Alita – Amadeus Linguistics Intelligent Travel Assistant – is described as a “computational linguistics interface for travel agents”, which Amadeus said “predicts, recommends and personalises trips for their clients using natural language processing and machine learning”.

The company said the prototype worked by using conversations between the travel agent and a customer in a retail shop, for instance, to predict preferences, show recommendations and personalise trips.

“Not only are words analysed, but also prosody [the patterns of stress and intonation in a language] in order to better capture the travellers’ preferences,” Amadeus said.

“Importantly, the way travel agents interact with the software is discreet and doesn’t break the natural flow of conversation. Not merely voice commands, this is computational linguistics used by the machine.”

Speaking at a dinner for ITT members earlier this month, Liz Emmott, general manager at Amadeus, added the new tech would enable agents to spend more time chatting with customers to create perfectly curated breaks for them.

“Alita listens to what the customer says and detects the type of person they are by the things they say and how they say them,” she explained.

“It pulls all the information on them and analyses it so it can suggest destinations and types of holidays.”

Amadeus said Alita is still a prototype and is currently being showcased during customer meetings and events, with no timeframe as to when it would be rolled out.