NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM THE BACK


Tigerbay, said: “Quite often, culture is the driver in terms of how quickly something will be taken up, and how successfully.” Morgan compared the


potential for change in payments technology to online banking, which he said consumers were sceptical of 10 years ago. Voice-enabled devices, he said, were also on the journey to adoption, with reduced prices making it more accessible to consumers. “One minute consumers are opposed to it, the next minute they’re ordering shopping or booking a holiday,” he added. Auden said travel firms


must keep up with the pace of innovation but warned it may be sensible to wait to see which technologies prove popular. “We see a demand for


innovative features,” he said. “Staying at the edge of that


curve is a consistent battle. “Sometimes it’s the non-


technical people at a business who analyse what it gets out of the function and what works.” Morgan agreed, adding that


innovation among technology providers is driven by clients’ demands. “Your next customer defines what your product needs to be,” he said. “A technology company can’t stand still and sell the same product. For them, ‘business as usual’ means innovating for the new customer.” But he said innovation can


be “stifled” within businesses, which can require increased IT budgets just to sustain their ‘business as usual’ ethos rather than to fund developments. “Your marketing department


might want to embrace AI but, in reality, there are other priorities,” he added. “Things might need replacing, and it all costs money. When you’ve got demands to run the business as usual, as robustly and efficiently as possible, innovation takes a back seat.”


TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY EUROPE 2018: Travel Weekly sister titleTrav


‘GDPR is an enabler for firms to get ready for AI’


Becoming compliant with new EU rules on use of data will put travel firms on the road to adopting emerging technologies based on artificial intelligence.


Ian Richardson, principal consultant at tech consultancy TheICEway, said looming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) due to come in on May 25 requires firms to get control of their data. “AI needs to learn and it needs


data to learn,” he said. “Data is personal and it’s regulated, and it’s also not in one place. How do you get control of all of that data?” Richardson said GDPR enshrines in law the need for firms to know where their data is and what they hold, making the process an “enabler towards getting ready for AI”. “As part of that [GDPR] you are


getting control of your data – you are taking your first steps towards AI,” he said. Richardson said the key applications for AI in travel include review and sentiment analysis, chatbots and virtual assistants,


‘Trust is critical if firms allow tech to make decisions’


Allowing machines to make key business decisions will require a huge amount of trust in their ability to make the right calls, said Inspiretec’s Luke Francis. Product manager Francis said


computers were capable of using trends analysis to make automated business-critical decisions in areas like yield management. But, he said: “This is really


78 travelweekly.co.uk 1 March 2018


FRANCIS: Tips conversational computers to transform service


advanced technology. It takes a huge amount of trust to allow machines to do that.” Francis said computers capable


making sense of images, and emotion and facial recognition. He said chatbots was the


area travel firms could most readily adopt today because the technology is relatively mature. But he warned: “A bad bot is bad


for business. If you do not get it right it can affect your brand.” Richardson said the booming


AI sector is prompting entire industries to rethink their approach. However, he said it was “shocking” that there is hardly anyone in travel embracing this digital transformation.


RICHARDSON: ‘A bad chatbot is bad for business. If you do not get it right it can affect your brand’


FIRMS SHOULD ASK AI TECH SELLERS


wWhat does AI mean to you and does this product fulfil that definition?


w How is your product superior to a current option that does not use AI?


w How will the performance of your product improve with AI?


w How much time and staff will I need to dedicate to your product?


FOUR QUESTIONS


of conversations will revolutionise how customers engage with brands and how they can provide a more personalised service. This could lead not just to personalised product recommendations, but personalised pricing based on the customer’s propensity to spend. Francis said firms looking to


get into personalisation should be clear about why they are doing it. GDPR compliance will help firms


with personalisation by creating “a single customer view”, something firms’ marketing departments should be empowered to exploit rather than their IT teams.


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