Shopping Assistant Bot Mezi Announces Travel Service at #MobileBeat2016

At today’s #MobileBeat2016, the annual flagship event by VentureBeat, chatbot company Mezi announced the launch of travel concierge services for its mobile app and SMS users. Powered by artificial intelligence technology and natural language processing, Mezi can assist with a wide range of travel needs, from booking hotels and flights to making restaurant reservations and tracking entire itineraries.

Developers behind Mezi aim to build a chatbot with personality — an approach called “consciousness design” that is emerging among such Silicon Valley’s AI pioneers as the Amazon Echo. In a guest post for VentureBeat, Mezi’s CEO Swapnil Shinde explained how his company worked to create a highly personalized bot interaction experience using emoji communications, specific voice and personality traits, and other design elements.  

According to Shinde, the Mezi bot is programmed to learn user’s individual needs and behaviors in order to deliver highly personalized recommendations. In the case of travel shopping assistance, this would include suggesting hotels based on proximity to nearby landmarks or appointments, or amenities such as WIFI and numbers of beds. Mezi can also take into account reward benefits when helping users make purchase decisions.

Mezi is reportedly able to suggest hotel and travel booking options in less than two minutes and to handle a majority of typical travel requests from end-to-end without need for human intervention. “In conjunction with our full-service shopping app, our new bots are helping us to create an intelligent pathway for conversational-commerce on mobile,” said Mezi CEO and Co-founder Swapnil Shinde in an official company statement. “Mezi is providing the best of both worlds: mobile convenience and expert assistance. As our AI advances in other product categories, we look forward to serving even more customers while keeping their experiences consistently human.”

MobileBeat2016 | Credit: venturebeat.com

This year’s MobileBeat conference is dedicated to exploring the booming world of bots and artificial intelligence. A dozen of companies and startups are expected to announce their latest bot-enabled products and services at the two-day event. NewsCenter.io will closely follow the announcement news as they happen. Stay tuned.