From Booking via Chatbot to Process Optimization: AI is on the Rise

Still, 60 percent of Lufthansa customers prefer to book traditionally through the website's search system, but the process is changing. "The entire travel ecosystem is really undergoing a transformation," explained Dr. Olaf Backofen from Lufthansa. His company group, according to Backofen, is already successfully using AI to generate newsletters and content. Additionally, they are currently running an A/B test on the website of their subsidiary Swiss, focusing on "Conversational Booking." This allows them to find out what resonates with customers. His company group is collaborating with the provider swifty, which specializes in AI-based booking solutions.

Productivity increased by 75 percent

The Lufthansa Group has already achieved a concrete benefit through AI-supported processing of customer complaints. The complaints, which are very unstructured and come in different languages, are processed and structured by an AI developed in collaboration with Microsoft. As a result, the productivity of the employees handling these complaints has increased by 75 percent.

AI assistants are already part of Everyday life at TUI

TUI has also firmly embedded Artificial Intelligence within its operations. The company has developed an AI assistant for employees, or more precisely, 1,500 different such agents, all working on the basis of Large Language Models, but keeping data internal. In the 1,200 travel agencies, AI assistants are now used in phone interactions with the company’s service agents, helping to listen and answer questions more quickly.

In direct customer contact, as André Exner from the TUI Group explained at the ITB Convention, AI is already being used. In the UK, 100 percent of users of the company's vacation assistance app now have the option to search and book traditionally or via chatbot.

Performance doubles every six months

Michael Guimet, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Copilot, emphasized the benefits of AI for optimizing business processes. Employees at Air India have now integrated Microsoft Copilot and its extensions into their Teams software, which helps them quickly evaluate large amounts of data and draw conclusions from it. Michael Guimet predicted that further comprehensive and rapid changes are expected as the performance of AI models doubles approximately every six months.