NEWS CONFERENCE REPORT
Connections Luxury Argentina: Eighty senior buyers and suppliers met in Buenos Aires for Connections Luxury’s first country-focused event sponsored by Argentina, National Institute of Tourism Promotion and Buenos Aires Tourist Board. Rose Dykins reports
Luxury agents ‘should tap into artificial intelligence’
Independent luxury travel agents have been advised to implement artificial intelligence technologies to stay ahead of the curve.
Marc Mekki, travel tech
entrepreneur and founder of the Symphony travel app and Ode to Joy, said embracing technology was a lot easier than some imagine. Speaking during his ConnecTed
presentation, he told delegates: “Over the next five years, technology will accelerate faster than it has done in the past 50.
Siena to host next Connections Luxury
The next Connections Luxury event will be held on February 25-28, 2018, at La Bagnaia Golf & Spa Resort Siena, a Curio Collection by Hilton property in Italy. To find out more about
Connections, email enquiries@
weareconnections.com
Marc Mekki
“Next-generation technology will not require us to learn and study it. It will learn and study us”
“Next-generation technology
will not require us to learn and study it. It will learn and study us. “Expedia,
Booking.com – all the
big boys are spending $8 billion per year and more on pay-per-click ad campaigns, chasing people all
over the web. This stuff is being invested in very, very heavily and they are doing it without any mercy for us and our industry.” Mekki said there was a silver
lining for agents, but it relied on them being “proactive”. “Facebook, Google and others
are creating ready-made systems that you just implement and adjust for your business,” he added. “You can have systems like chatbots set up in no time, which will mean you are ready for the next level – where people will start interacting with these technologies, leaving comments, leaving data that you can interpret and build more comprehensive profiles for your clients. You can start being proactive, rather than reactive. “You may be relying at the moment, as an agency, on word of mouth and you might be very happy with that. But you don’t need millions to get into this game. “All I am asking you to do is
to take the initial step through that door – and that step is much quicker, cheaper and easier than you think.”
16
travelweekly.co.uk 14 December 2017
‘Focusing solely on most elite clients will cost you business’
Luxury travel providers who focus only on the most wealthy risk losing out on business, warned Paula Goni, research analyst for Euromonitor International. She told delegates that
mass-market and prestige products were being combined to create a new segment, known as ‘masstige’. “For luxury travel, it could be about adding products that create this middle ground, where more consumers are far more willing and able to pay for these products,” she said. “Elite luxury travellers
are important in terms of net worth – in 2015, they accounted for about 40% of complete global wealth. “But they represent too small a group of actual people – they will make up just one per cent of the total global population in 2030. “If you don’t consider the number of travellers you are targeting, and only focus on the wealth, you will most probably lose out on opportunities to expand your product.”
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