Digital travel platform Agoda has introduced a new booking experience on its platform. Following a limited test in September, Agoda’s AI Assistant has expanded to users across 21 markets, allowing travelers to discover, plan, and book travel directly within Agoda’s mobile app.
Planning a trip typically requires switching between AI chats, search engines, review sites, maps, and booking applications. Agoda’s AI Assistant addresses this fragmentation by combining conversational trip planning with Agoda’s live inventory of over 6 million accommodations, flights, tours, attractions, and travel ancillaries. Travelers can explore ideas, compare options, verify prices and availability, and complete bookings without restarting the process at each step.
Connected Trips and Integrated Technology
The AI Assistant organizes multi-step travel decisions on a trip planner canvas. For instance, when planning a five-day family trip to Osaka, the assistant can compare neighborhoods, suggest restaurants and attractions, and locate available accommodations and flights while retaining preferences and trip context. Users can interact through conversation or tap suggested choices while keeping their itinerary in view.
Early beta insights indicate that users interacting with the AI Assistant are more likely to book a “connected trip”—combining multiple travel products such as hotels, flights, attraction tickets, and tours. The assistant also incorporates web search capabilities to deliver updated web information alongside live inventory data.
Underlying the assistant’s core conversational capability are OpenAI models. For restaurant and point-of-interest recommendations, the tool uses Gemini with Google Maps Grounding to pull real-time data from Google Maps, including ratings, photos, operating hours, and locations.
Omri Morgenshtern, Chief Executive Officer at Agoda, said: “Travel planning today is fragmented. People jump between apps, tabs, messages, and spreadsheets just to organize a single trip. With Agoda’s AI Assistant, we’re changing that. We’re giving travelers a smart companion that understands their preferences and trip context and adapts to their needs. Our goal is to remove the repetitive work from travel planning, so travelers can make inspired decisions with more confidence.”
