Seeking Value: The Hard Part of AI Travel Starts After the Search
AI agents could change how travelers shop and who controls the sale, raising questions about trust and travel agencies' roles.
A vague request to an AI assistant to arrange a trip to New York still needs to produce a precise itinerary that can be booked. Andrew Jordan, CEO of Travelport, emphasized that the AI must know the specific destination, desired dates, and time, just like a traditional travel booking. Travelport is collaborating with Cognizant and Anthropic to develop and test software using Claude for this purpose.
The project primarily focuses on Travelport's TripServices platform, which went live in June. The conversation, as part of the Seeking Value video series, was moderated by Newsweek's executive editor, Gabriel Snyder. Travelport's CEO, Andrew Jordan, stressed that while AI can help with exploring destinations and comparing options, it still requires specific dates, availability, and booking conditions to finalize a reservation.
Trust is another factor that hinders consumers from handing over their purchases to AI, as the stakes rise when travel plans get disrupted due to unforeseen issues like delayed or rerouted flights. Handling such disruptions correctly is crucial to avoid significant regulatory penalties. Cognizant is applying Claude to tackle the complex transactions involved in such scenarios, generating test cases to cover various possibilities.
Although engineers and testers make the final decisions, Claude's ability to trace business processes through existing software helps generate necessary test cases and update them as policies and data structures change. Decades-old legacy code can pose challenges for AI, as the original designers are often unavailable to explain how the software works.
Cognizant used Claude to follow business functions through millions of lines of code, translating embedded logic into language that travel specialists can understand and preserving existing system behavior as a set of tests. This collaboration allows Travelport to benefit from proven AI models and gain access to Cognizant's engineering resources and travel-industry expertise, helping Travelport improve its existing technology and develop new products.
Written by urgent.news from Newsweek's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
