Executive Traveller exclusive
For most travellers, an around-the-world trip is the ultimate goal – especially flying in the comfort of business class or even first class.
But stitching together your round-the-world or RTW journey is no easy task. In fact, it’s arguably the hardest part of the process.
Your travel must be in a “continuously forward” easterly or westerly direction, with no backtracking between continents. The RTW route must cross both the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, with stops on anywhere from three to six continents.
There are also limits on the number of individual flights you can take, and different fare rules between airlines.
And that’s before you deal with actual availability of the flights you want on the days you want.
Now there’s a smarter way to create your ideal getaway: an AI ‘travel agent’ created by the Oneworld alliance, which taps into the booking systems of all 13 member airlines across the world.
(That number will soon swell to 15 following the entry of Oman Air and Fiji Airways, while Hawaiian Airlines is potentially waiting in the wings).
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
The sheer complexity in building an RTW itinerary is enough to dissuade would-be travellers – especially “honeymooners or retirees who are doing this once in a lifetime,” says Roger Blackburn, Oneworld’s Vice President for Europe.
But it’s also a laborious and time-consuming process for “expert travellers”, Blackburn tells Executive Traveller.
Oneworld’s round-the-world AI assistant guides travellers step-by-step in mapping out their journey while also taking into account the complex rules and ensuring airlines have flights available for each key date in the globe-spanning itinerary.
Want to add some cities to your schedule, change the order in which they’re visited, spend more time in a certain destination?
The AI ‘chatbot’ agent understands natural language, so you can say “I need to be in Paris on March 22” or “I’d like to spend more time in Tokyo” and see revisions take shape.
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
However, Oneworld resisted the temptation to give its AI chatbot a cute name or humanistic persona.
“A little bit of my thinking was that chatbots have a slightly tarnished reputation,” Blackburn reflects.
“We’ve all had the chatbot that doesn’t really help very much, it’s just a way for a company for avoid a telephone call… it’s got a friendly name and a nice face, but it’s got the same canned answers and you just go around in circles.”
“So I didn’t really want to sell this as a chatbot per se. I wanted to say ‘this is a better way to help you solve your problems, this is a way of trying to understand your needs and help you explore those needs better’.”
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
The AI engine was created for Oneworld by Elemental Cognition, a startup founded by computer scientist David Ferrucci, who led the development of IBM’s Watson ‘question answering’ supercomputer.
“Their thing is a ‘rules engine’ which is good at abstracting complex sets of rules,” Blackburn explains, “like the rules behind our round-the-world fairs.”
Elemental Cognition “decoded our complexity,” Blackburn says.
“They ingested a year’s worth of global airline schedules and our rules, recorded in various formats, to build a customised solution that our customers could engage with in natural language.”
Oneworld is already seeing an increase in round-the-world bookings made directly from its website, saying travellers are now five times as likely to book a RTW trip.
“We could watch the ‘journey’ on the old website and see people struggle, sometimes trying for a long time – there’s a bookable itinerary waiting to get out, but they just can’t get there.”
“With the new tool we have a much better success rate, from suggesting your start point through to getting a successful itinerary… we also see people able to make a wider set of itineraries (because they) can explore a bit more now and look at some more options.”
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
While the new AI-assisted booking engine is built for the popular continent-based Oneworld Explorer RTW fare, Blackburn says it will eventually be expanded to cover the distance-based (and confusingly-branded) Global Explorer fare, as well as the Circle Pacific package for continents bordering the Pacific Ocean.
“Oneworld Explorer is our main product and gets the majority of the bookings,” Blackburn tells Executive Traveller, while Circle Pacific “is by far the smallest one.”
“So the order we’ll go for is Global Explorer first, and Circle Pacific after that – but we’re hitting the majority of demand with Oneworld Explorer today.”
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
Beyond that, there’s even scope for the AI assistant to create a round-the-world itinerary based on ‘award seats’ unlocked with frequent flyer points or miles.
“We would love to do points, and to help people use their points, but it’s a few steps down the line,” Blackburn admits.
“In the alliance at the moment, we’re working very hard on points-based upgrades” – using the points or miles earned with one member airline to upgrade your seat when flying on another member airline.
In action: Oneworld’s AI travel assistant for round-the-world trips.
One likely model for a points-based RTW booking engine could see users begin by choosing their frequent flyer currency and then constructing a fare around that, with the AI tool seeking out award seats.
“That’s exactly the sort of complex problem” the technology is intended to solve, Blackburn says.
“Should I use these points or those points? A tool like this might make that tractable and solvable for you.”
“So yes, we’d love to explore that, but we probably have several steps to go… we want to get our upgrades program done first before we’ll get to anything like that.”
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