TTI addresses AI uses at its annual conference

Event saw speakers such as Google and Trip.com share its ‘AI in action’

Last month, Travel Technology Initiative (TTI), a member organisation group focused on technology in the industry, welcomed dozens of execs from across the sector for a morning of learnings.

Keen to make an impact with its agenda, the organisation brought thought leaders together in London to discuss how they use AI to see tangible results.

Google opened the event, where senior industry manager, Lalit Gupta, took to stage to share the technology giant’s work using Generative AI.

Gupta spoke to how Google is using AI to address consumers’ behaviour changing and becoming more challenging in the travel industry and how it’s working together with travel partners with AI. 

With content being “all the rage” for search twenty years ago, before digital marketing came on the scene, he said that now “we’re back to content”.

He said, at Google, its mission remains the same to “organize the world’s information and make it as easily accessible but how it achieves this has become different due to travellers becoming more “demanding” and “more diverse in the way they search”.

The firm is using AI to produce and package results in ways that are “not only more digestible, but also help consumers engage with a diverse of partners and make better decisions”.

Search is no longer query driven but in fact other modes of input so Google is using AI with voice queries which means queries become longer and no longer keyword structure based.

This new multi-modal way means Google can no longer “just follow the same old structure of 10 blue links” – which is what the company was founded on – but instead needs to roll out a “full page experience”. 

It’s using classifications that are more “curated” to “drive higher user engagement” and ensuring multi-step reasoning is realized with layering attributes to meet the complexities of traveller’s needs.

The first vertical it’s done this in is dining but is rolling it out to hotels and others, too.

Gupta revealed that queries with six words or more are growing fast year over year than queries with less than six words. 

The audience also heard from Andy Washington, general manager for Europe at Trip.com, who shared how the Chinese-owned, Singapore-headquartered OTA is using it for personalise trip recommendations and itinerary planning as well as for customer service solutions. 

While Alex Bainbridge, CEO of Autoura, a digital experience platform, advised to look at what you’re trying to solve before “throwing AI at it”.

He confirmed Washington sentiments nd said that now with AI the difference we find is that the itinerary is no longer created by the tour operator but instead at the top of the funnel with the likes of Trip Genie (Trip.com’s AI assistant) and Google AI agent.

TTI’s single-day event also served up an opportunity for delegates to learn live how to code a tour app to match users’ preferences with AI technologies available at our disposal, online.

Delivered by Charlie Cowan of CharlieCowan.ai, a specialist AI company, it showed how AI is able to understand requirements and write code for development. 

The day was sponsored by Worldpay, which shared insights from its recent acquisition, Ravelin, an AI-powered eCommerce fraud prevention platform.

It was new chairman Jon Pickles’ first event in his new role leading the paid-for membership firm.