Alaska Airlines inspires destination discovery with Microsoft Foundry

Alaska Airlines identified guests were spending 40-plus hours in planning trips and rarely using AlaskaAir.com’s Where We Fly tool, making travel discovery overwhelming and impersonal.

In response, Alaska Airlines launched Alaska Inspires, a natural language search tool that brings the emotion into travel planning. Built with Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, Alaska Inspires personalizes destination discovery and booking.

Alaska Inspires has increased conversion rates to 7.16%, saving guests 75% of planning time and achieving 90% user satisfaction.

Planning a trip should be exciting, not exhausting. But Alaska Airlines found its guests were spending an average of 40 hours researching trips to new destinations, often overwhelmed by options and unsure what destination was right for them. Even with a prominent “Where We Fly” button on the AlaskaAir.com top menu, fewer than 1% were clicking on it.

“We realized that dreaming about and discovering all-new travel destinations isn’t an analytical problem. It’s one of passion that must take personal preferences and emotional desires into account,” says Bernadette Berger, Director of Innovation at Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines saw an opportunity to reimagine travel discovery as an emotional journey, not just a transactional one.

“Alaska Inspires helps our guests discover new destinations, using their natural language. Azure OpenAI enables our teams to tap into what inspires our guests’ travel decisions.”

Natalie Bowman, VP of Digital Experience, Alaska Airlines

Reimagining travel with natural language search

To help guests find the right destination for their specific travel vibe, Alaska Airlines launched Alaska Inspires—the world’s first customer-facing natural language search tool offered by an airline for charting a travel journey. Built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, part of Microsoft Foundry, the solution makes it possible for travelers to ask questions like, “Where can I see live music this summer?” or, “I want a diving adventure with vibrant coral—where should I go?”

Supporting 90-plus languages and including voice input, Alaska Inspires also connects to Alaska Airlines’ Atmos Loyalty Program to personalize recommendations based on points, status, and travel goals. Guests can now discover, compare, understand, and book—all in one place, helping travelers make confident decisions.

“Alaska Inspires helps our guests discover new destinations, using their natural language. Azure OpenAI enables our teams to tap into what inspires our guests’ travel decisions,” explains Natalie Bowman, Vice President of Digital Experience at Alaska Airlines.

Choosing Microsoft for a deep, existing relationship, along with its flexible ecosystem and access to the most advanced and up-to-date models in Azure, the airline quickly prototyped and scaled Alaska Inspires in less than six months. The team is now using Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot—all within the highly secure Azure environment.

“Microsoft isn’t just selling tech; they’re helping us unlock more value. We built on what we had, moved fast, and delivered something that truly helps guests discover the unexpected,” says Bowman.

Unlocking business impact and guest satisfaction

Alaska Inspires centralizes guest data in a single customer database and supports a recommendation engine. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to deliver responses grounded in real-time data from Alaska Airlines’s APIs.

Since launch, the solution has delivered measurable results:

7.16% conversion rate, outperforming the standard 5% booking widget
75% time saved in destination planning
90% guest satisfaction rating
87% of guests say they’ll use the tool again

In addition, Alaska Inspires earned the 2024 Future Travel Experience “Most Innovative Airline Initiative” award.

Looking ahead to AI as the heart of transformation

With direct access to Microsoft experts, Alaska Airlines avoids common deployment challenges, fine-tuning model responses, eliminating hallucinations, and ensuring pricing and destination data remain accurate. And as Alaska Airlines completes its acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines, it’s ramping up business process transformation with AI at the center.

“Microsoft has been a key partner in delivering our holistic AI strategy. Alaska Inspires is a great example of how our teams can quickly build, test, and launch GenAI experiences using Azure OpenAI.”

Charu Jain, SVP of Merchandising and Innovation, Alaska Airlines

The future includes enhancing Alaska Inspires, building in deeper personalization, and exploring new use cases across HR, finance, and operations. The modular architecture makes it easy to extend the experience, expanding AI-assisted discovery into other parts of the guest journey.

Alaska Airlines is also learning from other industries and actively evaluating how AI can reimagine business processes end-to-end. This mindset is helping unlock new revenue and drive greater operational efficiency across the enterprise, while keeping the guest experience at the core.

“Microsoft has been a key partner in delivering our holistic AI strategy. Alaska Inspires is a great example of how our teams can quickly build, test, and launch GenAI experiences using Azure OpenAI,” says Charu Jain, Senior Vice President of Merchandising and Innovation at Alaska Airlines.

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