Driven By Strong Demand from Travelers Searching for Vacation Destinations, Desti Takes On Google Search

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Desti, makers of the smart travel planner, is announcing the launch of Desti Discovery Assistant, a powerful search capability that automatically finds relevant articles from top sources about the user's places of interest. Now users can easily discover and read professional reviews, trip suggestions and tips by top magazines, newspapers and similar trusted sources. These articles are extremely hard to discover using Google as they are rarely on the first page results and because of the incredible investment in search engine marketing and optimization by online travel agents, who also do content marketing to garner favorable search results.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131002/SF90681-a)

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131002/SF90681-b)

Desti's iPad App, launched nationally late July 2013, has been a top-10 travel app consistently since launch. It is the first smart travel planner to understand the user in context of their travel needs and suggest the most relevant accommodations, attractions & activities. Desti uses AI to sift through thousands of places to find the best matches, and even summarizes consumer reviews. Now, with the Desti Discovery Assistant embedded in the app, trusted content about the suggested places is shown alongside the results.

Research is an integral component of planning and booking travel, and most of this research starts in the search bar. Recent research sponsored by Expedia Media Solutions shows travelers made 38 visits to travel sites in the weeks leading up to a booking. In a June 2013 American Express survey, thirty-four percent of consumers admit that they are overwhelmed by all the travel information and resources available online. Consumers are clearly not looking for more information, but more relevant information. Diving into trusted content and articles about the myriad of travel options helps consumers narrow down the options and make decisions.

"Researching a trip should be enjoyable and build up the excitement for the anticipated getaway - not a tedious mind-numbing chore paging through search results," stated Desti Founder & CEO Nadav Gur. "Search Google for a famous or popular hotel and you always get the same results – homepage, TripAdvisor, and a list of travel agencies. Not exactly what you need to make a decision. An expert's advice, like an article in Conde Nast or Travel+Leisure, is far more valuable in terms of inspiring you and helping you make a decision. Like an assistant, we've trained Desti to find this valuable content and distinguish it from articles generated for content marketing."

"When my husband and I decide to take a road trip to anywhere near or far, it's always a week-long effort to guess which hotels, motels, restaurants and activities were worth our time and energy," writes Laura Bee from Milpitas, CA. "I checked Desti yesterday and so desperately want to take that extended holiday I so badly need based on how amazingly efficient it runs. Yaozuh!"

With the surge in App Store downloads, more people than ever are using Desti to plan trips all over the US ranging from weekend outings to long-distance road trips. Using Desti's smart search, for the first time, travelers can tailor results to their specific preferences. Desti aggregates information in various forms from hundreds of sources, and creates a deep knowledge base about attractions, activities, hotels, B&Bs and other types of accommodations. Reputable articles are discovered and analyzed through Desti Discovery Assistant. Over time, Desti learns the traveler's preferences and gets smarter with each trip planned.

Desti Discovery Assistant is the latest big-data achievement by Desti, whose semantic search engine has been acquiring and analyzing massive amounts of US travel data since earlier this year. To make the most personalized suggestions for each traveler, Desti has analyzed, aggregated and indexed:

1. 300,000 North America points-of-interest, from popular to hidden gems generated by resolving together over 900,000 places from third-party databases
2. Over 2.3 million images associated with point-of-interests
3. 10 million articles, professional and consumer reviews specific to points-of- 
interest

Download the new version of Desti for free here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/desti-trip-planning-hotel/id533728846

About Desti
Desti is an intelligent travel planner, currently available on the iPad. An all-in-one app for travel search, planning and booking, Desti helps you plan and research vacations and excursions leveraging semantic search technology and artificial intelligence, packaged into a user-friendly interface. Instead of sifting through hundreds of search results and reading countless travel reviews, users can plan a trip holistically -- where to stay, what to do, where to visit, all beautifully presented and immediately available at the swipe of a finger for browsing, booking or sharing with friends. That's true travel nirvana.

Founded in 2011, Desti Inc. is an SRI International spin-off led by experienced travel entrepreneurs. Desti leverages SRI International's immense investment in artificial intelligence research and semantic technology. For decades, SRI International has pioneered technological advancements that are part of our daily lives, including the mouse, interactive computing, the Internet and more recently, Siri.

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SOURCE Desti