Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines launches a natural-language trip search tool and reports a 7.16% conversion rate
Alaska Airlines built Alaska Inspires, a natural-language search tool that lets travellers describe the trip they want in their own words, in more than 90 languages. Microsoft's customer story reports a 7.16% conversion rate against 5% for the standard booking widget, and 75% less planning time.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
7.16%
Conversion rate of Alaska Inspires since launch, as reported by Microsoft1
5%
Conversion rate of the standard booking widget, used by Microsoft as the comparison1
75%
Time saved in destination planning1
90%
Guest satisfaction rating1
What it took
The problem
Alaska Airlines found that guests planning a trip to a new place spent an average of 40 hours researching it, and often felt overwhelmed by the options. A "Where We Fly" button sat in the website menu, yet fewer than 1% of visitors clicked it. The airline saw destination choice as a matter of taste and feeling, not a filter on price or dates.
What they built
Alaska Inspires is a search tool where a traveller types or speaks a request such as a type of holiday, and gets suggested destinations. It works in more than 90 languages and accepts voice input. It links to the airline's loyalty programme, so suggestions can reflect a member's points, status and travel goals. Guests can compare options and book in the same place.
How they did it
The tool uses retrieval-augmented generation, which means the model answers from information fetched at that moment from the airline's own systems, here its APIs for prices and destinations. It was built on Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models. Alaska centralised guest data in a single customer database and added a recommendation engine. Microsoft says the team prototyped and scaled the tool in less than six months, and that its experts helped tune responses and keep pricing and destination data accurate.
Results
Microsoft reports a 7.16% conversion rate for Alaska Inspires against 5% for the standard booking widget, 75% less time spent planning, and a 90% guest satisfaction rating. It also says 87% of guests would use the tool again. The airline plans deeper personalisation and is looking at uses in HR, finance and operations.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Conversion rate of Alaska Inspires since launch, as reported by Microsoft | 7.16%1 | |
| Conversion rate of the standard booking widget, used by Microsoft as the comparison | 5%1 | |
| Time saved in destination planning | 75%1 | |
| Guest satisfaction rating | 90%1 | |
| Guests who say they will use the tool again | 87%1 |
Lessons for your project
Start from a measured customer pain. Alaska found guests spent about 40 hours planning new trips and that fewer than 1% used its existing destination page.
Compare a new channel with the booking path it sits beside. Alaska reports conversion against its standard booking widget, which gives a business case a clear baseline.
Ground the assistant in live business data. The tool pulls prices and destination facts from the airline's own systems, which keeps answers current.
Connect the tool to the loyalty programme so advice reflects each member's points and status.
Caveats
- The main source is a Microsoft customer story, so the vendor and the customer both have a reason to present results well. No independent source confirms the figures.
- The Microsoft page could not be fetched directly, so it was read from an archived copy. It prints the date 12/10/2025, read here as 10 December 2025. The June 2024 public launch date comes from the trade outlet CX Dive, which relays Microsoft's blog post.
- The sources do not say which model sits behind the tool, only that it was built with Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models.
- CX Dive rounds the conversion rate to 7%. The story does not state the period or traffic behind the 7.16% and 5% figures, or how satisfaction was measured.
Sources
- Alaska Airlines inspires destination discovery with Microsoft Foundry
Microsoft · 2025-12-10 · Vendor case study · microsoft.com
- Alaska Airlines works to simplify travel discovery with AI trip planning tool
CX Dive · 2025-12-12 · News · customerexperiencedive.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.