HomeToGo previews end-to-end travel journey AI companion, Super AI Sunny, and announces enhancements in collaboration with Google Cloud's Vertex AI

Luxembourg, 22 May 2024 - HomeToGo SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: HTG), the SaaS-enabled marketplace with the world’s largest selection of vacation rentals, today announced new updates on its product vision to build a fully AI-powered marketplace. Following its 2023 launch of AI Mode to revolutionize search for vacation rentals, HomeToGo debuted a first glimpse into building a comprehensive AI travel companion during its Capital Markets Day in 2023. Today HomeToGo officially unveiled its product plans to further fuel its distinction as the AI leader in the vacation rental industry:

• Announced the full vision for its future AI companion for the complete travel journey: Super AI Sunny. This AI-powered sidekick will intuitively guide HomeToGo guests through every aspect of travel planning, including search, booking and even post-booking support.
• As a step towards the Super AI Sunny vision, HomeToGo today revealed its first beta version with AI Sunny, an upgrade to its existing guest support chatbot, Sunny. As a new AI-powered travel assistant for supporting guests while booking, AI Sunny is powered by the same trusted AI platform as HomeToGo’s AI Mode is for search.
• Announced a collaboration with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI on the Company’s path to building a fully AI-powered marketplace.
• Launched new product upgrades with complementary brands to fuel its value as the go-to destination for holistic travel planning, including SQUAKE, komoot, and WeatherPromise.

Dr. Patrick Andrae, Co-Founder & CEO of HomeToGo: “At HomeToGo we don’t see AI as a trend but as a transformative shift with endless opportunities to empower our travelers and supply partners. The key for any AI endeavor is to constantly update your understanding about where model innovation of the likes of OpenAI, Meta or Google ends and where your own innovation can begin. We’ve earned a reputation in our industry as AI pioneers, having been the first to launch an AI product that revolutionized vacation rental search with AI Mode, making valuable learnings very early. Now, we’re complementing AI Mode for search to booking by upgrading our guest relations chatbot to an AI-powered travel assistant. Looking ahead, we plan to combine these technologies plus our invaluable learnings to build Super AI Sunny, an AI-powered sidekick that is always available as a personal travel assistant, for comprehensive travel planning from search to booking to post-booking. By combining the core vacation rental data only available to HomeToGo with the rapidly growing power of various LLMs out there, we continue to leverage new and useful advancements in AI as quickly as possible. Our extensive history with AI and the fact that we don’t wait for big, fancy launch dates means our travelers will be able to benefit from Super AI Sunny as soon as it’s ready for the market.”

Beyond Super AI Sunny, HomeToGo also announced several trailblazing AI developments that are currently launched in beta ahead of the busy summer travel season.

Introducing AI Sunny: Beta launch of HomeToGo’s AI-powered travel assistant for booking support

As progress towards HomeToGo’s Super AI Sunny vision, HomeToGo today first announced AI Sunny in beta. AI Sunny is an evolution of HomeToGo’s existing chatbot, Sunny, as a new AI-powered travel assistant that provides instant guest relations support for vacation rental bookings. AI Sunny complements HomeToGo’s existing AI Mode, its generative AI-powered search tool, by enabling guests to now ask and receive instant support for simple to complex booking-related questions via written, personalized conversation.

In a recent survey, HomeToGo found a clear demand for AI in travel booking, with 61% of U.S. travelers considering conversational AI to help with travel support and 72% saying they would use AI to find the perfect accommodation.[1] While HomeToGo’s award winning Guest Relations team still has dedicated in-house agents to provide a human touch in complex cases, AI Sunny’s beta launch has already improved escalation rate to human agents by about 40% versus the previous standard chatbot integration, improving efficiency while preserving a high quality service for travelers. 

Vision for Super AI Sunny

Looking ahead, HomeToGo’s AI Mode and AI Sunny products will be merged together to provide the foundation for Super AI Sunny, the company’s future AI companion for the full travel journey. Super AI Sunny will provide instant support for search, booking, and post-booking to make the entire trip planning experience personalized, intuitive and as simple as having a conversation with a well traveled friend.

• Search: Super AI Sunny can help guests find their uniquely ideal rental for any travel use case. For example, a two-bedroom villa with a pool that’s close to great hiking trails in Italy.
• Booking: The new AI companion will be on hand to answer any questions related to a specific rental - such as clarifying the pet or cancellation policy of a home, or information on parking options.
• Post-booking: Super AI Sunny will go beyond search and booking to help guests create unforgettable memories during their trip. In the future, Super AI Sunny could empower travelers with trip-related tasks such as creating personalized packing lists, sharing local restaurant recommendations, providing weather forecasts, and more - all based on the home the guests are staying in.

Enhancing HomeToGo AI in collaboration with Google Cloud’s Vertex AI

On its product journey and vision to build a fully AI-powered marketplace, HomeToGo has developed a central AI application dubbed by the project name AI Autobahn. This gateway centralizes and unifies all product use cases for AI while strategically remaining LLM agnostic overall. HomeToGo today announced its plans to leverage Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform capabilities as part of AI Autobahn, including Vertex AI’s model garden that offers a wide range of possibilities to train and customize LLMs depending on which capabilities best fit a given use case.

One of the key LLM models HomeToGo is currently leveraging are Google Cloud’s Gemini models, now being tested to power HomeToGo Smart AI Reviews. These generative AI-summarized reviews from trusted guests highlight key information based on each traveler’s unique intent, as well as most loved features of a home to help guests quickly make informed booking decisions. Google Cloud’s Gemini models offer an array of benefits as an LLM to power this key product, including a notable strong quality in terms of speed and reliability.

Additional product upgrades with complementary brands

HomeToGo also introduced new and updated Add-On features now in beta that offer even more for travelers to return to HomeToGo for easy end-to-end trip planning this summer:

• SQUAKE: Travelers are empowered to compensate for the carbon emissions associated with their vacation rental stays via a tailor-made product solution from SQUAKE. Now being tested as a post-booking experience across all HomeToGo markets on web.
• komoot: Travelers have free access to ready-made, nearby routes to their vacation rental bookings for biking, hiking and beyond from the outdoor experts at komoot. Now available for adventurous travelers in Germany on the HomeToGo App.
• WeatherPromise: German travelers can now protect their vacation rental getaways with a revolutionary weather guarantee, including the promise of a full refund of their vacation rental if it rains for a specified period of time during their trip.

Media Note: Product images and concepts for editorial use can be found here.

About HomeToGo 

HomeToGo was founded in 2014 with a vision to make incredible homes easily accessible to everyone. HomeToGo has since grown to become the SaaS-enabled marketplace with the world’s largest selection of vacation rentals.

With 15M+ offers across thousands of trusted partners globally, HomeToGo’s AI-powered B2C Marketplace expertly matches supply and demand to connect travelers with the perfect vacation rental for any trip around the world. As the go_to destination for vacation rentals, the HomeToGo Marketplace offers the world’s largest vacation rental selection combined with an end-to-end convenient, trusted and intuitive product experience.

HomeToGo_PRO, the Company’s B2B business segment, offers innovative Software & Service Solutions including Subscriptions for the whole travel market with a special focus on SaaS for the supply-side of vacation rentals.

While HomeToGo SE's registered office is located in Luxembourg, HomeToGo GmbH is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. HomeToGo operates localized apps and websites in 25 countries.

HomeToGo SE is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the stock ticker “HTG”.

For more information visit: www.hometogo.com/about
 

Media Contact
Caroline Burns
press@hometogo.com

Investor Relations Contact
Sebastian Grabert, CFA
+49 157 501 63731
IR@hometogo.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of the words "may", "will", "should", "plan", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "project", "goal" or "target" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, forecasts, estimates, projections, opinions or plans that are inherently subject to significant risks, as well as uncertainties and contingencies that are subject to change. No representation is made or will be made by HomeToGo SE that any forward-looking statement will be achieved or will prove to be correct. The actual future business, financial position, results of operations and prospects may differ materially from those projected or forecast in the forward-looking statements. Neither HomeToGo SE nor any of their respective affiliates assume any obligation to update, and do not expect to publicly update, or publicly revise, any forward-looking statements or other information contained in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law.

^[1] Representative survey conducted by HomeToGo among 2,000 travelers, with 1,000 each in the U.S. and in DE. The Survey was conducted on 24 April 2024 together with the survey provider Appinio.