How Tripadvisor Is Reimagining Travel with Qdrant

Tripadvisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform, is undergoing a deep transformation. With hundreds of millions of monthly users and over a billion reviews and contributions, it holds one of the richest datasets in the travel industry. And until recently, that data, particularly its unstructured content, had incredible untapped potential. Now, with the rise of generative AI and the adoption of tools like Qdrant’s vector database, Tripadvisor is unlocking its full potential to deliver intelligent, personalized, and high-impact travel experiences.

Activating Billions of Data Assets

The shift was driven by Rahul Todkar, Head of Data and AI who had previously overseen global AI teams. With a background in building complex data and AI products, including LinkedIn’s data, AI and vector systems, he immediately recognized the opportunity at Tripadvisor: a billion user reviews and contributions - including hundreds of millions of images - and years of behavioral data across hotels, restaurants, and experiences.

The goal was ambitious: convert this sprawling, multimodal dataset into a dynamic, AI-driven platform that enhances both user experience and business impact.

Generative AI at the Core

Tripadvisor’s generative AI strategy is built on three pillars: enhancing the user experience, improving internal productivity, and externalizing its AI capabilities to meet users beyond its own platform.

The most tangible result to date is Tripadvisor’s AI Trip Planner, a generative AI-powered tool that helps travelers build personalized itineraries through conversational prompts. This isn’t just a fancy feature; it’s delivering real impact.

2 to 3x Revenue Uplift from GenAI-Engaged Users

Since launch, Trip Planner has shown that users who interact with the generative AI tool spend significantly more. The company reports a 2 to 3 times increase in revenue from travelers using the new experience compared to those sticking with traditional interfaces. The AI not only simplifies the planning process but also helps surface better, more relevant options—driving higher conversion and satisfaction.

From Filters to Conversations: Reinventing Search

Tripadvisor is now focused on reimagining search—replacing outdated filter-and-tab systems with interactive, bidirectional search interfaces. Instead of typing rigid queries and sifting through static results, users will soon explore destinations, restaurants, or activities through dynamic, context-aware conversations.

For example, a traveler might ask: “What are the best things to do in Lisbon this weekend with kids?” Instead of sending the user to ten different blogs, the system will synthesize data across reviews, listings, photos, and preferences to deliver a tailored answer directly in the Tripadvisor product.

Why Qdrant Is Central to This Vision

To support all of this, Tripadvisor needed a way to store and retrieve complex, high-dimensional data, ranging from semantic embeddings to user behavior patterns.

The team is using Qdrant to build a user graph, a multidimensional representation of how users engage with different aspects of a trip: hotels, attractions, food, travel styles, and more. Vector-based retrieval allows them to query this data flexibly and serve responses that feel genuinely personalized.

And unlike traditional databases, Qdrant is built for real-time, unstructured data, making it ideal for powering conversational AI, search augmentation, and recommendation engines.

“Qdrant has been crucial for our transformation. When you’re dealing with over a billion plus user-generated, multi-modal pieces of content from hundreds of millions of monthly active users across 21 countries, 11M businesses and all the complex user interactions that come with it, you need a way to bring it all together. Now, we can represent everything from hotel preferences to restaurant choices to user behavior in a unified way. And we’re seeing real business results. Users engaging with our AI-powered features like trip planning are showing 2-3x more revenue.”

Rahul Todkar - Head of Data and AI

What’s Next

With Qdrant as a foundational layer, Tripadvisor is only just beginning to tap into the power of its data. The team is already exploring new use cases and looking to deepen its integration of vector search across every stage of the customer journey. And as interest grows in shared learnings and industry best practices, Tripadvisor is also helping shape how other companies apply AI in the real world.

This isn’t just a story about search; it’s about building a smarter, more adaptive travel experience. One where data is no longer just stored, but truly put to work.