Role of Recommendation Engine in OTA

The Online Travel Agency(OTA) has seen a tremendous amount of growth in the last few years, and so has the recommendation engine. You can consider any industry in today’s world; all of them have one thing in common – recommendation engines. The OTA industry is not different from others either. In fact, with the introduction of the recommendation engine in OTA, the revenue has increased by a significant amount. Let us understand how recommendation engines work in the OTA industry. 

Data Acquisition

A recommendation engine can only work when it has sufficient data with it. So, when any travel agency integrates a recommendation engine, it needs a user’s past travel history, such as which mode of transportation they have used and what was the distance traveled. Some people prefer to take cars for a smaller distance but fly for a long route, but for bachelors who want to go on a trip, they would always prefer cars. So, here are the few things that a recommendation engine needs so that it can give you personalized recommendations – 

1. Previous transportation information
2. User likes and dislikes
3. Onboarding information
4. Profiles with similar interests
5. Popular places in each city.

 Different Kinds of Recommendations 

So, once the recommendation engine has gathered enough data, the next step is to recommend places. Can you recall how every time you were set to visit a new place, there would be recommendations like ‘10 places to visit in Switzerland’ or ‘Must visit places in Switzerland’. Well, these are all recommendations. Here is how these recommendations are crafted – 

1. Recommendations based on previous travel history
2. Recommendations based on similar profile choices
3. Recommendations based on famous places nearby

What is the Need of Recommendations in OTA?

There are two aspects through which the recommendation engine has made its place in the OTA industry. The first one is that it benefits the customers by giving them what they want, such as the list of places they should visit. This helps in saving the time of customers and, if they end up enjoying their trip, they will definitely come back to use the same services again. The second reason is that the travel agencies can create their marketing strategy based on the data the recommendation system has collected. For example, if people are interested in going to Australia, the travel agency can create campaigns for Australia. 

Wrapping Up, 

Each industry should update itself with the latest technology as it comes. Alie – an AI-based recommendation engine, is the most updated with respect to technology and its ease. It has several algorithms and also shows the recommendations made to different users on a dashboard. To know more about Alie, try the 14-day free trial.