Martin Soler

Out of all the tech stuff that is happening. I think we need to do some work on making people care. Care to deliver great service. Care to thank someone…

📰 Meta's Muse, Priceline's agentic Penny, and Agoda's AI Assistant are accelerating AI in travel. AI agents in finance could move funds from 0.1% to 3.3%-5.0% yields. AI's role in travel, such as booking, raises questions of responsibility during issues like flight delays. Hyatt's survey indicates loyalty plans affect 40% of travel costs, while ChatGPT cites publishers 74.6% in travel queries. U.S. OTA bookings form about 20% of the market, prompting shifts in AI and human travel roles.

💻 Salesforce and Anthropic launched Claudeforce last month, utilizing AI to streamline access to Salesforce data. During the Spring Festival, Fliggy's AI integration boosted orders by 800%. Bookboost discovered guests with over 10 stays generate 18 times more revenue. A sustainability project in Bangkok drew over 951,000 visitors in its first year. Recent hotel data shows a 3% drop in hours per occupied room while maintaining occupancy. Airbnb aims for multi-billion-dollar hotel business expansion.

📊 Hotels should prepare for AI by focusing on ontology, a structured way to describe knowledge. Example: Room 407, a Deluxe King, connects to Room 408, cleaned in 31 minutes, 75 meters from linen store. This helps AI optimize operations like reducing housekeeping walk time by 18 minutes per shift. Start small by listing elements like rooms and tasks, and gather SOPs to structure data. A 40-room hotel doesn't need extensive tracking.

📈 In New York, tourist distribution this year seemed well-managed with fewer crowds outside Times Square. At the Louvre, 7 million of 9 million visitors come for the Mona Lisa. A Google Maps experiment across 10 US cities improved travel speeds by 2% by rerouting under 2% of trips. The US aims for 100 million international visitors annually by 2030. In hotels, smartphone checkouts increase satisfaction, hinting at the growing trend away from traditional front desk services.

📈 AI language models are reshaping customer interfaces, transitioning from 30 years of point-and-click to conversational searches. Current hotel systems, reliant on basic Availability, Rates, and Inventory (ARI), lack needed granularity, hindering AI integration. A study of 27,360 AI-generated answers revealed Google reviews as a key visibility factor, with hotel websites referenced in only 7% of cases. Booking Holdings surpassed Expedia in B2B room nights, with 196 million versus 170 million as of June 30.

📈 Capital One Travel has expanded its Premier and Lifestyle Collections to over 1,400 hotels, following similar actions by VISA. OTAs, benefiting from decades of expertise, large data sets, and billion-dollar ad budgets, overshadow hotels in spending on AI-powered discovery. During the FIFA World Cup, match days increased ADR more than occupancy. Airbnb is developing a loyalty program, possibly innovating with data and partnerships rather than just rewards. Attention currency is shifting towards trust, crucial in luxury and independent accommodations.