London, United Kingdom — May 21, 2016 — During London Technology Week, Lulutrip launched a new mobile app as well as new intelligence features that further enhanced her client experiences. The announcements at Lulutrip’s 9th Anniversary Celebrate event in the stunning Tower Room of 2 More London Riverside marked Lulutrip’s foray into data analytics and artificial intelligence-driven travel service that promises to revolutionise the travel agency world.
“Online travel agencies (OTA) disrupted the market for travel agencies by making standard travel products such as air and hotel available directly to be consumers over the web. However, much of the holiday planning and booking are beyond the standard products. ” said Jonathan Jiang, CEO of Lulutrip, “We revolutionised tour and activities booking by building the software and service infrastructure conducive to booking non-standard products. Now we are adding an intelligence layer that delivers bespoke planning and management services hitherto unseen on the market.”
The most important value-add of a knowledgeable human travel agent is selecting tours that are suitable for the client based on the client’s profile. Information overload and difficulty in differentiating products are the top complaints of OTA customers. The first of the AI-driven features, Lulutrip’s new Intelligent Grouping feature addresses this problem. Intelligent Grouping merges tours that cover the same major POIs and attractions into groups and highlight the differences amongst the tours within the same group. Under the covers, the system uses sophisticated data structure to capture the details of every itinerary, and the complex relationship between the various components of every product, as well as advanced metadata system to identify the differentiation between products within the same group. Leveraging the rich structured data, proprietary filtering and sorting algorithms allow the customer to pinpoint the products they need with ease. Customer survey showed that on average, customers save 80% on the time required to select a tour with Intelligent Grouping.
Another strength of traditional travel agents over OTAs is the service the agent can provide while the customer is traveling at the destination. Lulutrip’s Mobile App is the most advanced travel companion app on the market and it goes above and beyond the capabilities of the human agent. The main features of the App include real-time booking and customer service, travel oriented Social Networking, and intelligent itinerary tools. The Mobile App extensively leverages Lulutrip’s intelligence engine, delivering services such as pairing users with similar profiles and interests, and recommending products based on the user’s location, itineraries, and personal preferences. The App is more capable, responsive, and resourceful than any human agent can hope to be.
Today, over 60% of travelers in China choose to book travels from traditional agencies, because the services provided by OTAs have not met their needs. The most significant opportunity in travel is converting those travelers to online services. With the launch of the AI capabilities, Lulutrip has positioned herself to be the leader in capturing this new market.
About Lulutrip
Lulutrip is the world’s leading online travel agency for tours, activities, and tickets primarily serving Chinese speaking clients. We were founded in 2007 in Silicon Valley, and our team consists of 100+ enthusiastic travel lovers in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and London. Our portfolio covers Europe, Americas, Oceania, and Africa.
Lulutrip’s service derives from the combination of world-class customer service and state-of-the-art technology. Using our proprietary operations software and Big Data analytics engine, we simplify planning, booking, and social networking for both PC and Mobile clients. Our follow-the-sun customer service means a travel expert is available to you 24 x 7.