Tui, Europe’s biggest travel operator, has said it is investing heavily in AI as more people turn to ChatGPT to help book their holidays, including using the technology to create “inspirational” videos and content.
The chief executive, Sebastian Ebel, said the company was investing in generative engine optimisation (GEO), the latest incarnation of search engine optimisation (SEO), to help push Tui to the top of results from AI chatbots including ChatGPT and Gemini.
While traditional SEO relies on links and keywords to increase visibility in search engine results, GEO tries to increase recommendations via chatbots by ensuring a product is mentioned in the message boards, videos and other online datasets that the AI agents crunch to produce their answers.
Ebel said connecting to large language models and social media companies would help Tui to grow. “By being part of their ecosystem, not depending on Google alone any more, [we are] going into the space where our customer is,” he said. “We are building a partnership where we can optimise search, where we can broaden distribution and proximity to ChatGPT and TikTok.”
It comes as people increasingly use AI agents – autonomous digital secretaries – to help with their online shopping. This year OpenAI, Perplexity, Google and Microsoft all launched AI features that allow users to search for products through their chatbots, with agents that can complete orders on behalf of consumers.
Tui said it was using AI to help create “inspirational videos, content and translations to improve trip planning”, as well as AI-powered voice and chat agents for customer services.
It is the latest effort by the German travel operator to incorporate AI technology into its customer experience, after it started using ChatGPT in its app to provide holiday recommendations in 2023. Its first launch had some hiccups, with the Guardian finding at the time that the bot struggled with basic conversation.
Tui reported annual pre-tax profits up 20% to just over €1bn (£904m), close to a record high. Revenue rose 4% to €24.2bn but is expected to grow at a slower rate next year, between 2% and 4%, reflecting “prevailing macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties”, Tui said.
The company, which has been struggling in its core German market, also laid out plans to cut costs by €250m by 2028, though Ebel insisted “there is a big difference in having less jobs versus cutting jobs”.
He said: “Our workforce is changing and we are getting more efficient. We will not get less people in total. We want to grow and we want to be more efficient.”
The company, which has its headquarters in Hanover, employs about 67,000 people around the world. Its shares fell by 2.8% in early trading on Tuesday and are down by about 34% over the past five years.
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