It’s a well-known fact that TripAdvisor changed the landscape of the travel advice sector. The idea was simple: Instead of taking the word of a travel agent, who may be financially rewarded by promoting a certain hotel, you could simply look at what other travelers said about their experience. It cuts out the middleman and, in theory, means that you could get impartial peer-to-peer advice.
Of course, the term “in theory” does a lot of the work in the above statement. We know that TripAdvisor, while still useful, can be plagued with fake reviews, not to mention the fact that people are much more likely to leave a review than someone who had a great time. That has caused many of us to treat TripAdvisor reviews with a degree of skepticism when planning our dream trip. At the very least, there is an art to sifting through the (good and bad) reviews to find a general consensus.
How To Find The Right Products Online?
Nonetheless, the system is indicative of a wider issue on the web. Namely, how do we discover what’s the best ‘product’ without any hint of bias? There are certainly simple ways to do this. For instance, a gaming platform might list its top-rated slots based on how often players played them, or you might see a clothes store ranking popular jeans by how many units have been sold.
Yet, it is not so easy with travel reviews, as they are based on people’s opinions and experiences, not hard data. One solution that has been mooted is artificial intelligence, or more succinctly, AI search tools. The idea is that they will give much more impartial advice compared to, say, Google or travel comparison websites.
To provide a bit of an explainer, we need to first look at how the web works: If you search for an item on Google or Bing – Leading ski chalets in Switzerland, for example – the results that come up are not fully impartial. They will be a mix of sponsored results, showing ads for chalet providers (in this example) who have paid to be at the top of the search engine’s results.
You will also get results at the top of the page from companies that have mastered SEO – Seach Engine Optimization (basically manipulating keywords to make sure the website ranks higher than those of competitors). Now, there is nothing wrong with SEO, but it is also true that Google will not necessarily rank the best chalets (again, only an example), but instead favor the company that has the better SEO tactics.
Independent Analysis From Ai Has Some Merit
So, where does AI come in? Recently, OpenAI released a new “independent” shopping tool for its ChatGPT AI bot. The emphasis is on “independent,” as the bot will make recommendations for items and find you deals personalized to your size and style, etc. The point is that OpenAI is not financially incentivized to do this, and that marks a significant shift away from the standard web architecture.
While ChatGPT does not do travel advice yet – at least not as an official tool like shopping – the same theory would apply. What’s more, an AI bot could potentially sift through millions of reviews for you, picking out the common themes to help you frame an understanding of what staying at the hotel or eating at that restaurant is really like.
There is a lot of talk right now about AI search challenging traditional algorithmic search engines. To be frank, AI bots are still in their nascent stage. They make mistakes, and there can be issues with how the bots aim to please – they can act to affirm your query rather than question it – but it could open up interesting avenues for travelers in the near future.