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NEWS TRAVEL WEEKLY BUSINESS CONTINUED FROM THE BACK


the Beach, said: “Those that invest and stay ahead of the curve will keep accelerating and growing, but if you are not investing, it’s hard to keep up.” He said On the Beach was


a “good example” of a tech company in travel that should invest in its own systems. Jon Pickles, The Travel


Corporation’s global director for 360 engagement, said TTC has five reservations systems across 30 travel businesses, from river cruise to motor coach tours. All are “pretty legacy” with the “most-advanced” used for the Trafalgar, Insight and Contiki brands, he said. Pickles said TTC is “always”


looking at new solutions. “Off- shelf products help you get there without a major build,” he added. TTC uses AI to send “hot


leads” to call centres and agents with higher conversion averages, having added outsourced technology to its “stack”. But Pickles said the “trade-


off” was the integration of new products into legacy systems through APIs. “This always pulls you back,” he added. “We are trying to find creative ways to remove legacy systems.” IBM’s Thierry Gnych,


European lead for cognitive and industry solutions in travel, said: “Anyone can create a chatbot answering frequently-asked questions and deflecting to the call centre. But without a business objective, AI will do little to help, in terms of customer satisfaction or customer growth.” Byrne said a culture of


innovation keeps firms ahead of the competition. “It’s in our DNA that we are never really happy,” he said. “We always want to do better; that constant sense of dissatisfaction means you’ve got to innovate. Businesses that had a really good position in the marketplace no longer exist because they got complacent.”


Travolution Business Breakfast: A panel of technology experts met


Voice-activated services ‘will not replace agents’


Voice-activated technology is “coming” to travel and could be used to help cross-sell across product portfolios, delegates were told.


But Travolution’s expert panel


agreed the likes of Google Home and Amazon Alexa were not advanced enough to replace travel agents. Inflexion’s Gareth Healy said: “It


will be a while until we get tailored results. It has to be introduced in a frictionless way. Being the first to introduce voice will be difficult – it will have to be introduced gradually. But it’s coming.” The Travel Corporation’s Jon Pickles said it was an area operators must “keep an eye on” and could help companies such as his, which has 30 businesses offering travel experiences. “We are looking at how we can


encourage people to look across our product portfolio,” he said. “With APIs, we are able to


become our own consolidator.” But he warned: “I don’t think we


‘Suppliers will drive the take-up of blockchain’


The market will dictate blockchain’s take-up in the travel industry but it will be driven by suppliers, not consumers, according to tech experts. Thierry Gnych said his company,


IBM, was one of the early adopters of the distributed ledger technology, adding: “It’s not for me to be optimistic or not; I would let the market dictate it. “As usual, it starts slowly. But the acceleration is happening.”


62 travelweekly.co.uk 5 April 2018


are at the stage where people sit there asking questions [of a voice- activated device]. Certainly not in the street on phones – maybe at home. So we’re a little way off.” For now, he said, chatbots such as those used through Facebook Messenger are more in tune with how customers want to communicate with companies, but they have their limitations. One such limitation Pickles


highlighted was that product has to be loaded on to systems 18


He said blockchain could enable


a “digital reinvention across an ecosystem of companies”, reducing costs and speeding up payments and access to information. The Travel Corporation’s Jon


Pickles said Tui’s trial of blockchain within the company was “a good way of testing the water”. Inflexion’s Gareth Healy added:


“The innovation of blockchain payments will happen on the supplier side. Travel is a low-margin industry, so anything a supplier can squeeze out of that and anything that reduces friction will be adopted, especially when you are paying the same firms regularly. That’s not the same on the consumer side.”


THIERRY GNYCH: ‘It starts slowly but acceleration is happening’


Travel Counsellors’ Steve Byrne said its adoption would depend on the ease with which firms can “pivot” business models to use it.


months in advance, so chatbots are not always up to speed with the latest offerings. Agents account for 90% of some


TTC brands’ sales, so bots and voice technology could be used to send customers to a human salesperson, he said. “Marketing is more important to


drive personalisation,” said Pickles. “We get the personalisation by selling through intermediaries. “Voice, absolutely, but we’re not ready for it yet.”


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