Escape introduces Ask Skye, a new AI-powered personal travel assistant that simplifies holiday planning for consumers. Integrated across escape.com.au, Ask Skye transforms ideas into personalised itineraries – complete with real-time recommendations, live flight fares, accommodation options, activities and must-see sites.
Ask Skye helps users move from dreaming to doing by consolidating answers, curated content, expert insights from Escape’s travel writers, and bookable options in one place. Consumers can book online directly or share their plans with a travel agent to complete the booking.
News Corp Australia’s head of travel Kerrie McCallum said: “Ask Skye turns inspiration into action by pairing Escape’s trusted expertise with live, bookable options, transforming endless scrolling into a confident, streamlined plan”.
“It strengthens Escape’s end‑to‑end travel offering with tailored, real‑time recommendations grounded in credible content and seamless booking, while giving clients a direct way to reach travellers, maximise engagement and conversions, and move consumers straight to partners’ booking platforms”.
The Growth Distillery’s Technographics: Travel research shows planning a holiday should be joyful, yet one in three travellers give up before booking, overwhelmed by the volume of content and complexity. Ask Skye changes that by bringing inspiration, research and booking together as one connected experience.
The tool actively prompts users for the right information up front, enabling it to deliver tailored, relevant and higher-quality travel recommendations. It also highlights contextually relevant articles from Escape’s travel experts to inspire users further and help refine their itineraries.
The product has been developed in partnership with Ask Layla, an established AI travel tech company. It launches in beta phase, an early-access release to enable users to trial the experience and help Escape shape ongoing improvements ahead of the full launch in February.
A marketing campaign will introduce consumers to the new tool with promotion on digital, print, and social channels across Escape and the wider news network.
Escape has a monthly cross-platform audience of more than 3.1 million*, delivering the nation’s travel content to a brand ecosystem consisting of the weekly print insert in News Corp Australia’s Sunday state mastheads, weekly sections in the Tuesday state mastheads and Saturday Weekend magazines, website, video content, eDM and social channels.
