As a company, Expedia Group is no stranger to change – the company has been through many shifts in the travel and hospitality industry, from technological booms to slumps in the global economy, to the current AI revolution amidst a worldwide recovery phase.
Similarly, two travel veterans, Greg Schulze, SVP of Strategic Travel Partners and Hari Nair, SVP and General Manager, Lodging Marketplace, are no strangers to transformations in the industry either.
In this episode of Expedia Talks, we sit down with Greg and Hari to talk about their roles at Expedia and how it has evolved over time, especially with data, AI, and machine learning.
“When we talk about AI, it’s really not new to us. But it is wonderful that we are able to do a lot of innovative experimentation on our app,” explained Hari on the episode. “And it allows us to make really good investment decisions. We are a tech company. And we are passionate about the world of travel.”
Hari continued, “We can use AI to help our partners. We have thousands of hotels who come to Expedia’s portal on a daily basis. We’re using some of these learnings using ML and AI, to tell the hotels, here are the actions you need to take to drive the most profitable growth for you whether it is loading a promotion, or giving us availability, or about merchandising and offers they have.”
We also go back to the early days of Online Travel Agencies and how it changed the way we travel, and why travel professionals need to always be one step ahead of the curve with trends in the market.
One interesting point that came up was how professionals in travel should rise up to meet the opportunities and challenges of the industry at this technological turning point.
“My mission was the same then as it is now,” explained Greg. “And that’s to use data to make better decisions. It also requires really smart people and we have hundreds of data scientists, we have thousands of engineers, and even those of us who don’t call ourselves engineers have worked hard to keep up with the incredibly exciting technology – 800 billion AI predictions processed on our platform.”
He continued, “Because technology can take you down many different paths. It can lead to a lot of different insights. But where are you going to focus that? What problems are you trying to solve?”
Hari chimed in with equal enthusiasm, saying, “There is a choice for travellers and personalisation, creating amazing travel experiences, alternate accommodation as mainstream and not alternate anymore. And then data and insights allow me to make better decisions for my business.”
Listen to the full episode here:
