I go down the AI rabbit hole so you don’t have to!

A word from our sponsor!

HUGE news this week in the digital marketing space was that it turns out Google was just joshing when it said it was going to get rid of 3rd party cookies.

Brennen Bliss from Propellic said “Marketers rejoice! Google is no longer planning to depreciate 3rd party tracking cookies.

This is HUGE for travel marketers (and ALL marketers), especially since we're dealing with such a long purchase journey: we need a way to build audiences for retargeting, and this allows us to continue doing so.

I'm so excited about the certainty this gives us in our strategies - it allows us to continue targeting at the upper end of the funnel with content and pull people down the funnel to the booking & purchasing stage through user-specific tracking data.”

Need customers pulled through your funnel? Check Propellic out for yourself here.

Air Europa says having its data in order is the big advantage 

This piece in the CIO.com magazine features Air Europa director of data and analytics, José Carlos Bermejo who points to their long history of being diligent with data as being the reason they are ready to forge ahead in the gen AI era.

“Today we manage more than 300 business intelligence applications and almost 200 datasets in our corporate data catalogue, which are accessed by more than 750 unique users at an average of more than 1,200 sessions per day,” he says. “This reinforces our firm commitment to self-service and decentralized models.” Clearly data is seen as an essential asset in the organisation.

So how are they using AI? Bamjero says “they intend for a large part of the staff to have advanced tools to optimize their daily tasks…… We’ll do this in a progressive way, involving key people within the organization to be in charge of evangelizing and tutoring other users in their departments on these technologies, always relying on use cases and with a very practical approach.”

Honestly this is exactly the right approach. It reminds of the presentation by Tom McGarry from Holiday Extras who talked through a very similar approach at the Arival conference in Berlin in March.

Bermejo also goes on to say “There’s a big difference between sectors and organizations in terms of the level of maturity of their strategies. Some have opted for digital transformation and data as an essential asset, integrating it into their culture, processes and services. Others, however, are still in the initial stages or haven’t yet defined a clear vision.”

Where are you sitting in in your journey?

The revolution will not be televised! It will be generated by AI

Lots of talk about the “revolution” this week in a few articles. In his piece in Forbes, Dana Dunne of eDreams when talking of GenZ as the AI Generation says “The AI travel revolution is upon us, embrace it, or risk obsolescence.“ That seems pretty emphatic!

Whilst a fraction up in the hyperbole, Dunne does make some salient points about the connection between GenZ (and beyond) and the new technology.

Most pointedly, Dunne connects AI to personalisation and how that is perceived by younger travellers. “Personalization is key to engaging Gen Z consumers. This generation expects personalized experiences tailored to their individual preferences and behaviors. Businesses can leverage AI to analyze data and provide highly customized recommendations, services and messages. Leaders should focus on creating value-added experiences that resonate.”

Whilst it is hard to disagree with the theory, in practice I personally see very few travel brands looking to personalise any more than they did in 2019.

“In the travel industry, AI empowers us to explore more intelligent, personalized and exciting ways for people to discover the world. An AI-driven travel search engine analyzes billions of data points to provide tailored recommendations, ensuring that every journey is unique and memorable.”

Again it is data. We had a good decade of “big data” taking the keynotes at “big conferences” - so what has happened?

There are two key parts to the data question:

1. What do we really know about the customer?

2. Even if we do have granular data points on what the customer wants - how do we match it to products that broadly lay untagged and un-catalogued?

The idea that the “AI” will just find the right thing (that you sell) is right now, pretty farcical.

Meanwhile at Agoda, whilst also striving for personalisation (who isn’t) they’ve landed at the point of “focusing on doing one thing well, such as addressing specific customer questions about a current property, rather than trying to solve all problems.”

And in reality their “‘inside out’ approach to AI adoption which sees the majority of gen AI used for internal productivity gains”. (underline for emphasis is mine).

Are we seeing the picture here? This stuff is hard. Yes we can get somewhat meh, generic answers about anything in an instant and that has us seduced. But getting great answers & then bookable great answers - that is not so easy.

Forward looking employees are using AI - a lot!

Whether your formalised a policy or put together some directions for your team on AI use - chances are there are loads of people in your org not waiting to be told, but just jumping in themselves. That is the finding of the new Microsoft Report into AI in the workplace. “The data is in: 2024 is the year AI at work gets real. Use of generative AI has nearly doubled in the last six months,1 with 75% of global knowledge workers using it”.

There is nothing more human than finding the simplest way between point A & B and that is what AI is offering a lot of the rank and file in their daily jobs and tasks. “Users say AI helps them save time (90%), focus on their most important work (85%), be more creative (84%), and enjoy their work more (83%).” Surely these are all things you should be running towards as an employer and yet “uncertainty is stalling vision: 60% of leaders worry their organization’s leadership lacks a plan and vision to implement AI.”

I get it. It is just another thing in a long list of things for the harried management. But those numbers don’t lie. If you want more creative, focused and happy teams doing their work to help build your company - this is one of those times you need to stop what you are doing and get a plan in place. (I’ve built a free tool to help you if you don’t know where to start).

The other stunning revelation from the report was whilst employees have “fears of job loss, leaders report a talent shortage for key roles”. And for employees, your own knowledge of how to use AI tools can now be a competitive advantage with “managers say AI aptitude could rival experience”.

In that environment, do you think AI adoption is really going to slow down?

Meanwhile Capgemini released its own report, this time focusing more at the company than employee level with findings such as “96% of organizations worldwide have Generative AI currently on their boardroom agendas” of which “39% are taking a “wait-and-watch” approach". The report which “surveyed over 1,100 companies” and “found that 83% believe the chatbots are the most relevant generative AI application. About 70% think it will lead to greater efficiency at work enabling them to concentrate on strategy rather than routine tasks”.

Interestingly a new trending role appeared for those who want to get the jump into the future: “69% of executives foresee that AI will create new roles such as AI auditors and ethicists”. Put me down for the ethicist side of things as auditing seems like something AI should be doing - but you can’t really have the fox minding the henhouse I suppose…..

The article focuses on Multi Agent Systems - AI’s talking to each other to work out what needs to be done next. It says they will proliferate in 2025 and have certainly taken up a lot of airwaves in 2024 - so let’s hope we see them in action sooner rather than later.

In travel, your browsing agent might do all the research, make some decisions on what to book and then do the AI equivalent of heading over to the wallet agent and ask for the credit card details and finalise the transaction. I think we will see this on the business side of travel first in the TMS side of things. Best to practice with the corporate card first.  

Your AI isn’t cool, it’s a commodity!

Skift caught up with 3 CEO’s who build property management systems for hotels and poured a strong cup of reality onto the AI fire.

““I don’t think that’s cool. That’s commodity,” Cloudbeds CEO Adam Harris said, referring to the company’s existing AI tools. “These are mission-critical functionalities that hoteliers are doing every single day, and we’re just automating a step using AI. But is that the Holy Grail? No”. Harris was talking about some of the features inside his own products, “AI tools like automatic translation, advertising content generation, and AI-generated drafts of responses to customer reviews”.

I guess my counter is that for the person who had to respond to those reviews previously, it probably at least smells a bit like the Holy Grail?

Meanwhile Richard Valtr, Founder of Mews said “What’s annoying is how little everyone’s actually done in terms of actual interesting innovations. We just launched [our] first AI products at Unfold (the annual Mews tech conference); we’re now rolling it out. And we were so mad about it because we were like, ‘We’re going to be so late with this.’ It just feels like nobody’s doing anything, and it just feels very strange.”

Is this confined to just the hotel and property management system world? I don’t think so - but I personally also don’t underestimate the huge amount of tedium that has been taken out of workers lives already. It doesn’t really get the big bucks - but if you value employee happiness - it is actually already a lot.

I guess what these gents and others are getting at, is where is the real revolution, the huge transformation? It probably won’t be found in iterative productivity hacks. It will be found where AI changes something that is sector wide difficult to achieve - that can suddenly be achieved very easily but that can also just be an iterative improvement if it doesn’t come with a new mission (or return to an old mission that just never got close to being achieved).

How can new lines be drawn in our industry and be informed by new capabilities? That is the question we need to be looking to answer. It doesn’t need to scream AI from the rooftops (but maybe just in the pitch deck still…..). It just needs to accomplish hard things simply.

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Slack Group!

The Future is Calling?

FutureTravel Summit, one of the big events on the startup calendar is on again this year on November 28 in Barcelona - and they are looking for the best Travel startups to enter their pitch competition.

You don’t need to have AI inside - but it certainly won’t hurt.

They are looking for 10 early-stage startups:

• Focused on travel and/or hospitality

• Pre-seed or seed stage

• Not older than 3 years

A great opportunity “in front of a prestigious panel of venture capital investors, industry leaders, and influential figures in the travel sector”. Who wouldn’t want that! The application deadline is July 31 - so get your skates on!

Everything AI in Travel is a proud media partner of the event.

How to work with Tony

The calendar is now very full I’m afraid so less opportunities for general chit chats and catch ups. These days much of that is people looking to find a market for their AI product or a company looking for a product to fix a problem. Hence:

Marketplace

We are in the final week before launch of the marketplace for buyers and suppliers to find each other with their AI solutions for travel companies. Big thanks to those who’ve already added their tool!

If you have an ai solution in market (product, SaaS tool, service) - please get in touch to get information about being listed. We are grandfathering forever the lowest listing price for those who are in for the launch.

Please email me if you want to be part of the launch group!

Consultancy

For the fully committed business who now understands the transformative power of this technology, the final phase is to move to build your own internal “AI centre of excellence” which is combination of building an ai culture in your business by taking a human centric approach as well as building out or buying in the best solution to each identified issue. Please email me for more details on any or all of these phases.

Most clicked last week was the link to the piece around how AI was being used to get to your data. That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think