5 ms·

All of the demos of booking travel using AI are hilarious to me. This used to be a job a travel agent did, and planning a trip was either a fun conversation or

All of the demos of booking travel using AI are hilarious to me. This used to be a job a travel agent did, and planning a trip was either a fun conversation or you could be like "send me somewhere warm" and let them do it. Is it cheaper now that you can swear at flight booking software yourself, and scream at the hotel when they cancel your rooms that you got from a third party site that went through some other intermediary that bought the rooms at a group rate they shouldn't have been allowed to buy it at? Sure, it's cheaper. Is it better? Well, they want you to believe that. You have unlimited choice now. Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way!

TeMPOraL 7mo ago
> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.
- threetonesun 7mo ago
  Just buy insurance! Oh, it's up to you to understand what it actually covers, and it's about as much as the room/flight costs but won't you feel better about your choice?
- whatever1 7mo ago
  Similar example in the grocery stores with the self checkout. In the past if the employee did a scanning mistake, worst case the manager / customer would be mad. Now that you do it yourself if you mis scan organic tomatoes as regular tomatoes you are freaking going to jail. Ok exaggerating a bit, but having shoplifting in your record can be life changing, specially for immigrants
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    Well, even without exaggeration - if the employee made a scanning mistake, most of the time they (or the customer) would notice during or immediately afterwards, so the employee would just hit undo or scan a negative or such, and carry on. No such privilege is granted to regular customers. Instead, the self-checkout station locks itself up, and the customer has to wait several minutes for the assigned employee (who, most of the time, is also working two other tasks at the store) to show up, analyze the situation, enter service mode, and do the undo steps.
    - marcosdumay 7mo ago
      Some times I'm curious to see how stores work at the US nowadays. My experience is that the assigned employee is always looking for something to do, because he can't leave the self-checkout area, but there isn't anything to actually do there. And well, the store better not accuse honest customers of anything, or else some stuff they really won't like will happen (and that applies to poor customers too). Anyway, the experience is still so bad that I tend not to use it. But that's because the machines really suck.
      - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
        Between Costco/Target/Winco/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Kroger/Uniqlo, my experience is that I can check out quicker than before. I rarely have to wait for assistance, which itself is rarely needed. I greatly prefer the single queue in self checkouts rather than betting on which cash register line will get stuck on someone that has a pricing issue or something. Obviously, this has nothing to do with self checkouts, but I find single queues far more ubiquitous after self checkouts came around than before. For lots of stuff, a cashier is probably quicker. But I almost never have lots of stuff.
    - compiler-guy 7mo ago
      Do they ever actually analyze the situation? In my experience they just ignore any issues and hit "approve" and on you go. I could have done that myself. It's a classic false-positive problem. Most times when the self-checkout clerk has to give you attention, the problem is stupidly innocuous, so they blindly approve, as they have been trained by the system that it isn't a real problem. I'm sure plenty of things get by them this way.
- skybrian 7mo ago
  What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    They were in a position to notice and correct most mistakes near-immediately, or at least shortly after making it. For most other cases, apologies and/or reimbursements backed by insurance if needed, transparent to the customer. In self-service, all that is responsibility of the user, but it's all built on requests to third parties, so the user is not in a position to unilaterally fix a bad request.
    - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
      The travel agent is also not in a position to "unilaterally" fix a bad request, they are also requesting other parties to do things. Travel agents were not outlawed. Most people just prefer to save money and do the work themselves (for most trips) rather than pay a travel agent.
      - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        > The travel agent is also not in a position to "unilaterally" fix a bad request, they are also requesting other parties to do things. Yes, but they're already one level up, so they can fix the problems in their company's immediate system, and then unlike the customer, they're a trusted party in the network of all other parties, so they can mail/call other parties directly and get people there to fix issues without too much delay.
  - threetonesun 7mo ago
    There's multiple levels missing when you do it yourself. Usually they would do their best to sort things out. At the very least it was a single call to deal with the issue to someone who knew how to rebook flights, find new hotels, whatever, not you struggling to figure things out on your phone. For a full mistake, yes, they'd usually reimburse you, if not there are regulations around refunds and things like small claims court. Doing it yourself? Good luck! Hope you've got good service on your phone where ever you happen to be when things go wrong.
- lotsofpulp 7mo ago
  > And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy. And you can enjoy overpaying for a lower quality vacation if your travel agent is unscrupulous and getting kickbacks from vendors. That is the actual optimization that happened, I can do more research and communicate directly with vendors. Those that don’t want to are still free to pay extra for a travel agent.
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    > That is the actual optimization that happened, I can do more research and communicate directly with vendors. Only if your time is worthless.

TeMPOraL 7mo ago

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

threetonesun 7mo ago
Just buy insurance! Oh, it's up to you to understand what it actually covers, and it's about as much as the room/flight costs but won't you feel better about your choice?
whatever1 7mo ago
Similar example in the grocery stores with the self checkout. In the past if the employee did a scanning mistake, worst case the manager / customer would be mad. Now that you do it yourself if you mis scan organic tomatoes as regular tomatoes you are freaking going to jail. Ok exaggerating a bit, but having shoplifting in your record can be life changing, specially for immigrants
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  Well, even without exaggeration - if the employee made a scanning mistake, most of the time they (or the customer) would notice during or immediately afterwards, so the employee would just hit undo or scan a negative or such, and carry on. No such privilege is granted to regular customers. Instead, the self-checkout station locks itself up, and the customer has to wait several minutes for the assigned employee (who, most of the time, is also working two other tasks at the store) to show up, analyze the situation, enter service mode, and do the undo steps.
  - marcosdumay 7mo ago
    Some times I'm curious to see how stores work at the US nowadays. My experience is that the assigned employee is always looking for something to do, because he can't leave the self-checkout area, but there isn't anything to actually do there. And well, the store better not accuse honest customers of anything, or else some stuff they really won't like will happen (and that applies to poor customers too). Anyway, the experience is still so bad that I tend not to use it. But that's because the machines really suck.
    - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
      Between Costco/Target/Winco/Walmart/Home Depot/Lowes/Kroger/Uniqlo, my experience is that I can check out quicker than before. I rarely have to wait for assistance, which itself is rarely needed. I greatly prefer the single queue in self checkouts rather than betting on which cash register line will get stuck on someone that has a pricing issue or something. Obviously, this has nothing to do with self checkouts, but I find single queues far more ubiquitous after self checkouts came around than before. For lots of stuff, a cashier is probably quicker. But I almost never have lots of stuff.
  - compiler-guy 7mo ago
    Do they ever actually analyze the situation? In my experience they just ignore any issues and hit "approve" and on you go. I could have done that myself. It's a classic false-positive problem. Most times when the self-checkout clerk has to give you attention, the problem is stupidly innocuous, so they blindly approve, as they have been trained by the system that it isn't a real problem. I'm sure plenty of things get by them this way.
skybrian 7mo ago
What did travel agents do when they made a mistake? I don’t think they reimbursed people?
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  They were in a position to notice and correct most mistakes near-immediately, or at least shortly after making it. For most other cases, apologies and/or reimbursements backed by insurance if needed, transparent to the customer. In self-service, all that is responsibility of the user, but it's all built on requests to third parties, so the user is not in a position to unilaterally fix a bad request.
  - lotsofpulp 7mo ago
    The travel agent is also not in a position to "unilaterally" fix a bad request, they are also requesting other parties to do things. Travel agents were not outlawed. Most people just prefer to save money and do the work themselves (for most trips) rather than pay a travel agent.
    - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
      > The travel agent is also not in a position to "unilaterally" fix a bad request, they are also requesting other parties to do things. Yes, but they're already one level up, so they can fix the problems in their company's immediate system, and then unlike the customer, they're a trusted party in the network of all other parties, so they can mail/call other parties directly and get people there to fix issues without too much delay.
- threetonesun 7mo ago
  There's multiple levels missing when you do it yourself. Usually they would do their best to sort things out. At the very least it was a single call to deal with the issue to someone who knew how to rebook flights, find new hotels, whatever, not you struggling to figure things out on your phone. For a full mistake, yes, they'd usually reimburse you, if not there are regulations around refunds and things like small claims court. Doing it yourself? Good luck! Hope you've got good service on your phone where ever you happen to be when things go wrong.
lotsofpulp 7mo ago
> And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy. And you can enjoy overpaying for a lower quality vacation if your travel agent is unscrupulous and getting kickbacks from vendors. That is the actual optimization that happened, I can do more research and communicate directly with vendors. Those that don’t want to are still free to pay extra for a travel agent.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  > That is the actual optimization that happened, I can do more research and communicate directly with vendors. Only if your time is worthless.