The latest version of Penny, Priceline's AI-powered travel assistant, enables users to book trips without leaving their conversation, thanks to agentic AI functionality.
"The next generation of Penny is built around a simple idea: describe the trip you want and Penny handles the rest, helping travelers understand their choices, book with confidence and get to the trip they want faster," said Cobus Kok, Priceline's vice president of AI experiences.
Penny can understand complex trip requests, provide real-time pricing and availability and present users with varied options for their trips, according to Priceline.
"Where traditional online travel search requires navigating filters, tabs and separate browser windows, Penny can take a request like, 'compare flights from New York to Paris, Berlin or Madrid for the first week of July,' share options across destinations and let travelers book their trip without leaving the conversation," said Priceline, which is part of Booking Holdings (No. 1 on Travel Weekly's Power List).
Penny first rolled out in 2023.
Penny's new features
In its latest form, the center of the user experience is a live and interactive map. Priceline said that as a traveler's conversation with Penny evolves, options they are shown will sharpen. A "preference layer" covers the whole experience that includes both traveler behavior and preferences shared, like budget, location and trip purpose.
Penny provides Penny's Picks, which are presented as options that will deliver the most value to travelers.
The Penny's Take feature gives users deep looks at individual properties, which is in beta for hotels right now, Priceline said, and it will be expanded throughout the platform.
Penny is Priceline's proprietary AI, though the company does work with AI models like Claude. Penny has access to real-time travel inventory as well as decades of Priceline data to help make its recommendations.
In total, Penny is made up of more than 10 specialized agents to make its recommendations to end users.
Priceline estimates those who use Penny, as opposed to calling customer support, save nearly 10 minutes. Penny users are also more engaged with a higher conversion rate, according to Priceline.