Press Release

NEW YORK, NY, March 27, 2024 – Publicis Sapient, a digital transformation company, in collaboration with Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy, is now testing a transformative Generative AI-powered search product that will match travelers with the perfect home and destination based on a natural language search describing their desired vacation. This next-gen search will take travelers’ own preferences and offer a curated list of properties from the 140,000 available vacation rentals on the Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy platform.

"Generative AI is set to change the customer experience paradigm and drive new ways for brands to provide value to their customers. The new Gen AI-powered search product for Home & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy is going to transform how guests can search and plan for vacations, while further expanding Marriott’s data and AI capabilities," said Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient. “We're excited to see this latest innovation from our unique outcome-based partnership with Marriott International come to market, accelerating how we partner to create exceptional products, services and experiences for Marriott customers and their business."

Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy collaborated with Publicis Sapient to conceive, design, build and now test this transformative search product, leveraging the GPT Large Language Models (LLM) within Azure OpenAI Service.

“Finding exactly the right vacation home can be hard and time consuming but no longer,” said Peggy Fang Roe, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Marriott International. “Building on our deep focus in understanding how customers think intuitively about finding the right vacation home combined with the power of generative AI changes the game in search for vacation rentals. The long-term collaboration with Publicis Sapient has been instrumental in innovating and building the Homes and Villas by Marriott Bonvoy platform. Together, we are revolutionizing search enabling our guests to find the hidden gems within our 140,000 curated homes and villas worldwide.”

Travelers can include as little or as much detail as they’d like through this easily accessible and user-friendly search functionality, alleviating the stress that selecting a vacation property might otherwise present. A few sample searches include:

• I want to travel to London, Paris or Vienna and stay in city center 
• Best A-frame home in the mountains with a fireplace and stunning view
• I want to take a trip to California this summer where I can bring my dog
• I'm looking for a private villa in Asia with a butler and enough room for 6 people
• I need a beach front home in the Caribbean perfect for a bachelorette celebration

The results will suggest destinations and identify specific properties that meet the criteria entered in the search bar or close alternatives that meet as many of the descriptors as possible. In addition, the results will include useful information like weather and things to do at the location based on the criteria, such as hiking, sightseeing, or dining. Visitors to the site will have the option to use the new or traditional search functionality.

Homes & Villas by Marriott Bonvoy’s search with AI functionality, powered by Microsoft, is being tested initially as a part of the broader technology transformation at Marriott International to unlock value for customers with more seamless, personalized, and engaging ways to experience travel. It is expected to become widely available to all visitors first on the website and then on mobile in the coming weeks.  For more information, please visit homes-and-villas.marriott.com.

About Publicis Sapient
Publicis Sapient is a digital business transformation company. We partner with global organizations to help them create and sustain competitive advantage in a world that is increasingly digital. We operate through our expert SPEED – Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering and Data & AI – capabilities, which combined with our culture of curiosity and deep industry knowledge, enables us to deliver meaningful impact to our clients’ businesses through reimagining the products and experiences their customers truly value. Our agile, data-driven approach equips our clients’ businesses for change, making digital the core of how they think and what they do. Publicis Sapient is the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe with 20,000 people and over 50 offices worldwide. For more information, visit publicissapient.com.

Media Contact
Briana Lion
PR Manager, Publicis Sapient
briana.lion@publicisapient.com