ixigo's AI-driven voice-enabled travel assistant will take away the travel planning hassles

BANGALORE, INDIA: Travel marketplace, ixigo has announced an artificial intelligence-driven and voice-enabled travel assistant - 'Tara'.

Rajnish Kumar, CTO & Co-Founder, ixigo at at the Phocuswright Innovation Platform in USA last week, demonstrated how the emotive voice based assistance, pre-emptive trip planning, automated frequent flyer programme management, seamless flight search and booking and automated web check-in, etc. will help users save the time and effort spent on making travel plans, book and managing them.

ixigo believes that the next one billion of internet users will not use keyboards or text inputs and voice and gesture will replace keyboards, touchscreens eventually.

"ixigo will train using the most advanced neural networks, with data from the thousands of searches on the platform, user queries, call transcripts, feedback, emails, etc. so that the agent can talk in the most human possible," said he.

Chetan Kapoor, Research Analyst - Asia Pacific, Phocuswright said, “Many Indians still favour personal touch and professional recommendations during their travel bookings. By blending these aspects with a virtual, voice-based assistant on a smartphone, ixigo’s TARA has the potential to tap millions of Indian travellers which are migrating from offline to online booking channels - and seeking a curated travel shopping and booking service.”

Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-Founder, ixigo said, “TARA is the travel agent of the future. She is just like the travel agent of the past, except that she responds instantly and is available 24x7! She is unbiased and knows the traveller’s preferences by assimilating contextual awareness. TARA will ensure travellers simply focus on enjoying their trip, and leave all their travel planning hassles to us.”

Tara will officially come to the ixigo platform for trains and flights in early 2018, said ixigo.