MakeMyTrip’s New AI Bet. Plus: Air India Suspends Washington DC Service

MakeMyTrip wants to be a superapp, just adding more offerings to its portfolio will not help it get there. Its Gen AI trip planner is the next big differentiator for the online travel company.

In an upgrade to its existing AI agent Myra, MakeMyTrip has launched a Gen AI-enabled trip planning assistant. The tool will provide conversational assistance to travelers across each stage of travel planning including destination discovery, shopping, in-trip, and post-sales stages, the company said in a statement.

Travelers will be able to use the new Gen AI trip planning assistant through voice and text. MakeMyTrip has currently launched the beta version of this tool in English and Hindi and is planning to expand it to multiple Indian languages. “This will ensure that users across India who have previously been unable to book due to discomfort with the English language, will now be able to do so,” the company said in a statement.

In an earnings call last month, MakeMyTrip Group CEO Rajesh Magow said that the company is betting on AI to stand out. “We’ve seen a lot of promise coming out of Gen AI, and we’ve been investing significantly behind that, and we will continue to keep investing,” Magow said. “We see it more as sort of leading the innovation through Gen AI, rather than overtly getting paranoid about potential disruption.”

The Rise of AI: Multiple travel companies are using Generative AI and agentic AI to assist travelers in the booking process.

Skift recently spoke to five online travel agencies in India to understand how they are using AI.

According to MakeMyTrip, the differentiator for its upgraded planning assistant is that it goes beyond giving suggestions to customers. “Multiple AI platforms globally stop at suggestions, Myra is taking a course that hasn't been attempted before by bridging the gap between inspiration and actual booking, letting users move from query to confirmed booking in one conversatio