It’s the headline that won’t go away.
Artificial Intelligence has arrived, and similar to Blockchain has dominated tech conferences and panel talks the world over. However, as yet, it hasn’t caught the eyes of too many people in the travel space – but that is sure to change.
A few months back we did a piece on Blockchain, and how, through safer, easier, and less expensive processing it will change how transactions are processed. AI conversely, will change how we personalize our go-to-market strategy. It’s like both ends of a tech rope on fire.
Andrew Stephens of Forbes recently wrote that the AI revolution ‘ has been spurred by the influx of affordable and accessible advanced data analytics tools (typically based on machine learning methods), the availability of increasingly rich (albeit still noisy) and extensive datasets, and a growing acceptance among marketers of the potential power of data-driven approaches to marketing decision making.”
Data has always been the best friend of savvy marketers, getting the right message, to the right person, at the right time is only possible through an understanding of analytics. Yet this (AI) is different, this is anticipatory aggregation – the ability to see patterns, trends, and offer solutions (inventory) ahead of real-time. This is where we’re headed.
This isn’t to say that we won’t need a human element, but the human element will need to be able to use AI as a means to improve their customer service across their entire toolbox.
Stephens adds “Integrating insights across all of these tools is not easy, even if the various types of software and datasets play nicely with each other (which is often not the case). In the current marketing technology landscape, tools tend to be single purpose and sit in silos. This will change, and AI can help power these changes.”
He’s right, and although he’s addressing the marketing world en masse, his view overlaps straight into the corporate travel space. As the tech world evolves, it’s fruit makes decisions making reliable, quantifiable, and expeditious.