How AI Is Redefining the Landscape of Travel Marketing

Excerpt from PhocusWire

When ChatGPT first hit the mainstream, it seemed to many that the multibillion-dollar world of travel search marketing was about to change overnight.

It didn’t turn out that way.

“When the whole ChatGPT thing exploded, I was very bullish that this would be a massive disruptor because users would be so excited,” said Mario Gavira, vice president of growth at online travel agency Kiwi.

“In fact, it didn’t move the needle at all or, if it moved at all, it was marginal.”

The first major test of AI’s influence on search was when Microsoft started plugging OpenAI’s GPT-4 into its search results in February 2023. Back then, Bing had a 2.8% market share, compared to Google’s 93.4%. A year later that had increased to just 3.3% with Google at 91.6%, according to Statcounter.

It’s now clear generative artificial intelligence’s influence on search marketing is more of an evolution than a revolution.

There is going to be a slow migration from what we know as search to this convergence of search and AI,” said Robert Patterson, who leads the AI expertise hub for travel marketing firm MMGY Global.

Advertising dollars will follow…eventually.

“Brands are so reliant on the results of pay-per-click advertising and have such high confidence in that being a safe investment place. There’s going to be a hesitancy to a degree to move,” Patterson said.

“Relevancy is where it’s at and if AI provides more relevant, detailed results, it will win ultimately in the end.”

Understanding how search functions

The black box nature of AI, in which its creators may not know how it arrives at the results it produces, could also prove challenging for travel companies trying to game the algorithms.

MMGY is developing tools for brands that analyze how their content is perceived AI-powered search engines to advise them on how to modify the structure of their content and data for better performance.

“We need to produce content both for human consumption and for machine consumption,” Patterson said.

Yet search results from these new entrants seem unlikely to remain clickless forever.

A Perplexity spokesperson told Phocuswire that it plans to start rolling out ads before the end of the year, first in the United States and internationally over the next year.

Click here to read complete article at PhocusWire.