Tomo Knows Good Flight Deals. Tomo Is Your New Facebook Friend.

There’s something weird about using Tomo, the Product Hunt-approved flight deal service. 

Try it out and you’ll see. 

Suddenly, you’re chatting with Tomo — the name is Japanese for “long-time friend” — via Facebook Messenger. Where do you live, Tomo wants to know. What’s your departure airline? How far are you willing to travel to get the best deal on a flight? 

We told Tomo. 

Now, we wait. Presumably, the service will literally chime in at some future date with exciting flight deals. 

The service’s rigorously — and to our eyes, unnecessarily — cheesy promo video shows the happy results when one swimsuited millennial couple checks off Tulum from their bucket list, all thanks to Tomo. Thank you, Tomo!

So, yeah. It’s not exactly AI. But in its verisimilitude, the opening acts of the Tomo experience are weirdly convincing. And in an industry where non-virtual booking assistants — i.e. travel agents — are making a return to the market as a luxury good, it’s interesting to see where the other, quasi-automated end of the market will go. And in fact, Tomo also offers a money-back-guaranteed service powered by humans, in case your flight search needs extend beyond what Tomo the app can handle.

For now, we wait. For Tomo to return.

Because even Gen Xers could benefit from a trip to Tulum at a discount.