oneworld and Elemental Cognition’s breakthrough AI Travel Agent transforms the online booking experience

oneworld Alliance and artificial intelligence (AI) company Elemental Cognition have completed initial trials of their state-of-the-art booking tool that helps customers navigate the complex 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. In contrast to the general shift towards online channels, 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. All while navigating the complex product rules and ever-changing flight availability.

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

“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,” said oneworld CEO Rob Gurney.

Elemental Cognition CEO Dr. 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 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."

About oneworld

oneworld member airlines work together to deliver consistently a superior, seamless travel experience, with special privileges and rewards for frequent flyers, including earning and redeeming miles and points across the entire alliance network. Top-tier cardholders (Emerald and Sapphire) enjoy access to airport lounges and are offered extra baggage allowances. The most regular travelers (Emerald) can also use fast track security lanes at select airports. Learn more about the oneworld Alliance on oneworld.com.

About Elemental Cognition

Elemental Cognition (EC)’s Generative AI reliably solves your hardest problems. Our mission at EC is to accelerate and improve critical decision making for complex, high-value problems where trust, accuracy, and transparency matter. EC applies Large Language Models (LLMs) in combination with a variety of other AI techniques to ensure accurate solutions to complex, dynamic problems.

EC was founded in 2015 by Dr. David Ferrucci, the renowned AI researcher and inventor of IBM’s breakthrough Watson technology, to create the next wave of AI that accelerates and improves critical decision making across industries and use cases. Visit us at https://www.ec.ai.