The oneworld alliance partnered with AI company Elemental Cognition to complete initial trials of a state-of-the-art booking tool to help customers through the complex planning of a Round the World ticket. These tickets offer hundreds of possible destinations and millions of possible flight combinations, making them some of the most complicated products in the industry. While most tickets are booked online, Round the World tickets tend to still be booked by human agents.

“As our customers plan their next international adventure, we are focused on improving the experience for travellers [sic] 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,” said CEO Rob Gurney, CEO, oneworld.

The airline alliance looked to EC to create a solution combining the power and flexibility of human agents with the efficiency of self-serve technology. Using EC’s breakthrough reasoning, natural language understanding and dialog capabilities, the technology can understand a traveler’s needs, offer options to weigh and warn them of potential issues while navigating rules and changing flight availability.

“We are excited to partner with oneworld to deliver a transformative digital experience to its customers,” said Dr. David Ferrucci, CEO, Elemental Cognition. “Accommodating customer preferences while navigating complex product rules and ever-changing 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.”

Early results look promising with customers using the AI tool four times more likely to create bookable itineraries meeting their requirements while using standard interface.