00:00:17: Welcome to ITB Berlin's Travel

00:00:19: Hero

00:00:19: Podcast, where we explore the stories and strategies shaping global tourism.

00:00:25: I'm your host, Charlotte Labdevis, with Management Consultancy, a bright approach.

00:00:29: And today, we're joined by Yanis Simayakis, who's Director for Travel and Local Partnership, EMIA at Google, and Dirk Rogel, who is my fellow board of expert colleague here at ITB Berlin.

00:00:43: You all know probably that Dirk carries many other hats but this is the one that he's wearing today.

00:00:50: Today we'll be talking about AI and AI of course is no longer just a distant promise, it's here reshaping how we plan, operate and experience travel.

00:01:00: So from tackling labour shortages to hyper personalisation we explore what's hot right now, the game changing opportunities and the

00:01:09: risks

00:01:09: every tourism player needs to know about.

00:01:12: So

00:01:13: Welcome, gentlemen.

00:01:14: It's wonderful to have you here.

00:01:16: Hi, Charlotte.

00:01:17: Good to be here.

00:01:18: Thanks

00:01:18: for having me.

00:01:19: It's my absolute pleasure.

00:01:20: But what I want to do, first of all, I want to set the scene a little bit.

00:01:24: So you need to tell us a little bit more about yourselves.

00:01:27: And Yanis, why don't we kick off with you, please?

00:01:30: Yes, of course.

00:01:31: Hi, I am Yanis, and I lead Google's EMEA partnerships team.

00:01:35: We're responsible for driving growth and innovation through partnerships in the travel and local space at Google Search.

00:01:43: I've been in this space for approximately fifteen years and I'm very, very passionate about solving challenges in the intersection of the real and digital world.

00:01:51: So very much looking forward to today's conversations.

00:01:54: Specifically with Google, I've been for almost four years and initially was at Google Maps leading inside a strategy in that space.

00:02:03: Fantastic.

00:02:04: Well, I'm very excited to dive in and get to hear a lot of your insights.

00:02:08: And Dirk, tell us a little bit about some of those hats that you wear, please.

00:02:13: Oh yeah, I'm in the industry for twenty-five years and it's a pleasure to work with you Charlotte and many other great colleagues on the ITP Berlin Convention.

00:02:21: I also am a researcher for Focusrite.

00:02:23: I have my own management consulting company and it's getting more and more AI everywhere where I'm working on.

00:02:32: Yeah, absolutely.

00:02:32: And of course, that's why you're both here today, because we are going to dive in and see what's been happening.

00:02:38: So thank you.

00:02:38: That sets the scene beautifully.

00:02:40: I think we're going to dive straight in.

00:02:42: Janice, I'm going to go to you first, because since we got together for ITB Berlin, How have you seen the role of AI evolve in tourism?

00:02:52: And it's ongoing,

00:02:53: of course.

00:02:53: As you said, it is very much ongoing.

00:02:57: But if I were to single out one area, it would be on the launch we see of many products around triplanning.

00:03:08: So trip planning was just an idea, if you will, or a promise a few years ago.

00:03:12: And now we actually see quite a few products in that space and the ability of the technology to create bespoke itineraries, AI-generated travel guides, and real-time conversational interfaces.

00:03:25: So that's actually very, very interesting.

00:03:27: But what we also see on the consumer side is that consumers are loving this and are responding to this very, very positively.

00:03:34: So according to some recent research, we see that forty percent of global travelers have already used AI-based tools to plan their trips and more than sixty percent are open to using them in the future.

00:03:47: So to your point, Charlotte, this is already happening.

00:03:49: It's not just a promise in the future.

00:03:50: And that's very exciting.

00:03:52: Dirk, a couple of observations from you as well as to the involvement of it in tourism.

00:03:59: I can really agree.

00:04:00: the adoption from AI tools really gets fast in the consumer area.

00:04:04: And it's definitely shifted from let's say experimental pilots to core business tools.

00:04:10: It seems to become everywhere, not only in travel planning, it's really everywhere around the customer journey cycle.

00:04:16: And this journey just started.

00:04:18: I think one important thing is also marketing, travel marketing changed.

00:04:21: It really changed from classical search engine marketing more to as we call it, agent-engine optimization or search-generative experience, as you called it at Google.

00:04:32: So I think this journey just started as well.

00:04:36: Yeah, we are on the cusp of quite a lot of things, but it's picking up speed every day.

00:04:41: Janice, I'll get back to you and sort of say, and maybe this is just an extension of the first question a little bit, but what do you consider currently to be very hot in the AI conversation?

00:04:52: And what's grabbing your attention right now?

00:04:56: Yeah, first of all, I like the lot that Dirk's framing and I think we'll come back to this a lot in this podcast, which is around.

00:05:04: You know, the capabilities for the consumers, right?

00:05:07: The capabilities for the marketers and then the overall optimization we see in the business operations.

00:05:12: So efficiency, customer service sustainability.

00:05:16: But if I were to focus on one thing that we have been working on very, very actively is again, is this tree planning area.

00:05:24: So now I think we have tools like Gemini, where you can ask questions like, do you want a tropical vacation or should you visit a big city?

00:05:33: Or you can ask much more specific questions like, find me the cheapest flights to Europe and find me YouTube videos on what I can do on a budget in each of those places.

00:05:43: We also see that customers, we want to enable customers to ask complex questions like, things to do in Nashville this weekend, where a big family visiting friends who like music, chill vibes, and things off the beaten path.

00:05:57: So quite a mouthful there, right?

00:06:00: Or you also see how users are responding to this advanced capabilities with asking very, very specific questions.

00:06:08: One of the things that you can see at Google, you can see search trends, right?

00:06:11: So what people are looking for.

00:06:13: And one of the things we've always seen in travel is people are looking for a you know, luggage allowance information, you know, things like hand baggage, you know, things you can.

00:06:23: now actually people are asking very, very specific questions like vacuum bags or compression packing cubes.

00:06:29: So we see the tools are getting better, but also consumers and users are expecting much more.

00:06:37: And that's a very interesting direction for us.

00:06:40: And when I continue exploring this, especially as we see opportunities, to bring many of our products together like shirts, maps, Lens and Gemini to basically really create those end-to-end experiences for the users.

00:06:54: So fair to say that search is becoming more sophisticated really.

00:06:58: The consumers out there are actually understanding how better to search for what they are looking for whereas maybe in the past what could say was a little bit more basic.

00:07:07: Would that be fair?

00:07:09: That's fair.

00:07:09: So we see quite a few things there.

00:07:12: And thank you for the past.

00:07:14: talk a little bit about what.

00:07:15: what we see at search is that we see that people are asking much more complex questions.

00:07:20: So two to three times longer.

00:07:22: And also people are using new capabilities.

00:07:25: So Google and so the ability to basically use search with visual means and not just with typing in our voice.

00:07:32: So that's quite an interesting evolution.

00:07:34: Yeah, definitely.

00:07:35: That's been my sort of observation as well, particularly the longer search terms.

00:07:40: Dirk, what do you see as sort of the hot points for AI in travel and tourism at the moment?

00:07:47: Well, there are so many.

00:07:48: I mean, definitely we have to talk about autonomous agents.

00:07:51: Are they taking over?

00:07:52: Yes, they will, but only up to a certain point, I would say, just because we have the industry with the human touch and Definitely, we always will need human brain, we will always need human hospitality, which is most important probably.

00:08:07: But of course, autonomous agents are very valuable in several use cases, in uncountable use cases, I would say.

00:08:16: And in my opinion, they're not killing valuable jobs.

00:08:20: They have a great support for the industry and for the customers as well, of course.

00:08:25: This is what we're balancing at the moment very much, isn't it?

00:08:27: It's like, where does the technology actually help and enhance?

00:08:31: But maybe Yanis, tell us a little bit about what you think AI is doing to help us tackle labor shortages.

00:08:40: It is a very big question.

00:08:42: I don't know if I am the most qualified expert to talk about the labor shortage, but where we see an indirect way that AI can help the industry is with the perpetual challenge of balancing demand and supply right.

00:08:59: so the first one is basic is being able to better understand demand.

00:09:04: and that's what we see.

00:09:05: a lot of opportunity.

00:09:07: because if we think about the analytical side of AI be that the most or local governments or national governments can actually are much better position understanding expecting anticipating and predicting right what them demand charges they will have right and plan accordingly or develop tactics to basically better on smooth in that demand right.

00:09:35: And that goes back to Derek's point around effective marketing campaigns.

00:09:38: So we see a lot of opportunity in better preparing, anticipating and managing the peak.

00:09:44: And then we see also a lot of opportunity in AI helping driving efficiency, be that with fleet optimization when it comes to reliance asset management to hotels.

00:09:54: So basically increasing uptime and increasing supply across the board can also help with this pain point in tourism.

00:10:04: But curious, Dirk, what do you see on your end in that space?

00:10:09: Well, I think it didn't necessarily have to become visible for the customer.

00:10:14: I think, as you said, Janusz, I mean, it's really such a powerful, let's say, for calculation, pricing, also for procurement, itinerary building.

00:10:24: I think it's so much more than just the classical sheds that most people talk about.

00:10:30: It supports... our industry with great knowledge.

00:10:34: And of course, this knowledge has to be accurate and has to be available.

00:10:38: And you at Google and your competitors have a great challenge to read all these unstructured things that we have in the travel industry.

00:10:47: But there's not only one power occasion.

00:10:50: It's the hidden champions we talk about, and they are massive.

00:10:54: multiple.

00:10:55: Let's

00:10:55: maybe try to turn the conversation a little bit into sort of the daily operations aspect of the industry and the opportunities that AI is bringing here.

00:11:04: So Yanis, I'll

00:11:05: go to you

00:11:06: first, William, talk, ask you sort of what do you

00:11:08: see

00:11:09: as some of the more tangible ways that AI is improving really daily operations across the tourism industry.

00:11:15: Yeah, it's a great continuation of the points that Turko's making.

00:11:21: Again, going, I think there's the foundation of data.

00:11:24: right that actually we have a lot of.

00:11:26: and then the willingness we see in the industry to invest to actually use that data and we see this in again in industry surveys that the industry is planning to spend more.

00:11:40: and want to actually continue increasing the investment in that space.

00:11:44: So what are the applications?

00:11:46: So I think the first one is around, again, business intelligence and decision making, the things that we just talked about, so demand, pricing, customer churn, weather disruptions, route efficiency, et cetera.

00:11:59: Then I think there's a lot of opportunity in process automation.

00:12:03: We speak a lot about this, again, in tourism, many things.

00:12:06: could are potentially repeatable, and that's where we could see an opportunity.

00:12:10: It's early days, but we have some good use cases and success stories there.

00:12:17: We know, for example, that Cathay Pacific claim that they're using now AI to handle up to fifty percent of its customer charts, again, creating the space and the time for the human agents to focus on more complex or valuable issues.

00:12:32: Another area that we see a lot of opportunity in airlines and hotels are around maintenance and operational optimization.

00:12:39: Again, a lot of work in that space.

00:12:41: One example that we know of is of Swiss international airlines, where they're using artificial intelligence and Google Cloud technology to further enhance its flight operations.

00:12:53: Again, and I think the key idea here is to simplify that they're able to interlink all the relevant data.

00:13:00: from several operating units, think about the crew, maintenance, and the aircraft themselves, the schedule, the passenger schedule, to optimise the operation and optimise how they respond to disruptions.

00:13:13: And again, which is significant, the cost savings and benefits to the consumer experience when it comes to delays in that space as well.

00:13:21: Doug, I'll ask another question and let you come in on that as well, because we were talking about trip planning.

00:13:27: close to my heart i work with a lot of customers that are in this space so you know.

00:13:31: finally finally is all coming together for a lot of them which is wonderful but also we hear a lot about this sort of hyper personalization.

00:13:38: when i first heard it i'm sure it was in america and we have to use the z in there but now you know it's becoming part of the conversation.

00:13:45: but what does it Dirk, to you first and I'll come to you again.

00:13:49: What does it really mean in practice?

00:13:51: and what's the role of AI here?

00:13:53: That's

00:13:53: a very good question Charlotte.

00:13:55: I've no clue honestly just because it can be a buzzword to be honest.

00:13:59: but of course it's more just because it means that AI really gets personalized and I think that's a tough challenge, the technology itself.

00:14:07: Of course, it's hyper-personalized already, but of course, you have to dive into the travel structure and can be crucial to really integrate mid-office systems, back-office systems, and all this technology.

00:14:18: So hyper-presentation for me means really a perfect link between AI and classical travel technology.

00:14:26: And there's a lot of works to be done, but if we have it, it will become a great tool and probably the next big thing in my point of view.

00:14:33: Janis,

00:14:33: any thoughts on hyper personalization?

00:14:38: Hyper personalization goes very well with hyperbole, but I would say I think there are two aspects to it and that's where in both of those cases LLMs are very powerful.

00:14:49: The first one is the ability to use, if you will, a notion of unstructured data to connect different pieces together and come back with an answer that is relevant to you U.S.

00:15:01: Charlotte or me as Yannis or U.S.

00:15:03: Turk.

00:15:04: For example, help me book a dog friendly hotel with a pool and adjoining rooms in San Diego.

00:15:10: This is personal because it's very personal to you and your needs.

00:15:13: Dog friendly adjoining rooms in San Diego and it's very powerful because you can do all of this in one go.

00:15:21: And the second aspect is to better the ability for the technology to better know and anticipate things about you and this is of course very.

00:15:30: you know this is a very privacy laden space and it should be.

00:15:33: but for example you can authorize certain chatbots to access some information about you in your gmail or your email account right and in that case it can.

00:15:43: the technology can be even more powerful and helpful for you.

00:15:46: For example, I can find out that you are a loyalty member of a certain hotel chain or a certain airline program or you name it or OTA and then I can give you more useful and relevant results for you.

00:15:57: Or I can find out that you have a flight coming up and I can give you updates about this flight or options for you to basically to do something in case there is an issue with that flight.

00:16:07: So that's some areas where we see the promise of hyper personalization and this becoming a powerful way to give value to the consumer and not just long buzzword.

00:16:18: I want to stay here for a little bit longer sort of in and around this area.

00:16:21: Dirk, you touched on the AI agents already.

00:16:24: I mean, I think that our audience would love to hear what you consider to be sort of some of the more promising use cases in this area.

00:16:33: Janice, I wonder if if you have someone or somewhere in mind that that will excite our audience in this space.

00:16:41: How should I put it?

00:16:42: The concept of a true AI agent.

00:16:44: So somebody, some technology that can take actions on your behalf.

00:16:49: And we see some of this already happening, at least as experiments or limited releases in the travel space.

00:16:55: And we see people embracing this.

00:16:58: And it's quite powerful, because we talk about an autonomous digital assistant, which can understand complex goals, planning and actually being able to execute multiple step tasks.

00:17:09: If I were to speak about some of the things we're doing a lot at Google Search, is that we see that we can add a lot of value in the initial parts of the journey, research and discovery.

00:17:21: So how can I make sense of, hey, I want to go somewhere interesting, but I only have those two weeks and I have this budget, help me figure this one out.

00:17:29: And that's where we just launched an experiment actually last week in Google Flights, that it can help you with questions like, week-long trip this winter to a city with great food but give me non-stop only flights or ten days key trip to the world-class resort with fresh powder.

00:17:46: So this is built for open-ended exploration using LLMs to discern preferences expressed in natural language and then using to inform a more specific flight search.

00:17:56: It's still early days but that's definitely a very interesting direction and wish a lot of opportunity in this space.

00:18:02: Okay, I'm not going to ask you to drop any particular names, but if you want to, you can come back on that in a little while.

00:18:07: in terms of companies that are doing this very well.

00:18:10: Doug, maybe you'll drop some names, I don't know, or let's hear from you

00:18:15: as well.

00:18:15: Well, so far, I don't see a real market leading killer application.

00:18:19: Happy to present this at ITB-Twenty-six, but currently it's an open game, I would say.

00:18:23: There are several good tools and good features running on.

00:18:27: For instance, yours, Janis, are

00:18:29: very

00:18:29: much like your flight deals application your

00:18:32: AI based

00:18:33: application you just presented even if it's not available in Europe which is of course always an issue for EU citizens.

00:18:40: so please bring this to Europe.

00:18:42: I'm not conscious of time yet but I do have another couple of big sort of slightly bigger areas that I would love to cover with you both here and we are going to spend a little bit of time sustainability active as well.

00:18:55: What I do want to do, Janice, I really want to go straight in and ask some very specific sort of Google questions.

00:19:01: And Dirk, you know, you are always very welcome, obviously, to join us in that conversation as well.

00:19:06: But I mean, can you maybe I'll sort of start

00:19:09: almost

00:19:09: going backwards.

00:19:10: Can you actually share some examples of how?

00:19:13: Google

00:19:13: AI is supporting more responsible sort of destination management and or over tourism mitigation because it's a huge conversation in the industry and I'm really keen to understand Google's role here and what you guys are actually doing with this

00:19:33: in mind.

00:19:33: So on over tourism right and destination management we see the primary role that we can have here is providing decision makers with publicly available data to help them make better decisions.

00:19:51: And, you know, the one tool that we have is Google travel insights and destination insights.

00:19:59: And for this one, we use anonymized aggregated search and location data to provide a near real-time understanding of travel demand.

00:20:09: Then DMOs can leverage this data to identify big visitation times and popular attractions.

00:20:15: Then they can create targeted marketing campaigns to promote off-peak travel or encourage tourists to visit lesser known local attractions, effectively dispersing crowds and reducing also the environmental and social pressure on a few popular sites.

00:20:29: As a Greek, I can think of a few examples there.

00:20:32: But also, you know, understanding where travelers are coming from and what they're searching for, the most can also better plan infrastructure and resources to meet demand in a sustainable way.

00:20:42: So this is one, if you will, area where we think our data can be particularly helpful for them, you know, for that problem that you mentioned Charlotte.

00:20:53: We will, for ITB Berlin in twenty twenty six, we will run a major sustainability track as well.

00:20:59: And this is just one of the many questions that obviously we will be looking to discuss and to get some answers for.

00:21:06: I mean, do either of you have a little bit of a sense of, you know, how AI is being used to optimize maybe even that area of transportation and logistics when we're talking greener travel?

00:21:16: Maybe, Janice, you might have had a chance to look into this as well

00:21:19: on your behalf.

00:21:20: Yeah.

00:21:21: So when it comes to greener travel itself, there are a couple of aspects.

00:21:26: The first one is how to give information to users.

00:21:31: And that's where we've done a lot of work with the travel impact model for Google flights to help consumers better understand the environmental impact of their choices.

00:21:41: So for folks in Google flight charts, but also in other tools, the CEO equivalent impact of their flight choices.

00:21:49: And in that way, in a few other ways that we use to display this information, we now have sufficient data to tell us that will help users make more sustainable choices.

00:22:01: The second one.

00:22:02: is what we call the nudge mode.

00:22:05: So let's say you're looking for a flight from Paris to Zurich.

00:22:09: There is an excellent train choice also from Paris to Zurich.

00:22:12: In that way we also display this information and nudge you to take the train which is obviously a more sustainable choice.

00:22:19: But of course, You need to show people information to let them make the choice that works best for themselves.

00:22:26: So that's kind of on the travel side.

00:22:28: And then similarly on hotels, we're showing when available attributes of the sustainability of the hotel.

00:22:34: And again, helping users make more sustainable choices or better understand.

00:22:38: the environmentally part of the accommodation they choose.

00:22:41: When it comes to the actual technology, so how can we actually the industry become greener?

00:22:48: It's a very big opportunity, as we said, Charlotte, right, of how can we make travel itself more sustainable?

00:22:56: So we have used AI and various other technologies to create a few products in that space.

00:23:03: The biggest ones I could talk about is contrails, innovation, and green light in the city transportation.

00:23:10: So if I can talk about green lights for a second, this is basically short for condensation trails and they are the line-shaped clouds that you sometimes see behind planes.

00:23:20: And you know through the physics of this whole process they have a surprisingly large impact on our planet.

00:23:26: Approximately thirty five percent of aviation's total warming impact is coming from corn trails.

00:23:32: So more than one third.

00:23:33: It's quite significant.

00:23:35: And And for that particular use case, we have built a forecast model where we predict contrail formation areas using a very, very complicated AI model that is powered by a huge weather flight schedule in satellite imagery data.

00:23:50: And we're making this available to the industry, and we promote its use so as to help reduce the environmentally backed aviation.

00:23:58: already have had a very successful pilot with American Airlines for seventy test flights over six months and we saw that we were able to reduce contrail formation by more than fifty percent through using this technology.

00:24:11: So that's one example.

00:24:13: If I think about the project green light.

00:24:15: in that particular case we use AI to address another source of urban emissions which is traffic signals.

00:24:22: In this case we understand traffic flow And we use AI-driven recommendations for city traffic engineers to optimize traffic light timing.

00:24:30: So things you would never expect Google to be doing, right?

00:24:32: But we're doing traffic light optimization.

00:24:36: And this is already implemented by more than a dozen of cities.

00:24:40: And cities have seen up to a thirty percent reduction in unnecessary stops.

00:24:44: and a significant decrease in emissions at optimized intersections through using this technology.

00:24:49: So those are a few areas where to your invitation.

00:24:52: Charlotte were using AI at Google to help reduce the environmental impact of travel and logistics.

00:25:00: Before we wrap up, I just want to have a tiny little look at some recommendations and outlooks for the future.

00:25:05: Maybe some future-gazing.

00:25:07: Dirk, I will come to you first.

00:25:08: What skills, and this is as we begin to wrap up, gentlemen, but what skills or competencies does the tourism industry really need to develop to sort of stay ahead in this space that we are talking about?

00:25:21: Well, firstly, good news.

00:25:23: As it seems, coding is not that essential as it has been before.

00:25:26: So everyone is welcome to use AI.

00:25:28: And I think it's very important to have curiosity, some courage and even desire for innovation.

00:25:35: So it's again just getting started.

00:25:37: And so please hurry on.

00:25:38: Everyone is welcome to join the AI circus.

00:25:42: Yeah,

00:25:42: maybe some last words from you in terms of,

00:25:45: you know,

00:25:45: what do you feel that the industry needs to develop or focus on in the space of AI?

00:25:51: Big question for a few words.

00:25:52: I really agree with the point of Dirk.

00:25:55: I think there is some foundational capabilities in understanding and making use of your own data and then an openness and the curiosity about what you can do with this, where the value may lie and what providers are out there, who you can work with those to take advantage of them.

00:26:12: I think it's a very, very big opportunity for the industry and it can help anybody in that space.

00:26:19: So it's not something that's only for a particular segment, but it could be valuable for a big hotel chain, you know, for a small independent hotel and so on and so forth.

00:26:28: So I'm very, very optimistic about what lies ahead and all the conversations in ITB.

00:26:34: next year on that topic.

00:26:35: It sadly is the end of the podcast and I thank you both for such a wonderful and insightful conversation.

00:26:41: Thank you so much both for being here.

00:26:43: Thank you so much.

00:26:44: My absolute pleasure.

00:26:45: I really hope I'm sure all of us will be back together if no sooner than at least for ITB Berlin next year of course.

00:26:52: We

00:26:52: know already that AI will again have its own track and ITB Berlin of course hosted by no less than Dirk and also when ITB Asia goes live in October it'll will be on the agenda there.

00:27:05: Do look out for ITB Berlin's call for papers which officially will be up and running from somewhat mid-October.

00:27:13: We will be back with more details and you can find more details on the ITB convention websites about that as well.

00:27:19: To our listeners it remains for me to say that as AI continues to evolve at lightning speed the tourism industry can't afford to sit still.

00:27:28: Keeping up with the latest developments isn't just about spotting the trends as we just heard.

00:27:33: It's about understanding really the opportunities, navigating the risks and making sure that your business really is ready for what's next.

00:27:42: Thanks again to Yanis and Dirk for reminding us of just that.

00:27:46: It's been wonderful.

00:27:47: We'll soon be back with more voices and visions shaping the future of travel, only here on the ITP Berlin Travel Hero podcast.

00:27:55: Thanks for listening and safe travels.