The Role of LLMs in Modern Travel: Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing various industries, including tourism. GetYourGuide (GYC), an online marketplace for travel experiences, is leveraging LLMs to enhance customer experiences and streamline operations. One of the primary applications of LLMs at GYC is content translation and localization, enabling real-time translation of travel information in users' native languages. Additionally, LLMs are used for content generation and customer support through automated FAQs and multi-turn conversations. However, challenges such as hallucinations, prompt leakage, and role consistency arise when using LLMs like ChatGPT. To address these issues, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is proposed as a solution. RAG combines an LLM, a vector database, and an embedding model to mitigate hallucinations by retrieving relevant context and feeding it to the LLM for more accurate responses. While fine-tuning a model can improve its understanding of domain-specific language, RAG offers flexibility and cost efficiency in handling diverse or dynamic queries without extensive re-training. Combining fine-tuning with RAG can result in a more robust and effective solution that meets both general and specialized requirements.