Within the race for dominance within the AI travel industry, even a small lead matters without delay.

Every player within the space attempting to capitalize on the promise of recent AI/LLM technologies is scuffling with the incontrovertible fact that major platforms like ChatGPT are limited by data that’s outdated or not real-time. In an industry like travel, where fickle plans and itineraries literally change with the weather, this is especially problematic.

As each investors in AI travel and advisors coordinating deals for startups on this space with other investors, we prefer to see firms pushing boundaries and providing value for users in latest, concrete ways.

As an example, Kayak and Expedia have launched ChatGPT plugins, but GuideGeek from travel publisher Matador Network provides real-time flight data (. Meanwhile, Roam Around has a robust visual element to its interface.

But travel information is complex, and misinformation — or AI “hallucinations” — are a challenge. Roam Around sometimes recommends one site while showing a photograph of one other (and potentially linking to a 3rd), and in one in every of our queries, GuideGeek conjured a cleverly-named pub that simply doesn’t exist.

At this early stage, our firm and other investors within the space we work with don’t have an expectation of perfection. The advances between ChatGPT-3 and ChatGPT-4 are so apparent that it’s easy enough to have a look at the underlying technology and say, “eh, they’ll figure it out.”

We’re more focused on how firms are shaping and augmenting this technology for travelers, and the market segments throughout the travel industry they’re positioned to capture.

Differentiation is essential — you would like greater than a skin for ChatGPT

Most AI products appear to be built on ChatGPT. While each travel company may start with the identical baseline, we actually prefer to see proprietary data that may train the AI to provide superior outputs. OTAs (online travel agencies like Expedia and Booking.com) have a bonus here with massive amounts of knowledge about their customers and the way people plan and book trips.

Small agile teams have a possibility to adopt this technology and rapidly scale up before the massive guys can effectively implement or risk disrupting their existing business. If consumers can use an AI tool to go looking all airlines immediately, why does an OTA have to be within the loop?

The OTAs are built on recommending what the masses want, but the entire point of AI is that the reply is now customized to the person. A median rating of 8 for a hotel doesn’t apply to a selected person whose essential priority is to be near a lesser-known local surf spot an AI surfaced for them.

To attempt to drive utilization, startup players should get more creative with product design. Getaiway and Roam Around have focused specifically on itineraries, with the latter simplifying the user input right down to one word — type in a spot and get an itinerary, then refine from there. Matador says it plans to incorporate influencer videos from its wide selection of content creators within the GuideGeek messaging interface.