Over the past year, the conversation around AI in digital products has rapidly shifted from distant potential to present-day experimentation. As a UX designer, I’ve been reflecting on where AI has the most meaningful impact—not just in novelty features, but in improving user flow, simplifying decision-making, and reducing operational inefficiencies.
Recently, I attended a presentation that explored ways AI could be embedded into customer- and partner-facing experiences. While the projects shared are still in development, they offered a thought-provoking glimpse into how AI can enhance the trip journey from both ends: for the traveller seeking relevance and for the accommodation partner seeking clarity.
This article offers a designer’s perspective on how AI might soon be leveraged to reduce friction, personalise content, and help teams shift away from rigid A/B testing towards scalable, contextual solutions.
Surfacing the right Information, at the right time
Travellers often face a common challenge: too much information, not enough clarity. Whether it’s navigating long property descriptions, scrolling through hundreds of reviews, or trying to understand vague amenity listings, the process can feel more like work than discovery.
AI offers an opportunity to reshape this experience entirely. Instead of relying on static text blocks, property content could be dynamically summarised based on a traveller’s context or previous interactions. For instance, if someone previously filtered by “quiet neighbourhoods,” AI could prioritise reviews or highlights that confirm soundproof rooms or peaceful surroundings.
This allows for better alignment between user interest and property presentation without the need to manage dozens of content variations manually.
Helping accommodation partners find answers faster
On the partner side, many accommodation owners and managers rely on support teams or static documentation to find answers about platform setup, policy changes, or technical requirements. These materials can be extensive and detailed, but not always easy to search or interpret under time pressure.
Imagine a scenario where an AI-powered assistant could guide partners through setup, flag missing actions, and proactively suggest improvements. Rather than scrolling through help articles or waiting on support tickets, partners could ask natural-language questions and receive tailored, accurate responses. For example:
- “How do I activate calendar syncing for my second property?”
- “Why is my exclusive discount not showing to travellers?”
This not only improves partner efficiency but also reduces dependency on human support teams, particularly during high-traffic seasons.
Designing for personalisation without manual overhead
From a UX perspective, AI provides an elegant workaround to a long-standing problem: how do we serve different users with different needs, without bloating the interface or multiplying variations?
Traditionally, this meant running segmented A/B tests, launching new feature flags, or creating dedicated content versions. But AI allows for on-the-fly contextualisation, presenting the most relevant content to each user without fragmenting the experience. This could mean:
- Dynamic property highlights based on user behaviour
- Personalised checkout nudges for hesitant bookers
- Tailored recommendations during the discovery phase, without forcing users to filter endlessly
It’s not about replacing the role of the designer, but about designing smarter entry points and feedback loops that work in partnership with AI.
New design responsibilities emerging
If AI is responsible for creating micro-content, serving recommendations, or answering help queries, our role as designers begins to evolve. We may find ourselves:
- Designing prompt structures and AI inputs
- Curating tone-of-voice guardrails for machine-generated responses
- Ensuring feedback loops that allow users to flag irrelevant or unhelpful answers
- Mapping which touchpoints are better handled by AI, and which still require human nuance
These responsibilities align more with system thinking than static interface creation, and will likely grow in importance as platforms scale their AI usage.
A future of one-to-one experiences
The long-term opportunity with AI is not just efficiency, but experience. When implemented thoughtfully, AI can enable unique, context-aware interactions for every user, making digital products feel less like mass-market tools and more like personalised assistants.
We’re not there yet. But for designers, it’s the right time to start asking:
- Where are users overloaded with content or options?
- Where are support teams answering the same questions repeatedly?
- Where can AI improve clarity, not just speed?
By focusing on use cases grounded in real behaviour and friction points, we can begin shaping AI features that meaningfully support both sides of the booking experience.