This resonated with me -- a very accurate assessment of the opportunity. We believe there's room for human in the loop powered by AI tooling to capture conversation and turn it in to bookable trips. This is what we are working on at Fora to empower our advisors.
I am curious to see how the booking infrastructure evolves to enable accurate, reliable and rapid rate discovery and booking across all supplier types. A lot of action in this area, but fundamentally it's still broken and hard to fix. I do think the OTAs will play an infrastructure role here, but at scale the number of issues which arise from data issues or hotel operational issues or human error is quite high, especially when compared to financial technology error tolerances. And the real-world implications of arriving someplace without a hotel room or a ride are problematic. Curious for your thoughts on that piece of it.
Yeah that was my point. AI is moving ahead at light speed and supplier tech is crawling. OTAs will play a role but they take a big cut. I have to believe that the only ones with the resources are the chains. Hmmm...good article topic...?
Agree, it has to be driven by suppliers making their own data and systems better. Some big hotel chains are migrating their CRSes right now -- not sure these new systems optimize for the kind of interfacing we are talking about here. I suspect the hotels in the best positions will be on the more innovative CRS/PMS platfoms, but again noting that the networks which connect to these will still need work.
This resonated with me -- a very accurate assessment of the opportunity. We believe there's room for human in the loop powered by AI tooling to capture conversation and turn it in to bookable trips. This is what we are working on at Fora to empower our advisors.
Right -- AI Augmented humans (advisors, agents, creators, suppliers) is the model I think will ultimately win.
I am curious to see how the booking infrastructure evolves to enable accurate, reliable and rapid rate discovery and booking across all supplier types. A lot of action in this area, but fundamentally it's still broken and hard to fix. I do think the OTAs will play an infrastructure role here, but at scale the number of issues which arise from data issues or hotel operational issues or human error is quite high, especially when compared to financial technology error tolerances. And the real-world implications of arriving someplace without a hotel room or a ride are problematic. Curious for your thoughts on that piece of it.
Yeah that was my point. AI is moving ahead at light speed and supplier tech is crawling. OTAs will play a role but they take a big cut. I have to believe that the only ones with the resources are the chains. Hmmm...good article topic...?
Agree, it has to be driven by suppliers making their own data and systems better. Some big hotel chains are migrating their CRSes right now -- not sure these new systems optimize for the kind of interfacing we are talking about here. I suspect the hotels in the best positions will be on the more innovative CRS/PMS platfoms, but again noting that the networks which connect to these will still need work.
"AI agents negotiating directly with suppliers."
You mean, of course, the suppliers' AI agents...
Yep. 100% -- this is inevitable.