What is Despegar SOFIA?
SOFIA is the AI travel assistant of Despegar (Decolar in Brazil), launched in March 2024 and built with OpenAI's GPT-4 and Whisper on AWS. You can type, talk or tap visual options to explore trips, and it handles after-sale questions such as booking status, vouchers and cancellation policies, with handoff to human advisers. In September 2026 Decolar reported its first fully agentic sale in Brazil: a lodging booking chosen and paid by Pix inside the SOFIA conversation, a feature still in testing.
Cost: No separate charge (Comes with the device or service). Booking: You book in the same app. Works on: Web, WhatsApp, Inside Despegar / Decolar.
Best for: Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking travellers booking with Despegar or Decolar who want chat help before and after buying.
How Despegar SOFIA uses AI
Helps explore destinations and narrow options, answers questions about existing bookings, and in a test in Brazil completes a lodging purchase inside the chat.
Booking: You book in the same app.
Keep in mind
- End-to-end in-chat purchase is in testing, started with lodging in Brazil and Pix payment
- Complex cases are passed to human advisers
Is Despegar SOFIA free? Cost and plans
No separate charge. No separate charge reported; you pay for what you book.
Despegar SOFIA alternatives
Tools for a similar task. Sharing a task does not make them interchangeable, so compare what each one does.
Sources
Sources checked . This listing summarises what the provider and other cited sources say; it is not a hands-on test.
- Despegar revoluciona la industria turística con el primer asistente con IA generativa (La Nota Económica, 4 Mar 2024)lanotaeconomica.com.co, checked . Supports: SOFIA launch; speak, type or tap; built with GPT-4, Whisper and AWS; available across the region; self-assisted purchase or handoff to Despegar staff
- IA de Despegar registra más de 800.000 conversaciones mensuales (Valora Analitik, 22 Oct 2025)valoraanalitik.com, checked . Supports: Web access via despegar.com.co; WhatsApp channel; common questions on booking status, vouchers, cancellation policies; human hybrid model
- Decolar faz 1ª venda 100% agêntica no Brasil (Hotelier News, 1 Sep 2026)hoteliernews.com.br, checked . Supports: First fully agentic sale in Brazil via SOFIA; lodging; Pix paid without leaving the conversation; feature still in testing; plans to add other products and payment methods
What we could not confirm
- No official Despegar product page for SOFIA found; facts come from press coverage
- Whether SOFIA is in the Despegar and Decolar mobile apps
- Supported languages and full country list