• Innovative AI-Powered Search: trivago introduces “Smart AI Search,” an advanced free-text search functionality powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) that allows users to search for hotels using natural language, making it easier and more personalized to find the ideal accommodations.

• Pioneering Collaboration with Google Cloud: trivago’s collaboration with Google Cloud to integrate Vertex AI Search into its platform has led to the co-development of a unique and unprecedented solution in the travel industry, overcoming previous technological limitations and enhancing search capabilities.

• Enhanced User Experience: With the new AI-driven search functionalities, travelers benefit from improved accuracy, efficiency, and a broader search scope, ensuring personalized results based on detailed and intuitive user queries, ultimately transforming the hotel search experience.

trivago is reinventing hotel search by making it both more comprehensive and easier to use. We’re excited to announce a groundbreaking advancement that we have explored for over a decade. This powerful tool allows our users to search using natural language, making it simpler than ever to find the ideal hotel based on your specific needs and preferences.

Say hello to our new “Smart AI Search,” an innovative feature designed to empower travelers to search for hotels with unprecedented ease and precision.

Enhancing Hotel Search with LLMs and Google Cloud’s AI-powered Search Technology

LLMs have spearheaded a breakthrough in generative AI, unlocking numerous opportunities for innovation. We adopted a tech-first approach to explore these possibilities and identified significant potential in leveraging LLM technology to enhance and expand our users’ search experiences. Despite the absence of guarantees that the technology would suit our desired use case, the substantial time and effort invested underscore our commitment to creating real, tangible value for our users through innovation.

“Our journey towards providing an effective free-text search began in 2014, and we made another significant step in this direction when we went public in 2016. For the past decade, we have been driven by a vision to better understand user preferences and match them with hotel offerings. Unfortunately, many travelers still experience disappointment due to mismatched expectations. Earlier technological limitations hindered our initial efforts, but our new Smart AI Search, powered by LLMs, has finally made the cut. It has allowed us to reimagine the core of our product and introduce unprecedented ways of finding hotels, greatly enhancing our existing search functionalities,” said Andrej Lehnert, CPO, trivago.

AI is vast and exciting, but it poses challenges and brings uncertainty in terms of balancing investment against potential value creation. Especially when compared to incremental improvements in our product innovation, which is a rather systematic and predictable way of evolving our product. The complexity of developing advanced and custom AI features is high. Therefore, we collaborated with Google Cloud to leverage their Vertex AI Search technology.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with trivago on this pioneering project,” said Dr. Stefan Ebener, Google AI Head of Customer Engineering. “By leveraging Google Cloud’s advanced AI capabilities and trivago’s deep knowledge of the travel space, we have created a search experience that not only understands the intricacies of natural language but also delivers highly relevant and personalized results. This innovation marks a significant step forward in the travel industry, making it easier for travelers to find exactly what they are looking for, effortlessly and efficiently.“

As Google Cloud’s pilot customer, we implemented Vertex AI specifically tailored to trivago’s use case . This collaboration proved fruitful, as we successfully combined our collective expertise to create a unique solution that is unprecedented in the travel industry.

Redefining Hotel Discovery with “Smart AI Search”

As a leading global hotel search platform, we understand that travelers have diverse needs and often seek a more personalized and efficient way to discover their ideal destinations and hotels. Our goal was to bridge these needs while also offering a window to inspire them. Our free text search functionality leverages AI-powered search technologies and natural language comprehension to interpret and respond to user queries with unprecedented accuracy and relevance. Unlike typical search functionalities that limit users to predefined criteria, the free-text search allows travelers to articulate their hotel requirements in their own words. It is designed to understand the nuances and subtleties of natural language. Users can input queries in everyday language rather than relying on rigid search parameters. For instance, a user can type “Hotels close to the Canadian Rockies” or input more specific requirements such as, “Hotels close to the Canadian Rockies with hot tub, rustic and luxury” and our platform will interpret these requests and present the most relevant options available.

Each example highlights how the free-text search understands and processes natural, colloquial language to fetch results that match the user’s exact needs, bridging the gap between desire and discovery. Traditionally searches are connected to a region, city or point of interest. Our Smart AI Search enables you to do a boundless search that puts your search context in the core of matching preferences and accommodations.

Powered by Google Cloud’s robust AI infrastructure, which processes vast amounts of data to understand context, synonyms and user intent, the result is a search experience that feels intuitive and natural, significantly reducing the time and effort travelers typically spend trying to find exactly what they are looking for.

Benefits for Travelers

The introduction of AI-powered free text search functionality caters to travelers looking for easy to navigate, efficient and personalized recommendations based on their hotel requirements.

• Enhanced Accuracy: By understanding the context and nuances of user queries, our search functionality delivers more accurate and personalized results.

• Improved User Experience: Travelers can now search using natural language, making the process more intuitive and less cumbersome.

• Time Efficiency: The advanced AI algorithms streamline the search process, allowing users to search in a more intuitive way to find their desired accommodations and destinations quickly.

• Broader Search Scope: The functionality can interpret a wide variety of requests, accommodating diverse travel preferences and needs.

The Future of Hotel Search

We anticipate that the free-text search functionality will seamlessly complement our existing search capabilities. While there are tangible limitations inherent in LLM technology, gaining a deeper understanding of user interactions with our free-text search feature is crucial for its refinement and success. Our ongoing efforts focus on enhancing the accuracy of search results and improving the overall user experience.

“At trivago, we are at the forefront of exploring AI use cases alongside esteemed collaborators like Google Cloud. We’re excited to be pioneering in the travel space and that we have introduced features on a global scale that nobody offers so far. Travelers can now provide an extensive search context, which we use to find the most relevant hotels for them, all while maintaining the core hotel list experience they are accustomed to. Although it’s early days and AI still presents tangible limitations, we are committed to iterating on this functionality and staying at the verge of what’s possible,” said, Johannes Thomas, CEO, trivago.

As we move forward, our focus remains on refining this integration based on our learnings that the real value lies in the customization and refinement of search results and the output is only as good as the available data. Looking ahead, we are excited about the endless possibilities that AI and machine learning bring to the travel industry. The launch of our “Smart AI Search” functionality is just the beginning. We are committed to addressing technical limitations and continuously enhancing our technological capabilities to provide users with more natural and simple ways of finding their ideal hotel.

We invite you to experience this new functionality for yourself and see how we are making travel planning smarter, faster and more intuitive than ever before. Look out for the Smart Filters prompt, shown above. It directs users to use natural language to find their ideal hotel. Join us on this journey as we continue to break new ground in the world of travel.

Explore “Smart AI Search”* and join us in redefining how travelers find their ideal hotels. Visit http://ai.trivago.com to experience our AI-powered free text search.

* “Smart AI Search” is a beta version and will be refined based on user data and insights. The feature is currently only available on desktop.

Media Contact:

naomi.mnyamana@trivago.com