Tripadvisor is seeking to improve the travel planning process through a partnership with artificial intelligence-powered answer engine Perplexity.
The partnership sees the integration of Tripadvisor’s reviews, AI-generated summaries and more than 300,000 experiences from Viator with Perplexity’s chatbot-style search capabilities.
"The companies aim to provide personalized and actionable recommendations to simplify and enrich the trip-planning process,” a Tripadvisor statement said.
Tripadvisor said that a number of features are already live on Perplexity.ai with enhancements to be rolled out over the next three years. While quick searches carried out by PhocusWire online did not present Tripadvisor in a prominent position, the company said it could be a timing issue as it's a gradual process.
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“As travelers increasingly seek direct, personalized and contextual insights backed by AI, our partnership with Perplexity is redefining how these journeys and experiences are planned,” said Rahul Todkar, head of data and AI at Tripadvisor. “By merging Tripadvisor’s trusted travel expertise, rich data and AI recommendations with Perplexity’s advanced AI search capabilities, we’re creating a seamless and delightful experience that meets the needs of today’s explorers.”
“We’re always looking for ways we can power new search experiences,” said Johnny Ho, co-founder of Perplexity. “Travel is a top search category on Perplexity, and we’re excited to team up with Tripadvisor Group to make their trusted recommendations available through our answer engine.”
While some might question whether an actual partnership is needed given that Perplexity could surface Tripadvisor results anyway, the reviews giant said the partnership gives Perplexity "direct access to all the richness of our reviews, ratings and recommendations that can be surfaced based on context of the user query, personal preferences and other considerations. This level of access would not be possible otherwise and should enable a partnership that can benefit all end user."
"Online visibility is shifting fast as AI overviews affect SEO traffic and travelers increasingly turn to tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers," said Mike Coletta, Phocuswright's senior manager of research and innovation.
"Tripadvisor’s partnership with Perplexity is a smart play to be where travelers are and lock in visibility for their content with a fast-growing external platform."
Christian Watts, founder and CEO of Magpie said companies such as Perplexity, which use foundational large language models, struggle with accessing "live or current data" such as product information and reviews.
"Perplexity adds live search to that base AI result, so you could argue that deals like this can help them surface that live data much more easily. Assuming the deal includes some frequent caching of reviews, it ought to open up potential for much better and faster real-time results."
This is not Tripadvisor’s first foray into AI. The company announced its integration of OpenAI for trip planning in mid-2023.
Later that year, the company rolled out AI generated summaries to provide travelers with additional insights on hotels. The company also announced updates to its “Trips” planning tool including the addition of hotels to its AI-powered itinerary recommendations as well as the addition of popular activities in its prompt for travelers that have shown interest in a destination.
In late 2023, the company also shared early results of its AI efforts during its third quarter 2023 financial results, with Tripadvisor members who had created itineraries returning at a higher rate. In addition, members who had built an itinerary also generated 3x higher revenue than the average Tripadvisor member.
“We believe the initial data is a good indication of early product market fit. And we’re on a plan to launch this full trip planning and itinerary product on our mobile app on iOS and Android this quarter,” said Matt Goldberg, CEO of Tripadvisor, during the Q3 results.