Despegar has enhanced its artificial intelligence travel assistant Sofia, unveiled earlier this year, with a raft of new features.
While announcing first quarter 2024 results, the company said the service now includes hotel recommendations and enables users to search by city and dates as well as budget and key amenities.
Sofia also has more personalized features according to the user’s stage in the travel planning cycle from pre-acquisition to in-trip, post-trip and by country.
Further enhancements are planned for the near future, including maps with special offers and smart filtering.
The updates were announced as Despegar reported gross bookings up 12% year over year to $1.3 billion in Q1. Revenue increased 9% to to $173 million while adjusted EBITDA came in at $39 million, up 126% year over year.
Despegar attributed the bookings increase to “robust demand,” particularly in Brazil and Mexico.
Adjusted net income for the Latin American online travel agency increased 68% in Q1 to $22 million versus the same period in 2023.
Loyalty program members increased 83% to almost 26 million year over year. Transactions made via Despegar’s app hit almost 49% of total transactions compared with 36% year over year.
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Damian Scokin, CEO of Despegar, said, "During the first quarter we built on our strong results of the year 2023 by continuing to drive solid top-line growth, particularly in Brazil and Mexico, and achieving our highest EBITDA margin ever. Our ability to offer compelling value and a superior customer experience through our industry leading technology platform, coupled with the most comprehensive range of payment options in Latin America, continues to position us as the leading travel technology company in the region. These core capabilities also enable us to further capitalize on the travel market’s strong secular growth trends.
"We also built on our impressive track record of innovation, with the recent launch of our exciting AI travel assistant, Sofia. We are thrilled by the many ways customers are already engaging with Sofia, and we are using customer feedback from these interactions to refine and enhance her capabilities. Additionally, customers can now use Sofia to search for hotels as well as a growing number of other travel services and offers.”
Earlier this year in an interview with PhocusWire, Scokin shared learnings from the testing phase of its app as well as how it is using AI in other parts of the business.
The company has updated its guidance for 2024 following the results with revenue of at least $820 million, which would represent a 16% increase on 2023. Meanwhile, adjusted EBITDA is expected to hit $155 million, up 34% year over year.