Setting Sail for Smooth Journeys: How Setur's Azure Open AI Chatbot Transforms Travel

Setur Servis Turistik (Setur), founded by Koç Holding in 1964 as a duty-free branch, has become one of Türkiye’s biggest household names. Today, it operates over 50 duty-free stores across the country and portfolio of businesses operating at every point of tourism, travel, and transportation. Always ahead of industry trends, the company embraces artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, stepping into an era of smart travel with Microsoft Azure as its primary technology platform. 

Travelling globally with AI

Setur’s digital transformation journey began in 2017 by centralizing its core systems on Azure. “We selected Azure with a belief that it would grow alongside our business,” recalls Alphan Kimyonok, CIO at Setur. “Since then, we’ve seen how Azure has continually offered new services spanning across software, data, and infrastructure.”

Setur adopted Azure OpenAI to create an enterprise chatbot that serves as a global travel assistant for customers in order to transform travel services.  “We aspire to be a global tourism company,” says Kimyonok. “Achieving this would be impossible with using only traditional channels like agents, call centers, or tourism agencies—we cannot fully avoid queues and labor bottlenecks.”

Setur utilized Azure OpenAI to develop its chatbot after experiencing challenges with other solutions. “Developing the initial chatbots before Azure OpenAI required significant effort—we had to implement thousands of rules to make it useful. And even when we launched one of the earliest versions of the chatbot, it was unable to reduce call volume because it could not autonomously respond to a large number of inquiries” recalls Erdal Sekerci, Data and Analytics Manager at Setur.

Azure OpenAI, in contrast, provided enterprise-level reliability, security, and compliance, while integrating seamlessly with Setur's existing Azure infrastructure. "Knowing that Azure principles were incorporated into OpenAI was a significant factor,” Sekerci says. “The process also went smoothly because IT infrastructure were already hosted on Azure, so integrating the chatbot with our website was straightforward.”

Setur’s team launched the pioneering AI project in record time. “Azure got us up to speed,” shares Kimyonok. “We created a prototype within a month with the assistance of numerous Microsoft consultants.”

Where can I find a souvenir? Instant responses to travel queries

Microsoft and Setur powered the chatbot with Azure OpenAI to use Setur’s hotel data, including pricing and promotions, to offer highly personalized and rapid travel advisory services. “Although our customer support and travel agents are highly experienced, they are not always able to provide immediate responses,” Sekerci notes. “But with Azure OpenAI, requests and queries like ‘Make a plan for my beach holiday’ or ‘where can I buy souvenirs in town?’ can be answered instantly by the chatbot. This provides more meaningful interactions for our users," says Sekerci.

Changing the course of travel experiences

The chatbots deliver critical operational efficiencies by assisting agents with providing vital support. “We expect that between five to 10 percent of 60,000 daily users to interact with the chatbot. During peak season, those figures could double,” reveals Orkun Mehmet Kiliclioglu, BI and Analytics Process Leader at Setur.

The technology is also set to revolutionize the search experience. "We will simplify intricate searching and the purchasing process,” says Sekerci. “I foresee us having a natural language search bar or voice search for customers to find anything they want.”

Sharing the vision for Setur’s transformation, Kimyonok says, “I believe conversational bots will radically change user interfaces. Possibly one day we can expect to use an application with only a single microphone icon. Whatever the future, we’re on a brink of a new era of highly personalized and efficient end-to-end travel experiences.”