Swiss International Airlines, commonly known as Swiss Airlines, applies artificial intelligence (AI) to motivate people to book travel to certain destinations. The airline came up with this solution when it realized its website destination portfolio was uninspiring and travelers sought a better and more personalized customer experience (CX).
Swiss Air applies AI to inspire travelers
Part of the Lufthansa Group, Swiss Air serves around 18 million passengers annually. Struggling to convert potential travelers into passengers, the airline was looking to get creative. One of the big issues was that people did not know all the destinations that Swiss Air covers.
At the CX Network's All Access: The AI Revolution in CX, Edward Pauls, digital adoption and innovation expert at Swiss Airlines, shared the company's efforts to use generative AI to inspire people to see the world.
"We wanted to inspire people to choose Swiss for their next destination, moving beyond the traditional 'A to B' booking mindset," he said.
Meet Heidi, a virtual AI assistant
The solution was Heidi, a generative AI assistant or chatbot "to inspire and personalize reocmmendations for travelers," said Pauls. Created in partnership with Google, potential travelers can meet Heidi, which looks similar to platforms like ChatGPT, on the company's website. Visitors can type in a description of a vacation and the virtual assistant provides details to encourage booking. On Google search, Swiss Air reminds users that Heidi is a work in progress with the following incomplete message:
"Please note that Heidi is a minimum viable product in an early development phase. Although Heidi can answer many questions correctly, she can occasionally give ..."
In fact, she might not always work because she is still in development. Swiss Air's team came up with the idea in September and rushed to develop a minimum viable product (MVP) with the help of AI experts. By October and November, Heidi was in the testing phase with a small group of customers. They provided feedback and the airline tweaked the technology accordingly. Swiss Air rolled out Heidi through the website and newsletters.
"The process showed that generative AI can enable rapid innovation in customer experience," said Pauls.
Watch the full session to hear from Pauls directly.
Help from AI-powered Heidi
The intention is for someone to type in something like "beach holiday in Europe," and get answers from Heidi about where to go, what it's like and what to do there. The responses are "sanitized and checked to ensure they align with Swiss' brand values and are safe for users," said Pauls.
"We implemented a multi-agent system to sanitize both user inputs and AI-generated outputs, filtering out harmful or inappropriate content," said Pauls. "We also made sure Heidi only recommends destinations that Swiss Air actually serves, avoiding hallucinations or misinformation. Representing Swiss' brand values in AI responses was a challenge, but we worked closely with our brand team to ensure consistency."
Still, gaining customer trust when applying AI is a challenge for most nowadays. At the beginning, users did not quite understand the purpose of Heidi, said Pauls.
"Explaining how it works and what happens with their data helped build confidence," he added. "We're planning more communication, especially via social media, to increase transparency about how Heidi operates and how user data is handled."
While some might be reluctant to share with AI, they can provide more details to Heidi to ensure they receive more personalized responses. For example, if somoeone types that she is looking for a family holiday at a beach in Europe, Heidi might recommend Barcelona and explain why families enjoy it, said Pauls.
"The assistant can also provide detailed recommendations for activities based on the user's input, making the experience more relevant and engaging," said Pauls.
What do customers think of Heidi?
The response from customers has been interesting. Somxe misunderstood Heidi's purpose and thought of it as a standard booking tool instead of a tool to turn to when seeking inspiration. The executives pondered whether to promote certain destinations over others and tried to figure out the right balance between business goals and brand values.
"There were amusing moments like users asking for recommendations on where to 'get plastered,' which led us to implement stricter content filters to maintain our premium brand image," said Pauls.
Of course, the airline wants to customize recommendations per traveler profiles and preferences. But they also want to introduce people to new destinations, places they may have never considered if not for discovering it from Heidi. After all, this is meant to be inspirational and therefore aspirational.
"We adjust the creativity of the language model to allow for both conventional and more unusual recommendations," said Pauls. "As we integrate users' travel histories, we can avoid suggesting places they've already visited and introduce them to new, less obvious destinations. This balance is something we continue to refine."
Unbothered by competition from the likes of ChatGPT, the airline focuses on making Heidi visible to those who are interested in traveling with Swiss.
"We discussed the idea of influencing [large language models] to recommend Swiss more, but that's not practical or ethical," said Pauls.
Heidi will get an upgrade. The plan is to making interactions more personal by integrating users' past travel experiences and preferences, including pricing information and highlighting underperforming destinations that might need some love. The line between man and machine may blur further, too.
"We're also working on making the chatbot more human-like and context-aware like factoring in weather forecasts for travel recommendations," says Pauls. "There's much more to come, and we see this as just the beginning of a broader, AI-driven transformation in customer experience."
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