As we count down to Phocuswright Europe, taking place in Barcelona from June 10 to June 12, PhocusWire is shining the spotlight on a selection of conference speakers in a series of Q&As.
On June 11, Shilpa Ranganathan, chief product officer of Expedia Group, will take part in a one-on-one executive interview focused on designing the future of travel.
Below, Ranganathan, who was named chief product officer at the end of last year, opens up about what excites her, the greatest challenges she faces, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and what areas of the industry she believes are ripe for innovation.
The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What are you working on that excites you?
From a company perspective, having spent time early in my career at Expedia Group about 20 years ago and returning now—everything is new, different and exciting. This company has had many evolutions during my time away. We have built a successful, scaled travel platform enabling differentiation at scale for our Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo brands. This has increased our speed to deliver both partner and traveler solutions and experiences.
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With AI so rapidly evolving, it is a wonderful time to be in travel and the business of making products. I am incredibly excited by our ability to not just use AI for hype but to apply it practically and methodically to the hardest problems our customers face.
From a personal perspective, meeting our partners, getting feedback from our travelers and getting to work with the team is the most exciting—I have been so pleased with the passion and motivation of the team, and I am grateful to be a part of a company that is all about making people’s dreams come true.
What are the greatest challenges you currently face?
The industry is quite complex, and the trends that impact travel at a macro level are often challenges we have little control over. But the thing I always remind myself as a product maker is that we have a responsibility to our customers and partners; we have to reduce this complexity and build product experiences that are delightful, simple, trustworthy and easy to use.
Enabling a customer to have a great trip across the board is a complex problem—one that requires deep partnerships in the ecosystem and travel industry. It can be a challenge to deliver on the whole trip experience across multiple legs of a travel journey, but to me, it’s our greatest opportunity as a platform to partner deeply with our suppliers, partners and advertisers around the world and build collaborative solutions to help travelers fulfill their dreams.
We are fortunate at Expedia Group to have a great team that recognizes the importance of simplicity and a great ecosystem of partners that share our mission.
When we look back in five years time, what will be the biggest impact of AI?
It is such an exciting time to be in technology and travel, and my belief is that AI is going to help us meet our customers and partners needs with more ease and agility in the next few years.
As a company, we’ve learned a lot about AI and travel over the last couple of years. We have brought AI to where customers and partners are today—to optimize shopping (Smart Filters, Property Q&A, Summarized Reviews), to support servicing our travelers at scale and help partners optimize their inventory and advertising spend with us. AI has helped us better explain and elevate the inventory we have, so customers have the ultimate confidence when booking with us.
While it sounds weird to say, I think the opportunity ahead with respect to AI applied in travel is that it gives us a great opportunity to make travel more “human.” For decades, the travel experience has been rigid and trained us as humans to be very specific about our parameters—where we want to go, when and with whom. With AI now we can make this experience to explore, plan and shop dynamically with personalized product experiences.
Imagine conversing as you would in human, understandable language to describe your travel needs and having a trusted companion that works on your behalf, helping to take the burden off before, during and after the trip. And that is just one-side of our marketplace.
The implications of AI on our business are just as exciting in the technology we are building for our partners. We are already using it to give our partners insights to grow their business, streamline servicing and offer their travelers better and more personalized experiences. There is so much more we can do here, and we are only just getting started.
As a product maker and a technologist, this is such a fun time to work at Expedia Group. We have a solid platform from which to build scaled experiences and no shortage of complex problems to solve. Emerging technology, including AI, will transform the experience of travel and five years from now, the AI-based trusted companion will take care of all the hard things in the travel experience, allowing us all to just enjoy our trips and make great memories.
What product areas are most ripe for innovation in travel technology?
I could point to a thousand ways we innovate for travel when it goes “as planned.” To me, the most interesting places where innovation can occur in the travel industry [are] when things do not go as planned.
How do we support our travelers and partners in these moments? What happens when your flight gets canceled, when an unexpected life event requires you to change plans, when a weather event closes a hotel property unexpectedly? It’s in these gaps that the hardest and the most unique problems lie—[problems] that we can solve for both our travelers and our partners.
What are your priorities this year?
- Solve the hardest problems for our customers in the most delightful way: For many people, travel is the most expensive item that they will purchase all year. It is something they plan for weeks (if not months) and look forward to. It is where some of our most lasting memories (good and bad) will be made. That is a huge responsibility and a priority for me as I design unique product experiences with my teams.
- Build a team culture where we can do our best work: There is so much joy at Expedia Group. We are a group bound by a happy purpose and fueled by our mission. Each one of us has a role to play in building our culture. My purpose is to provide clarity, focus and a creative/fun environment for our team—so they can deliver quality, end-to-end travel experiences.
- Leverage technology (e.g. AI as a means to an end) to develop products that bring partners and customers along as we find new ways to transform the way humanity travels.
Phocuswright Europe 2025
Join us in Barcelona from June 10 to 12 where Shilpa Ranganathan of Expedia Group will take part in a one-on-one, executive interview.