“I’m confident it will change everything.”
“Seven or eight.” “Ten.” “Six to seven.”
On a scale of one to ten, these were the high numbers given to the transformative potential of ChatGPT by three experts in the travel industry during PhocusWire’s LinkedIn Audio event, “Let’s Hear It! How ChatGPT will transform the travel industry”.
Paul English (Co-founder, Kayak and serial entrepreneur partner), Shane O’Flaherty (Global Director of Travel, Transportation and Hospitality, Microsoft), and Rajesh Naidu (Senior Vice President and Chief Architect, Expedia Group) were asked if ChatGPT would transform the way travel brands operate and the way consumers search and book or is the hype going to fade.
It’s a question that has circled OpenAI’s groundbreaking tool for a while now, and it’s one we’ve brought up during our own chats with those in the travel and hospitality space.
A solid foundation for new products
Not only has ChatGPT skyrocketed to superstardom in just under three months, but the technology also it uses has proven to be a pretty viable resource for new product development.
As Paul explained during the audio event, “In the past, user interfaces were designed to teach users how to think like a computer. It’s a very constrained form. The computer says, you have to tell me your date, or if you want one stop or nonstop… you have to answer all these questions. And now, people can express themselves by typing or by speaking exactly what they want. So, it’s really going to change everything in terms of what the interface looks like.”
Paul, who runs his own recommendations platform called Deets via Boston Venture Studio, is already building products on top of ChatGPT. Similarly, KAYAK was a thin layer built on ITA software.
“You can say, I want a romantic Italian restaurant that’s spacious and not too loud… and ChatGPT is going to help us figure out the right event for that consumer.”
Basically, it lives up to the hype.
Microsoft’s Shane O’Flaherty alluded to ChatGPT as being a part of a much larger AI ecosystem that includes speech, visuals, language, and decisions – all stitched together to enhance the consumer experience. It will also change the employee experience on the business side of things to drive productivity.
Google’s throne and democratisation
Of course, it’s hard to discuss ChatGPT without bringing up its prophecy as a search engine disruptor or if we were to remove the sugarcoating, a Google-killer. GPT’s proficiency and data-sourcing capabilities have experts convinced that it is the next stage of search engine interaction.
According to Expedia’s Rajesh Naidu, “The democratisation and disintermediation of search is something we have to look at. It’s going to come back to – how are you helping enhance an augmented experience with the traveller. There’s always been disruption in this space. But, Alexa did not replace Google, Bing as a third-party challenger could displace Google. For travellers, it’s just something we’ll have to make easier.”
Echoing the idea of democratisation, Christian Watts (Founder and CEO, Magpie) fielded a question to Rajesh about startups having access to the same tools as larger OTAs, essentially allowing them to move at greater speeds and level the playing field.
We had similar discussions with Christian concerning ChatGPT and how its scale of opportunity is unprecedented. Christian also joined us on a recent episode of Top of the Wit to get into ChatGPT. Stream here.
On startups, Rajesh said, “It’s a good opportunity to bring new technologies to the market. At Expedia, we have an Open World Accelerator program. We’re always looking for partnership opportunities and we’re always scanning the market to see what opportunities there are to partner with startups and others.”
Security, privacy, and smaller companies
On the other end of the democratisation conversation is the idea that the application of ChatGPT by smaller companies won’t be as seamless as it should be – a concern that was raised by Terry Jones (Founder, Travelocity). Will smaller companies need to engage a third party to build ChatGPT products for them?
Paul answered, “I absolutely think the GPT’s API will allow small startups with just a handful of engineers to build compelling apps on top of it. The point of OpenAI is that it’s a platform, it’s not really an application company, I know Google’s trying to do the same thing – so I do think that a small group of engineers will be able to build compelling apps on top of this.”
One issue that hasn’t surfaced as much in the short time that ChatGPT has been in the spotlight is privacy, and by association, security. As more people start to engage with GPT-powered applications in the real world, measures to protect sensitive information and traveller confidentiality will have to be in place.
“You certainly have to understand the data privacy implications,” explained Rajesh. “Whether it’s a credit card number or a trusted traveller number or social security number, you have to have the disclaimer and the warning for the traveller as they’re interacting… but also, what are your processes to ensure that the data isn’t propagated down into the wrong places.”
Is this a tech fad?
It’s important to remember that ChatGPT may be new, but the technology behind it isn’t – well, not entirely. Shane was quick to remind everyone that Artificial Intelligence has been around for decades and GPT is just the latest layer built on top of ever-expanding technology.
“This type of technology, which essentially has been built on for decades, from AI in the 50s to Machine Learning in the 90s to Deep Learning in the 2010 – 2020 range, so it’s been built-on significantly but this is the first time we’ve really democratised AI to a certain extent – and through this computing platform, how do we help organisations and empower them with this tech to drive a better customer experience and better employee experience.”
