Myrealtrip Built Its Ai Trip Planner In 2 Days Using ChatGPT
“In travel, it’s not just people asking random questions to have fun with this thing, they are actively trying to gather information.”
The announcement of the multimodal GPT-4 by OpenAI and Microsoft this week has sent every tech industry scrambling to unlock all its capabilities, and the travel space is no exception. In the four months since its release, ChatGPT had been adopted at breakneck speed by travel and hospitality players – using its groundbreaking language processing abilities to develop new tools to engage with clients, consumers, and travellers.
One such tool is MyRealTrip’s AI Trip Planner, an interactive platform that allows users to converse with the ChatGPT-powered AI to plan itineraries and receive recommendations for tours and activities. Like many adopters of ChatGPT, the AI Trip Planner wasn’t in MyRealTrip’s pipeline, but with ChatGPT catching on like wildfire, the South Korean company couldn’t resist the urge to implement the AI engine in a new service.
And, they built this new service in 2 days.
That’s a ridiculously short time to build an app, but in the case of ChatGPT, it’s not be all that surprising.
In recent weeks, we’ve quoted a number of industry experts and key players who have vouched for the speed at which ChatGPT can be implemented. The tech’s highly accessible nature is what makes it a viable tool not just for large companies, but small startups as well. This was echoed at PhocusWire’s LinkedIn audio event regarding the adoption of ChatGPT when Paul English (Co-founder, Kayak) said, “I absolutely think the GPT’s API will allow small startups with just a handful of engineers to build compelling apps on top of it.”
Still, developing any sort of offering to consumers requires the channeling of vital resources in the form of people, time, and talent. However, there is something that can make the rush seem worthwhile – a sense of fun.
WiT caught up with Jonathan Chung (Jonny), Chief Experience Officer, MyRealTrip, to get his thoughts on ChatGPT, the anticipation of GPT-4, and how the company built a fully functional AI planner in under 48 hours.
Q: What gap in the market were you addressing by adopting ChatGPT and how did you know it was the right move?
Now that travel is back, people are travelling a lot, and they’re thinking of what to do in new cities and oftentimes they have to gather that information from search engines like Google, but a lot of Koreans use Naver.
A lot of the information on Naver is now outdated, so we were thinking of having this AI planner to help plan these trips.What we added on top of that were maps and locations and some pictures. So, it’s not just chatting but it’s giving [users] a little more information that’s tailored for travel.
Q: I’m guessing the AI Trip Planner wasn’t in the pipeline before ChatGPT “broke the internet”. How did you know this was worth pursuing and rejigging the pipeline for?
We talk a lot about how, when the whole industry moved from PC to mobile 10 years ago, the companies that caught on that wave of the changes in technology are really doing well. We really think AI will be the next ‘thing’ in travel. We do believe it solves a lot of different use cases, not just the planning… but translations and [other elements] regarding communications.
We were thinking a lot about AI before, and when ChatGPT came out we knew we had to do this right away. And when this came out we were like, let’s do this in 2 days.
