Around the world in 80 ways

ONEWORLD'S AI-powered travel service helps ambitious travellers book international trips with its member airlines. Oneworld's Round the World fares allow passengers to book up to 16 flights between at least three continents on a globe-spanning trip that lands back home up to a year later – but with 15 airlines, hundreds of destinations, millions of possible flights, constantly changing seat availability and varying fare rules, scheduling such a trip is beyond conventional airline booking engines and a daunting prospect for travellers. To simplify the process, Oneworld turned to AI start-up Elemental Cognition, which leveraged Google Cloud infrastructure to produce a robust booking system capable of handling airline schedules’ complexity. The tool includes a chatbot that asks customers about their home city, ideal destination and desired travel dates. It then produces…