Priceline Aims to Offer ‘Personal Concierge’ via Google AI

Online travel agency Priceline has teamed with Google to offer AI-powered services.

As the companies said in a Tuesday (June 6) news release, the partnership with let Priceline’s customers engage with a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot, and will also start seeing more personalized offerings when seeking hotels.

Marty Brodbeck, Priceline’s chief technology officer, said in the release that the company wants to “transform the novelty of generative AI into lasting value for our customers and our business.”

Brodbeck went into more detail in an interview with Reuters, describing the company’s chatbot as functioning like “a personal concierge.”

“You can easily find out that in Bryant Park there’s a Christmas market that runs from early November all the way through the beginning of January when you’re actually booking your hotel,” Brodbeck told Reuters.

Google has invested heavily in AI, even as its CEO maintains there is “not a race” to develop the technology.

“While some have tried to reduce this moment to just a competitive AI race, we see it as so much more than that,” Sundar Pichai wrote in a Financial Times op-ed last month.

“At Google, we’ve been bringing AI into our products and services for over a decade and making them available to our users. We care deeply about this. Yet, what matters even more is the race to build AI responsibly and make sure that as a society we get it right.”

As noted here last week, the company has been incorporating AI into a number of problems, including its search engine, with Search Generative Experience using AI to answer questions directly on the Google Search webpage. Google takes this information from around the internet and links to sources used when generating an answer.

“With the launch of ChatGPT late last year, an AI chatbot that could answer almost any question with a unique answer, companies have been adding generative AI features to their products amid increased public interest,” PYMNTS wrote.

Elsewhere in the intersection of travel and AI, German travel platform GetYourGuide announced last week it had raised $194 million, funds that will allow it to invest in AI technology.

“The investment will help increase the pace of innovation for travelers and supply partners, leveraging the rapidly progressing capabilities of AI and large language models (LLMs),” the company said in a news release.

“The acceleration of product investment will not only help travelers make the most of their travels, but also empower supply partners to manage and grow their businesses on the platform with intuitive tools.”