IHG Hotels & Resorts builds travel planner within mobile app

Personalised travel recommendations powered by Google Cloud AI

IHG Hotels & Resorts has built a new travel planner powered by Google Cloud AI.

The travel planner will offer personalised travel recommendations to customers who use the IHG One Rewards mobile app.

It is part of a suite of new features that will launch in the second half of 2024, which IHG says will create ‘a more dynamic digital guest experience’.

IHG’s travel planner will offer guests recommendations and ideas for both broad and nuanced requests such as, ‘Give me four late-night dinner options near the InterContinental London Park Lane’, or ‘Does the Kimpton Shinjuku Hotel in Tokyo allow pets?’ to ‘What jazz shows are happening near the Holiday Inn Express Manhattan Times Square South the weekend of October 12th?’.

Additional features will launch in the months following its public launch.

Jolie Fleming, chief product and technology officer at IHG Hotels & Resorts, said: “Working with Google Cloud as an AI innovation partner, we’re making trip planning easier and more interactive for prospective travellers.

“Our customised travel planner will use GenAI to help people discover destinations among our more than 6,000 IHG hotels across 19 brands in over 100 countries.

“Soon, guests will use the IHG One Rewards mobile app as a true mobile travel companion to build a full itinerary and book hotels in a few taps.”

IHG said working with Google Cloud will enable it to move quickly to deploy additional features to its IHG One Rewards app. The travel planner will be developed using Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s AI platform, and Google’s Gemini models.

Thomas Kurian, chief executive at Google Cloud, said: “IHG is not only reimagining how people travel, but also how people interact with brands.

“This implementation of generative AI combines Google’s technical expertise with IHG’s commitment to service, raising the bar for how the hospitality industry thinks about guests’ digital experiences.”

Google Cloud became IHG’s cloud provider in 2022.