NAVER Enhances Local Accommodation Searches with AI Technology

Why it matters: NAVER is upgrading its local lodging search capabilities, leveraging its AI technology and an extensive database of local reviews.

This enhancement is an extension of the company's efforts to use AI to refine local search results, a commitment demonstrated by its previous overhaul of restaurant search last year.

The Key Points:

• NAVER's latest update focuses on leveraging more than 600 million local reviews to simplify and speed up accommodation searches. This upgrade will initially include bed and breakfasts, campgrounds, and inns, with a future rollout planned for all lodging categories.
  
• The company incorporates user-generated review content into its search results, including keywords, text, and images. This approach allows results to be delivered based on the "characteristics" of the lodging as reported by past visitors, providing more refined search results.
• Naver's proprietary search technology, AI Snippet, is applied to each listing. This tool extracts and displays reviews that match the user's search intent from the wealth of local reviews on NAVER.
  
• The Place Filter feature has also been enhanced. Based on review content analysis and lodging trends, filter keywords have been created that align with a location's unique characteristics and meet users' search needs.
  

The Big Picture: NAVER's recent reorganization aims to streamline the search experience by leveraging the extensive local reviews on its platform, as noted by Sehun Lee, Head of NAVER Place Search.

The company is expected to expand this initiative across multiple verticals and strengthen its local search offering by integrating video reviews into search results in the future.