Prep Checklist: Tips for Easier Flights and Road-Trips For me, an Australian who lives in the US, the cost of flying home and back is in the thousands. Any savings AI can find would make a world of difference to my bank account. How to use AI to find cheap flights With a dedicated Google Flights extension, I had expected Gemini to transport me to the best deals. I followed the prompts to enable extensions, but I couldn't get it to work -- even after poking around in my Google admin console all afternoon. A CNET editor was able to use this tool as expected (see screenshot below), so it's worth testing out to see if it works for you. Gemini / Screenshot by CNET Annoyed by the lack of ease, I ran a quick search for AI tools that could save me money on plane tickets, and in my "travels" I discovered Karma, an AI coupon code extension that I could easily install. I saw Expedia on its list of affiliated brands, so I used that travel platform to search for flights. I picked dates four months away for a hypothetical trip home to Australia. The cheapest return flight was $1,443. Not bad, but Karma pinged me with a coupon. I clicked "apply coupons." See also: Worried About Expensive Holiday Airfare? 5 Easy Tips to Save Money on Plane Tickets I copied the code and continued in Expedia, assuming it would automatically apply at the checkout page, but there was no area to apply a code. Turns out Karma coupons can't be applied to all Expedia purchases; maybe I could have found a way to use one somehow, but it wasn't working for this flight option. But for me, it's strike number two. Back to Gemini, but for some advice this time. I asked Gemini how AI can help me save money on flights. The answers were to be expected, but two words piqued my interest: "secret fares." Gemini / Screenshot by CNET I checked the age of those two links Gemini referenced and they were from 2018, so I responded to Gemini asking what platforms have "secret fares." Gemini / Screenshot by CNET While skiplagged sounds like an adventure in itself, I'm too old to fly with no check-in luggage or risk being blacklisted by airlines. When there's only one (practical) way to enter my country (by air), the potential reward wasn't worth the risk. It was interesting that Hopper wasn't mentioned in Gemini's list, although it was the source of the original "secret fares" information. It had come up in my own research, so I decided to give it a shot. Hopper's Price Prediction function is only available in the app. I downloaded it. See also: Travel Planning With AI: I Tested It for a City I Know Inside and Out Once I set myself up in Hopper, I ran a quick Google Flights search and found a good option for $1,256. Hopper's cheapest option was $1,272 (for that same flight), but it said I could save up to $199 by waiting longer before booking. I turned on Price Watch notifications. And waited. I checked back in a day later and it hadn't changed, then the following day it had gone up. I opened the app a few days later and again it had gone up, not down. If you have more time, it could take a few weeks for Hopper to identify a lower price. As always, there's no guarantee. Strike number three. Double-check flight pricing If you're using a flight booking platform like Google Flights, Skyskanner or Expedia, these sites do have AI features built in. This might be sufficient, and you can use AI chatbots on those sites for travel advice. For confirmation, I checked with ChatGPT. It gave me tools I'd already tried out. ChatGPT/Screenshot by CNET What I did discover via ChatGPT is the new Google Flights refund feature on itineraries departing from the US. If the price drops on a booking (that had a price guarantee badge), you get refunded through the Google Pay app. Pretty cool. That one feature alone is enough for me to stick with Google Flights, alongside accessing advice from AI chatbots. You can also use AI to plan out a strategy to use credit card points to save on flights. However, AI has been found to pull up outdated card bonuses and rewards information, so it's important to vet it before applying for a new credit card. The verdict on finding cheap flights using AI After multiple attempts to use AI to save money on flights, I unpacked my bags. While I expected Gemini's Google Flights extension to be as smooth as Google Flights itself, I couldn't get it to work, even with the features enabled in my Google account. Gemini also admits it doesn't always get it right, so be sure to check the flight details on the airline's website. Given flight tickets are often in the thousands, you don't want to risk any mistakes. In short, using AI to find flight deals still has a way to go. I did, however, find some interesting things via AI, such as the refund feature. AI is a great thought partner but not yet a booking partner.
Finextra
2 days ago
- Business
- Finextra
Ant International launches AI travel companion for digital wallets
With launch partners including Agoda, Fliggy and Ant International introduces Alipay+ Voyager, an AI travel companion integrated into digital wallets for the travel industry to simplify and enhance travel experiences for global consumers. 0 Alipay+ Voyager combines Ant International's agentic AI capabilities with the galaxy of cross-border travel services offered by OTA partners and 100 million global merchants in Alipay+'s partner ecosystem. Through its one single AI interface embedded in e-wallets and super apps, Alipay+ Voyager assists travellers, via text or voice in their local language, to complete itinerary planning, booking, and purchasing in-destination merchant offerings with a seamless flow. Alipay+ Voyager is first launched on three of Asia's biggest mobile wallets, Alipay (Chinese mainland), AlipayHK (Hong Kong SAR, China) and GCash (the Philippines) ahead of the summer travel peak. It will roll out to more Alipay+ payment partners throughout 2025. Alipay+, started as a cross-border payment technology solution, now helping 36 leading e-wallets and payment apps with 1.7 billion consumer accounts connect to over 100 million merchants. The Alipay+ Wallet Tech team has been working with e-wallet partners in emerging markets to develop payment, security and growth capabilities and solutions since 2015. Today, the team plans to further build out other agentic AI suites for different industries on Alipay+ GenAI Cockpit, its main AI platform for fintechs. Driving Global Connectivity and Growth in the Merchant-Wallet-Consumer Ecosystem The online travel market is expected to grow 10% annually through 2032, with mobile already making up two-thirds of traffic. Travellers, especially Gen Zs, increasingly favour unique, hyperlocal experiences, using mobile-first, all-in-one solutions to uncover their best options. Alipay+ Voyager has a number of distinct features: • Intelligent end-to-end assistance from one single hub in familiar wallets: research, decision and action support before, during and after the trip • Real-time global-to-local connections: seamless transitioning to local services like ride-hailing, public transport, shopping, dining and sightseeing; • Purposeful, forward-looking curation: Voyager AI intuitively understands a user's preferences, proactively solves problems when there are issues such as flight delays or bad weather, and surfaces hyper-relevant options in real-time before a traveller even asks, all within their home e-wallet; • A new growth gateway for merchants and OTAs: captures multiple core markets through one easy deployment across the largest regional and global e-wallets. 'Travellers today are using more tech to enhance their trips, and there is a need for the industry to adapt and meet these new and emerging expectations,' said Douglas Feagin, President of Ant International. 'By integrating a proactive, always-on AI travel companion within digital wallets that consumers already use frequently, we're empowering travel and wallet partners with new opportunities to engage travellers in a more relevant, personalised way, through every step of their journey.' Gil Hazan, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Agoda, said: "At Agoda, we are committed to making travel more accessible and seamless for everyone. By integrating our extensive supply network as one of Asia's leading online travel platforms with Alipay+ Voyager's expansive wallet partnerships, we can offer travellers a more convenient and personalized booking experience. This collaboration enables us to reach a broader audience and provide tailored travel solutions that cater to the diverse needs of today's travellers."
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ex-Meta engineers have built an AI tool to plan every detail of your trip
The travel industry has gathered extensive data over the years about trips and transportation, and founders are using it to use it to create every conceivable kind of AI travel startup. In fact, every word of this sentence is a link to a new AI travel tool. Now, startups and incumbent travel tech companies are in a race to build one comprehensive tool that could plan and manage every part of your trip. Airial is one of the contenders that's banking on its ability to map out your entire travel experience end-to-end. At a surface level, here's how it works: to begin, you can type in some details about any trip that you want to take, and the AI will create a plan for you, including your starting and ending points. You can choose an instant trip function to quickly create a travel plan that includes flights, hotels, and transport across multiple cities. The platform also generates a daily itinerary for you to visit interesting places and eat at restaurants. You can specify your preferences while planning or modify them later after looking at the plan. The interface shows you your overall trip plan, and you can click on each phase to see the daily itinerary and the places AI has suggested for you to visit. You can click on each item to see an overview, reviews, location, and alternatives. Plus, the assistant can answer questions about each particular place for you. Airial also shows a map view of all the places you are visiting that day, so you can gauge the distance between points. It also shows details like transfer time, wait time at train stations, and whether you can take a day trip to a place nearby. Moreover, you can add a link to a blog, TikTok, or a Reel, and add items mentioned by a creator to your itinerary. The tool also surfaces TikTok videos related to a city based on your prompts and details that you've provided, so if you don't have a prior inspiration, you don't have to look for it. The company was founded by Archit Karandikar and Sanjeev Shenoy, who were college friends in India. Karandikar has held various engineering roles at Meta, Google, and Waymo, working on using AI in products. Shenoy worked at Meta primarily on the team that developed Instagram Reels. The duo said that they've always had a passion for travel, so they wanted to build something in the sector. They described the Airial experience as working with your family's travel agent. 'Pretty much all the other companies we know in the space are focused on creating a rough plan for you. With our models, we reason thoroughly over the logistics part of your trip with a focus on details. We integrate dozens of APIs and consider many parameters to map out your flights and trains, figure out connectivity time, and [determine the] proximity of activities from your hotel,' Karandikar told TechCrunch over a call. Karandikar said that the startup's value proposition to users is personalization and time saving. He said that if you are a vegetarian and mention that to the AI tool, it will only suggest suitable eating joints for you. The company has based the training of its AI models on a paper by DeepMind researchers called AlphaGeometry. According to the startup, the paper describes an AI system that solves geometry problems. At its core, Airial is combining that inference method with LLMs to build travel plans. The startup has raised $3 million in seed funding that was led by Montage Ventures with participation from South Park Commons, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India), and individual investors from Meta, UiPath, and Dropbox. Daphne Che, a principal at Montage Ventures, said that the team's technical understanding will give them an edge over other teams. 'I think every consumer who wants to plan travel will run into issues of [too] many options and variables to figure out. It is hard for a company just using LLMs straight up to solve these problems. Airial's tech stack can reason over thousands of variables to figure out the best spots and transport for you while keeping your requirements in mind,' she said. Airial said it has 'tens of thousands of monthly visitors,' and the company is focusing on growing users rather than revenue. The company said it recently added features like trip sharing and collaborative trip building. It has also added cars and buses as options for multi-city transit. The travel tool has further added a social aspect, which allows users to view a friend's trip and modify it. In the coming months, the company wants to work on iOS and Android apps for its platform. The startup also wants to provide verticalized search for hotels, activities, and influencer videos. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
TechCrunch
4 days ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Ex-Meta engineers have built an AI tool to plan every detail of your trip
The travel industry has gathered extensive data over the years about trips and transportation, and founders are using it to use it to create every conceivable kind of AI travel startup. In fact, every word of this sentence is a link to a new AI travel tool. Now, startups and incumbent travel tech companies are in a race to build one comprehensive tool that could plan and manage every part of your trip. Airial is one of the contenders that's banking on its ability to map out your entire travel experience end-to-end. At a surface level, here's how it works: to begin, you can type in some details about any trip that you want to take, and the AI will create a plan for you, including your starting and ending points. You can choose an instant trip function to quickly create a travel plan that includes flights, hotels, and transport across multiple cities. The platform also generates a daily itinerary for you to visit interesting places and eat at restaurants. You can specify your preferences while planning or modify them later after looking at the plan. The interface shows you your overall trip plan, and you can click on each phase to see the daily itinerary and the places AI has suggested for you to visit. You can click on each item to see an overview, reviews, location, and alternatives. Plus, the assistant can answer questions about each particular place for you. Airial also shows a map view of all the places you are visiting that day, so you can gauge the distance between points. It also shows details like transfer time, wait time at train stations, and whether you can take a day trip to a place nearby. Moreover, you can add a link to a blog, TikTok, or a Reel, and add items mentioned by a creator to your itinerary. The tool also surfaces TikTok videos related to a city based on your prompts and details that you've provided, so if you don't have a prior inspiration, you don't have to look for it. Archit Karandikar and Sanjeev Shenoy Image Credits: Airial The company was founded by Archit Karandikar and Sanjeev Shenoy, who were college friends in India. Karandikar has held various engineering roles at Meta, Google, and Waymo, working on using AI in products. Shenoy worked at Meta primarily on the team that developed Instagram Reels. Techcrunch event Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $200+ on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW The duo said that they've always had a passion for travel, so they wanted to build something in the sector. They described the Airial experience as working with your family's travel agent. 'Pretty much all the other companies we know in the space are focused on creating a rough plan for you. With our models, we reason thoroughly over the logistics part of your trip with a focus on details. We integrate dozens of APIs and consider many parameters to map out your flights and trains, figure out connectivity time, and [determine the] proximity of activities from your hotel,' Karandikar told TechCrunch over a call. Karandikar said that the startup's value proposition to users is personalization and time saving. He said that if you are a vegetarian and mention that to the AI tool, it will only suggest suitable eating joints for you. The company has based the training of its AI models on a paper by DeepMind researchers called AlphaGeometry. According to the startup, the paper describes an AI system that solves geometry problems. At its core, Airial is combining that inference method with LLMs to build travel plans. The startup has raised $3 million in seed funding that was led by Montage Ventures with participation from South Park Commons, Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India), and individual investors from Meta, UiPath, and Dropbox. Daphne Che, a principal at Montage Ventures, said that the team's technical understanding will give them an edge over other teams. 'I think every consumer who wants to plan travel will run into issues of [too] many options and variables to figure out. It is hard for a company just using LLMs straight up to solve these problems. Airial's tech stack can reason over thousands of variables to figure out the best spots and transport for you while keeping your requirements in mind,' she said. Image Credits: Airial Airial said it has 'tens of thousands of monthly visitors,' and the company is focusing on growing users rather than revenue. The company said it recently added features like trip sharing and collaborative trip building. It has also added cars and buses as options for multi-city transit. The travel tool has further added a social aspect, which allows users to view a friend's trip and modify it. In the coming months, the company wants to work on iOS and Android apps for its platform. The startup also wants to provide verticalized search for hotels, activities, and influencer videos.
Geek Wire
09-05-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
New Expedia feature uses AI to help travelers plan and book trips based off shared Instagram Reels
Expedia Trip Matching is a new feature that allows Instagram users to share travel-related Reels with Expedia and receive AI-powered travel-planning information back. (Expedia Images) Don't just scroll past those influencers soaking up all the sun at far-off destinations in your Instagram feed. Build an itinerary and book a trip in the same location. That's the premise from Seattle-based travel giant Expedia, which announced the beta release Friday of Expedia Trip Matching, a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to reel travelers in through Instagram Reels. It works when would-be travelers share any publicly available travel-related Reel directly with the official @Expedia account on Instagram. When the video is sent, it initiates an AI-generated response from Expedia with personalized travel recommendations, itineraries and trip-planning resources based on the video. Travelers can review and book directly from that customized itinerary, turning their social media travel daydreaming into real-world booking. Expedia says it's the first online travel agency to integrate real-time, AI-powered travel planning directly into Instagram. 'It's no secret people are getting their news, inspiration and travel ideas from influencers and content creators, with a recent study showing that 80% of millennials rely on social media for travel decisions,' said Jochen Koedijk, chief marketing officer at Expedia Group, in a statement. 'We want to be where consumers get their inspiration, which is through social media.' Trip Matching will be available to U.S. travelers in the upcoming weeks. Expedia shares fell more than 8% after the online travel giant company reported earnings Thursday and said it saw lower-than-expected demand in the U.S. — including a substantial decrease in inbound bookings from Canada.
