Give an AI assistant a vague request to arrange a trip to New York, and it still has to produce an itinerary precise enough to book. The collaboration initially focuses on TripServices, Travelport’s booking and servicing platform, which launched in June. Jordan discussed the work as part of the Seeking Value video series presented by Cognizant.
Joining him was Nambi Palanivelu, vice president and strategic business unit head at Cognizant, overseeing retail, consumer goods, travel and hospitality. Gabriel Snyder, Newsweek’s executive editor, enterprise, moderated the conversation. AI assistants can help travelers explore destinations and compare options, but completing a reservation requires specific dates, availability and booking conditions.
A request to book a trip within company policy, for example, leaves open whose policy applies and which restrictions govern the booking. Those ambiguities have to be resolved before a reservation can be confirmed. Palanivelu said the demand for precision applies to hotel reservations, payments and loyalty-point redemptions.
Jordan believes consumers have another reason to hesitate before handing purchases over to AI: trust. He compared the prospect to autonomous vehicles, arguing that people’s willingness to surrender control can lag behind the technology itself. The stakes rise when travel plans unravel.
Jordan identified unexpected disruptions, including delayed and rerouted flights, as the hardest part of servicing trips with AI. Mistakes in handling refunds can expose to significant regulatory penalties. Cognizant is applying Claude to the engineering work behind those transactions.
Palanivelu said the models can trace business processes through existing software to generate test cases and update those tests as policies and data structures change. Consider a canceled flight affecting 200 passengers. Some travelers may need to be rebooked, others may require partial refunds and the transactions could involve multiple currencies, jurisdictions and time zones.
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