Toronto,
03
August
2016
|
21:43
Europe/Amsterdam

Booking.com Pilots a New, Smarter, Mobile-Based In-Destination Experience

With the newly launched ‘Booking Experiences’ your smartphone will soon be all you need for a highly curated, frictionless experience wherever your travels take you

TORONTO – July 14, 2016 So you’ve found the perfect destination and booked an amazing place to stay.. but what do you do while you’re there? Today Booking.com, the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest choice of incredible places to stay, announced the pilot release of its new Booking Experiences product. The ultimate technology response to take the friction out of the in-destination experience, Booking Experiences will allow travellers to discover the best a destination has to offer, all through a mobile device. Booking Experiences is a first-of-its-kind, highly curated, mobile-led experience that will ultimately harness Artificial Intelligence technology and powerful machine-learning to predict individual traveller intent and create a truly convenient, personalised in-destination experience—all on demand, with hassle-free payment and priority queueing. Booking Experiences is available today on both the Android and iOS versions of the Booking.com app for those who have accommodations booked in Amsterdam. The pilot launches for Booking Experiences Paris, London and Dubai are set to go live at the end of this month, with New York city set to go live in the autumn of 2016.

Unlike other experience-seeking tools, Booking Experiences is managed entirely within the Booking.com app without having to rely on or redirect to 3rd-party websites. Once travellers have booked a stay in one of the first cities to offer Booking Experiences, via a single QR code in the Booking.com app a traveller can get instant booking access to all of the participating venues and attractions in that destination. Booking Experiences eliminates the need to book in advance or wait in lines to buy tickets— simply show up to the attraction you’re interested in, scan the code from your smartphone and enjoy. The QR code is automatically linked to your credit card of choice.

Travellers can view the full list of available things to do and visit for their destination in advance and/or simply explore on the go once they arrive. Booking Experiences provides the ultimate in flexibility and convenience, as travellers only pay for those experiences they choose to take advantage of, with the freedom to decide on the go and the peace of mind knowing that there’s always a spot reserved.

Booking.com has leveraged insights from its millions of travellers about what they liked (and didn’t like) about various destinations and the experiences they had there. Combining this endorsement data with a customer’s previous travel preferences, where that person is at the moment in a specific destination, as well as third-party data like the current waiting time at the most popular museum, the Booking Experiences technology will eventually learn over time to provide a traveller with increasingly personalized, relevant and timely suggestions to personalize the in-destination experience.

“With Booking Experiences, our passion for data-driven insights, our deep knowledge of travel and our ambition to smartly infuse Artificial Intelligence technology into our product are all coming together to create a new, uniquely mobile travel experience that’s curated, seamless and personal,” said David Vismans, Chief Product Officer at Booking.com. “The technology behind Booking Experiences will continuously learn from your travel preferences, as well as other travellers like you, to eventually present you with increasingly curated options that are just right for you. Our ultimate goal is to keep you inspired, regardless of whether it’s your first—or fifth time visiting a particular location.”

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CONTACT DETAILS FOR BOOKING.COM:

For further information, contact the Booking.com Canadian press office:

annie@punchcanada.com / 416.668.3393

About Booking.com:

Booking.com is the world leader in booking hotel and other accommodations online. It guarantees the best prices for any type of property – from small independents to five-star luxury. Guests can access the Booking.com website anytime, anywhere from their desktops, mobile phones and tablet devices, and they don’t pay booking fees – ever. The Booking.com website is available in 42 languages, offers over 974,000 hotels and accommodations including more than 474,000 vacation rental properties and covers over 93,000 destinations in 224 countries and territories worldwide. It features over 97M reviews written by guests after their stay, and attracts online visitors from both leisure and business markets around the globe. With over 19 years of experience and a team of over 11,000 dedicated employees in over 176 offices worldwide, Booking.com operates its own in-house customer service team, which is available 24/7 to assist guests in their native languages and ensure an exceptional customer experience.

Established in 1996, Booking.com B.V. owns and operates Booking.com™, and is part of The Priceline Group (NASDAQ: PCLN). Follow us on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, like us on Facebook, or learn more at http://www.booking.com.