Expedia Group is an innovator in AI, deploying the technology across customer-facing platforms and back-office operations. It's also important at agency franchisor Expedia Cruises, in communications, analytics, marketing and more to come.
Expedia Cruises advisors were using early versions of generative AI engines as a tool for email communication, said Expedia Cruises president Matthew Eichhorst. Those tools came into prominence after ChatGPT opened to the public in late November 2022.
The next step was using generative AI to match destinations with a client's interests and preferences. Then, Expedia Cruises began to see AI's value in analyzing sales data, with AI helping to unveil trends in the marketplace. For instance, Eichhorst said, AI could be used to identify destinations where prices are declining. It can also provide indicators about client interests based on buying patterns.
Last year, Expedia Cruises built AI into its learning-management system, where generative AI tools enable advisors to role-play selling travel with a bot, in which customer conversations are simulated. Eichhorst called the tool "phenomenal."
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The franchisor has begun applying AI to its marketing, whether it's the creation of ads, headlines and copy or selecting products that are a match for customers.
Product selection is based on regional buying patterns over the previous 30 to 90 days, Eichhorst said. For instance, for a client based in Florida, the agency's AI technology parses data to determine what other people in the state are buying. Then, it will send emails featuring products based on that data. The technology was built in-house.
Eichhorst said the marketing application is in its infancy and has so far saved its product team time in addition to being more accurate than "just sifting through thousands of products."
Expedia Cruises has also applied AI to its help desk to answer advisor questions and for commission management, sifting through data and automatically populating back-office information.
Going forward, Eichhorst is eyeing two areas that could benefit from an AI boost: websites and customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
Expedia Cruises has partnered with a new vendor for website technology, Optimizely, which helps advisors create more personalized sites versus the sites today that are based on templates.
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Regarding the CRM, the company for the past 20 years has used a house-built CRM, but Eichhorst believes a third-party provider will give advisors a boost. The agency is looking for a vendor with an AI-first strategy, enabling Expedia Cruises to deploy AI tools throughout the platform. He expects to decide on a vendor shortly.
He said that the era of AI in travel agencies is in the early stages. Advisors are excited.
"They’re not as threatened by it as they used to be," he said. "They're embracing it with curiosity rather than as reluctant participants."
Eichhorst said he is now eyeing AI technology tools that will help Expedia Cruises advisors do their jobs better.
"There's so much work to do, and so if it can unlock advisors’ capacities to do more thinking rather than doing [busywork], I think that's going to be very, very exciting for not just the business outcome, but people," he said. "I think it's an efficiency play versus a cost-cutting play."