Google power, virtual reality, artificial intelligence and the future

On stage and behind the scenes it was the Google factor that dominated on Day 2 of EyeforTravel North America

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The first keynote saw virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) take centre stage and first up was Nick Mattera, Senior Director - Digital Engagement at Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority. He shared insights into how the authority is using VR to engage visitors to the region. Earlier this year the authority launched a virtual reality app, which has been downloaded 12,000 times, and today 30 360-degree films can be viewed of the most iconic Las Vegas experiences. 

In keynote 1 we also heard from Phil Easter, Director Mobile Apps & Wearables, American Airlines and Jenny Thomassian, Head - Travel, Google.

Needless to say, what our friends at Google are doing behind the scenes with AI and VR really piqued interest. Thomassian shared a slide which revealed that 73.5% of Googlers would use VR for travel, tourism and adventure, making this the top use case followed by movies or recorded videos, live events, home design, education and gaming. 

And boy is Google taking that seriously. After Google Daydream, a VR headset that will ship in November, travel brands should be watching out for Tango. Still in alpha, Tango ‘lets you see more of your world’. The idea is that you will be able to ‘hold up your phone, and watch as virtual objects and information appear on top of your surroundings’. Coming later this year, ‘Explore More’, also a Tango feature, will enable users to ‘navigate stores, museums and other indoor locations with directions overlaid onto your surroundings’.

The audience also heard about Google’s Deepmind artificial intelligence. With its so-called Wavenet system, the team at DeepMind (a British AI company founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014), has managed to produce what is to date the most realistic sounding machine speech. Watch out Siri and Alexa!

Oh and if that wasn’t enough from Google, where travel brands used to have brochures, now we have Google cardboard, which ‘brings immersive experiences to everybody in an affordable way’. Murmurings in the coffee break showed that while not travel all suppliers are convinced by Tango, Google cardboard could come up trumps.

  

Fear factors

So, yes, Google delivered the wow factor in the morning keynote, but from informal discussions between tracks, it was clear that many travel suppliers also feel threatened by the world’s biggest search engine. The secret fear is that if (or perhaps when) Google can make more money by replacing travel intermediaries (among its biggest customers today) then it will.

“Nobody is saying this really loudly but travel suppliers are undoubtedly seeing Google’s dominance in search and the higher PPC costs are forcing commissions up from the good old 10% to as high as 34%,” says Tim Gunstone, EyeforTravel MD.

Conversational commerce is going to be huge

“Most view this as unsustainable and at our Vegas summit we’ve heard that travel distribution strategy is being driven by the desire to find better ways to digitally engage with customers and drive loyalty,” he says. (See Desire for loyal customers is driving digital innovation in travel)

Social media is an essential weapon and in an afternoon track speaker Katie Duzan, Product Marketing Director, Lithium, admitted that getting the customer experience right is anything but easy. The key point from this session was that brands need to understand that what can be measured, gets funded, and with data and analytics this is now possible.

  

Also on the social front, one way that travel suppliers believe that they can beat Google is by using messaging apps which have come a long way and are now far more interactive. “Companies are building interfaces that allow you to book travel via these apps,” says Gunstone, who believes that, “conversational commerce is going to be huge!”

Having said all that, if you thought Google was standing still on that one, think again. Now we also have Google Allo, which launched in September, and which some are saying beats Amazon Alexa hands down!

Ending the day was Fayeem Dayala at the Travel Corporation who gave insights into the benefits of programmatic advertising, and issue we will be delving into more deeply in the coming weeks.

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