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The return of the (robot) travel agent
As the internet took over, millennials ditched travel agents in favor of a DIY approach. With AI, they’re rediscovering the joys of letting someone — or something — else do the planning.
Edie Cohen, a travel agent with more than 50 years of experience (starting when she was 14, with a temp job during the 1966 New York City school strike), recalls phone calls and reservations written on index cards giving way to teletype and then fax. When I recently booked a hotel in Tokyo, I spent a few weeks exploring neighborhoods on Google Street View, peering into the pixelated windows of stand-up bars and ramen shops. Some of that can be managed by rephrasing your queries and asking the AI to correct its errors, explains Jaideep Patil, a developer of Forge My Trip, a tool that helps make those refinements.
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