At EXPLORE, Expedia’s annual partner conference held in Las Vegas, the company announced the launch of 40+ new products and features across its tech ecosystem – chief of all being the introduction of Romie, an AI-powered travel assistant.
Romie is designed to assist travellers at every step of their booking process – from trip planning, shopping, booking, and providing assistance when unexpected changes occur during a trip. The alpha version of Romie is currently available on EG Labs, Expedia Group’s hub for experimental products. At the moment, the product is only available in English and in the US.
Speaking at the launch media conference, Rathi Murthy, CTO of Expedia Group, explained that the current trajectory for Romie is to get real-world user feedback and build the assistant from there, adapting it to different languages for global users.
Some key features of Romie include:
- Group Chat Trip Planning: Romie can join group chats and provide suggestions on destinations and activities. Romie works internally on Expedia’s ecosystem and, if customers enable it to, externally on third-party messaging apps like WhatsApp – listening and learning in the background before giving personalised recommendations.
- Smart Search: Romie summarises group chat discussions and integrates the information into the Expedia shopping experience.
- Itinerary Building: Romie assists travellers in building personalised trip itineraries, suggesting restaurants and activities based on preferences.
- Dynamic Service: Romie monitors changes in travel plans and provides alternative suggestions if needed.
- Intelligent Assistance: Romie updates travel itineraries in real-time and provides information to group members as needed.
Murthy emphasised the company’s focus on creating hyper-personalised travel experiences, stating, “We believe in re-imagining the traveller experience, and then using the latest in AI to bring it to life, and with Romie, we’ve done just that.”
A live demo of Romie, Expedia’s newly launched AI assistant, on the EXPLORE 2024 floor
Expedia Group’s 2024 Spring Product Release includes over 40 new products and features:
- Personalised Itinerary Builder: Travellers can create customised itineraries based on AI-generated recommendations.
- Self-Service Booking Management: Travellers can manage changes, cancellations, and air credit redemption directly through the Expedia app or website.
- Enhanced Help Center: Travellers can quickly find solutions to common issues with the updated Help Center.
- Price and Destination Comparison: Travellers can compare prices and destinations easily to find the best options for their trips.
- Guest Review Summary: Expedia summarises guest reviews to help travellers make informed decisions.
For industry partners, Expedia Group introduced several new tools aimed at safeguarding businesses, controlling rate integrity, and providing actionable insights on service.
Some partner product highlights include:
- Fraud Prevention as a Service (FPaaS): A solution to help partners screen bookings, reduce unauthorised account access, and minimise chargeback losses.
- Advertiser-Funded Loyalty: A program allowing destination partners to fund rewards for travellers booking hotels.
- Optimised Distribution for Hoteliers: An offering that provides regional chains and independent hotels more control over their inventory and pricing.
- AI-Powered Guest Experience: Insights to help hosts improve the guest experience based on guest reviews.
- Seasonal Cancellation Policy: Vrbo’s date-based cancellation policy gives vacation rental owners more control.
Travel Shops
Expedia Group also introduced Travel Shops, a new storefront that allows content creators to share and save their travel recommendations in one central place on the Expedia app. Travel Shops enables content creators to earn commissions, increase visibility, and customise their own personalised space for travel content.
Jochen Koedijk, CMO of Expedia Group, described Travel Shops as “a first-of-its-kind travel platform that bridges the gap between content creators and travellers, creating a central hub for curated travel recommendations and a seamless shopping experience.”
During the launch, both Murthy and Expedia’s new CEO, Ariane Gorin, explained that Travel Shops is now live and has 14 creators in initial phase. Starting Q3 2024, the Shops will be open to the public. Akin to Amazon storefront, the platform allows anyone to create and sell travel recommendations via Expedia’s ecosystem. Once in that stage, commissions for creators will be an option, as Expedia is gathering feedback from its current group of influencers and ambassadors to finetune the product.
