Expedia Group today is working with AI Singapore (AISG) under the latter’s flagship 100 Experiments (100E) programme to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) solution to transform the online search experience for Asian travellers.
Expedia will provide a team of experienced engineers, data scientists and marketers to work with the AISG’s project lead, project managers and AI apprentices to enhance travel search query understanding and improve the accuracy of search query resolution in Asian languages.
With English as the dominant language being used online by 25% of all internet users, today’s search engines are extremely efficient in understanding travel search queries and providing query resolutions in the English language.
However, when dealing with travel search queries conducted in Asian languages like Japanese and Korean as well as simplified and traditional Chinese, the performance of the search engines declines significantly and the accuracy of query resolution dips.
For a start, the Expedia Group and AI Singapore project team will leverage natural language processing and machine learning to develop an AI-based model to enhance search query understanding and resolution in the Japanese language, before extending the model to other Asian languages to enhance online search efficiency.
When completed, the AI solution will enable Expedia Group to deepen its understanding of travel search query patterns and nuances in Asian languages, and equip the travel platform with the ability to serve the needs of Asian travellers better by improving the accuracy and efficiency of search query resolution.
“Under AISG’s 100E collaboration with Expedia Group, machine learning is applied to better understand search queries for Asian languages in the growing online travel market in Asia,” said Laurence Liew, director of AI Industry Innovation at AI Singapore.
More importantly, we are also using the opportunity to train Singaporean AI engineers via the AI Apprenticeship Programme,” said Liew.
