The Alibaba Group’s online travel platform Fliggy announced that it has made tangible progress in its artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
The platform pointed out that its average service time per customer inquiry went down by 54.7 percent in the transportation sector, highlighting the benefits of this technology.
Fliggy chief executive Zhuoran Zhuan said: “We envision a future where traditional online travel agencies may give way to omni-intelligent travel agents, which will offer smart and reliable travel services. In the travel industry, where supply and service fulfillment are vital, enhancing supply chain quality and ensuring customer satisfaction will remain our priorities.”
Applying AI to key sectors
Throughout 2024, Fliggy extended its AI applications across various functions, including supply chain operations, customer service, merchant tools, platform governance, product development, and destination marketing.
Recently, the company launched its AI Itinerary Assistant within its app, powered by DeepSeek-R1 and key models from Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen.
This feature offers instant responses, assisting users in itinerary planning, activity recommendations, and product selection, thus streamlining the booking process.
Three Es of AI
The company’s AI innovation strategy centres around what it calls The Three Es of AI: Efficiency, Experience, and Ecosystem.
Over the next three years, Fliggy plans to leverage AI to enhance supply chain quality and scale, improve supply-demand matching, and better address personalized user needs.
Initiatives under each E include:
- AI for Efficiency: Fliggy’s AI integration has reached a 70 percent penetration rate in AI-assisted coding. The hotel business development team is now fully equipped with AI agents, leading to improved operational efficiency within the organization.
- AI for Experience: Approximately 10 percent of online customer inquiries are now managed by AI. In the transportation sector, AI customer service surpasses human agents, with a First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate and customer satisfaction score that both exceed those of human counterparts by seven percentage points. Additionally, AI has cut the average service time per inquiry by 54.7 percent.
- AI for Ecosystem: Fliggy’s AI tools have streamlined product and store management for merchants, with travel agencies being early adopters. For instance, traditional methods of finalizing group tour itineraries previously took about an hour, but with Fliggy’s AI publishing tool, merchants can convert Word document itineraries into a publishable format within 60 seconds. This automation can enhance product listing efficiency decreasing turnaround by 3.5 times and enable seamless automatic inventory management within the Fliggy system.
