Oneworld Alliance and Elemental...

The pioneering booking tool is designed to help customers with complex bookings

Oneworld Alliance and artificial intelligence (AI) company Elemental Cognition (EC) have completed initial trials of their booking tool that helps customers navigate the process of planning a round-the-world ticket.

With hundreds of possible destinations and millions of possible flight combinations, these round-the-world tickets are some of the most complicated products in the industry and the majority of these trips are still booked with human agents.

Oneworld challenged EC to build a solution that combines the power and flexibility of the best human agents with the convenience and efficiency of a self-serve technology solution.

Leveraging EC’s breakthrough reasoning, natural language understanding, and dialog capabilities, the solution understands a customer’s needs, helps them weigh options and trade-offs while proactively warning them of potential issues including complex product rules and ever-changing flight availability.

The initial results show that customers using the new tool are four times more likely to create bookable itineraries that meet their requirements than those using the standard interface.

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Speaking about the initiative, Oneworld CEO Rob Gurney said: “As our customers plan their next international adventure, we are focused on improving the experience for travellers booking a Oneworld Round the World ticket.

"We’ve partnered with Elemental Cognition to elevate the technology powering our booking experience, and ease the challenge our customers face when planning such complex journeys.”

Elemental Cognition CEO David Ferrucci added: "We are excited to partner with Oneworld to deliver a transformative digital experience to its customers. Accommodating customer preferences while navigating complex product rules and flight availability is a perfect demonstration of the power of our AI technology. It is great to see it help Oneworld’s customers transform their travel ideas into their dream trip."

For more information, visit www.oneworld.com