by Angela Guess

A new press release reports, “The No. 1 most visited destination in the U.S. – known for innovative vacation experiences – unveiled another ‘first’ for visitors today with the beta launch of a destination mobile app that uses WayBlazer’s IBM Watson-enabled technology. The new app taps Watson’s artificial intelligence to understand conversational language from users and offer personalized recommendations of Orlando experiences that best fit an individual’s needs and preferences. In addition, the Visit Orlando App also features augmented reality experiences for visitors to explore, have fun and earn savings throughout the destination. The app was created by Visit Orlando, Central Florida’s official tourism organization and trusted source of visitor information. It is now in public beta and can be downloaded in Apple App and Google Play stores.”

The release goes on, “Travelers begin their app experience by speaking or typing in natural language into their mobile device, the same way people normally ask questions in conversation. The Visit Orlando App uses Watson’s Natural Language Classifier andAlchemyLanguage services to enable this personalized and natural language experience. Because of WayBlazer’s Watson-enabled machine learning capabilities, the app also continuously learns from previous interactions and gains knowledge about user preferences, helping further refine its recommendations over time. Once a user asks a question, the app narrows available options based on individual-specific factors such as the traveler’s interests, time of day, location and weather. It then further refines the final recommendations by applying insights from numerous data sources such as media stories, consumer and expert blogs, trusted third-party travel resources such as TripAdvisor, and Visit Orlando’s extensive database.”

Read more at PR Newswire.

Photo credit: Visit Orlando