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For a startup that has been around for just two years we really didn’t expect to reach 3.0 so fast. However, this summer our team really got down to business and was able to push out several important new features which definitely called for a 3.0 release.
Let’s start from the newly redesigned landing page, where you will notice a funny little character at the bottom …
The future of online travel
There has been a lot of llama talking lately at Wayaj, what was born as an entertaining character to lighten up our landing page has quickly become a full-fledged virtual assistant.
Wayaj’s Super-Llama virtual assistant -a.k.a. chatbot in tech speak- has been designed to help Wayajers plan their sustainable trip and answer questions. The Super-Llama is our artificial intelligence (AI) engine, to train it and achieve great recognition of speech patterns really takes millions of interactions, so we had long conversations with her to teach her how to behave in public. However she is still very young, she’s technically a cria (that is the actual name of a llama cub) so please excuse her if sometimes she doesn’t really catch your drift. Users can ask questions like “find hotel in New York for Halloween”, “what is the carbon footprint”, she can also tell jokes and has hidden easter eggs, for those of you who like to hunt them.
In the future months, as we keep training the llama to refine its understanding of travel speech patterns, we plan to expand the AI to recommendations and to voice assistants like Google Home and Alexa.
Advanced carbon footprint calculator
Travel and tourism are the sixth industry for carbon emissions globally. As part of our mission to educate tourists to travel more sustainably, we have designed a new accurate carbon footprint calculator which makes it easy to see how our choices in terms of means of transportation and destination really affect the current climate emergency. Users can split their itinerary in multiple segments and specify the type of transportation for each segment to create an accurate account of the carbon emissions generated.
Easy. Fun. Earth-friendly.
Instant booking!
Last but not least, Wayaj now offers instant booking. If you see the blue icon with the thunderbolt (and there is also a filter on the landing page) it means that you can confirm your accommodation and rate right away and pay for it. Our rates are competitive with those you find on other online travel sites (Expedia, Trivago etc…), because we believe that sustainable travel doesn’t need to cost more. All you need to do after that is to show up at the hotel with your confirmation number,…. and of course offset the travel carbon footprint, which is on us if you book before October 31st, 2019
From urban hotels for business trips to faraway unique resorts, many sustainable destinations around the world await for you and with Wayaj you can rest assured that you make the best informed choice to minimize the impact on our planet!
What’s next?
In the next few weeks, you can expect more design improvements as we are working to fine tune the user experience with all these new features. Also on our to-do list, as we keep training the llama to refine its understanding of travel speech patterns, we plan to expand the AI to recommendations and to voice assistants like Google Home and Alexa.
Stay tuned, ask the llama, travel sustainably with Wayaj and leave your reviews to help other eco-conscious travelers make the right choice!
