NEWS in London this month in partnership with Google. Lee Hayhurst and Ben Ireland report
‘Digital has a place, but you can’t replace human beings’
E
Lee Haslett, Virgin Atlantic; Stephanie Kovach, Google; Holly Addison, Odgers
Berndtson; and Vicki Wolf, Abta In partnership with
Supported by
merging technology such as voice search and artificial intelligence is “light years” away from rivalling human travel agents, the Future of Travel Selling conference was told.
Giles Hawke, chief executive of Cosmos and Avalon
Waterways, told delegates that consumers would always value the expertise of consultants, particularly for complex trips. “Siri or Alexa is not going to help you book a holiday
anytime soon as they don’t work. It’s light years away,” he said. “People lose interest in technology that doesn’t work.” Hawke admited he risked sounding like former Abta
president and Bath Travel boss Stephen Bath, who two decades ago famously said he’d rather invest in new carpet for his stores than computers. But he pointed to the emergence of trade bodies
such as Clia, in cruise, and the Association of Touring & Adventure Suppliers (Atas), as evidence of a vibrant agency sector. “You only have to look at the growth of Clia and Atas, organisations that are commited to training travel agents on differentiated product that is hard to recreate yourself and needs expertise. Tat’s the future for tour operators and agents,” said Hawke. Travel agents on the panel agreed. Kirsten Hughes, UK
managing director of Travel Counsellors, said: “We can’t ignore tech. But tech doesn’t have empathy, humans do.
Kirsten Hughes, Travel Counsellors; Giles Hawke, Cosmos and
Avalon; and Julia Lo Bue-Said, Advantage Travel Partnership
“It’s about puting tech in the hands of agents. When we
created homeworking 25 years ago, people thought it was middle-aged women working in their bedrooms. But today it’s a fully-digitised platform that takes ‘pain’ away to enable our agents to sell.” Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of Advantage Travel
Partnership, said there was a place for digital in travel but that it couldn’t replace talking to a human being. But Andrew Shelton, managing director of Netflights,
predicted technology like voice “will come”, particularly for straight-forward requests. “Te problem with voice is just that people don’t know what question to ask,” he said.
o go’ in appointing female leaders
senior role list each candidate’s childcare commitments when assessing the best person for the job. “It’s disappointing how
much I hear that they have to be visible all of the time,” she said. Addison said to “break
through the glass ceiling”, many senior females had told her they had relied on mentors. “Mentorship has helped,
whether it’s formal or not,” she said. “But there is still an awful lot more to do in this space.”
Google finds ‘challengers’ can break brand loyalty
Brand loyalty in travel can be broken simply by ‘challenger brands’ making noises in the market, exclusive Google research suggests. Google analysed 300 behavioural
traits and used seven to filter search results in online travel sales of hotel and package holidays. It pitched a pretend brand, Caliente
Getaways, against the two favourite package travel brands of 1,000 shoppers to see which metrics made them shiſt to the challenger. Tey included
travelweekly.co.uk
freebies such as extra room nights, notes saying ‘book now’ or ‘selling fast’, and social norms like holidays being billed as the ‘most popular’. It found 34.3% of shoppers moved
to their second-favourite brand merely by its introduction, while 87.7% moved when all seven factors were added. Caliente Getaways atracted 75% of
shoppers to switch when all seven metrics were applied.
Google research lead
Alistair Rennie, Google
Alistair Rennie said: “It’s a prety good proxy for a challenger brand in the real world.”
31 OCTOBER 2019 13
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