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.
Karen Bolda, chief product and technology officer of B2B for Expedia Group, will take part in an executive panel called “The Bridge Series: Travel Tech Trends Around the World.” The discussion will cover “technology in the New Age of travel,” highlighting product and service enhancements across different markets.
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Below, Bolda opens up about her priorities, artificial intelligence (AI), her travel technology predictions and more.
What are your priorities this year?
We’ve got a lot of amazing things happening this year—and, in particular, my number one priority is our expanded B2B tech offering. At our partner event, Explore, we announced a number of new APIs [application programming interfaces]—car, activities, insurance and air—these are embedded with AI and unlock value for our partners with end-to-end trip packaging.
How are you currently experimenting with AI?
- Expedia Group has been at the forefront of AI-driven travel solutions. We have a massive travel dataset, which our AI models are using to refine traveler recommendations, surface competitive rates and optimize inventory distribution.
- On the B2B side of the house, the new APIs we announced are fueled by AI, automation and continuous innovation.
- Our B2B technology powers over 70,000 businesses and 160,000 travel advisors worldwide. What’s exciting is that we’re leveraging one of the industry’s largest travel datasets and cutting-edge AI capabilities throughout our B2B tech, so our partners stay competitive as technology changes.
- We are constantly experimenting with new ideas and technology in our B2B Innovation Center and recently hosted an AI Hackathon for Private Label Solutions, our B2B business.
If you could change one thing about your business and/or the industry overnight, what would it be?
For the industry, I would love it if every traveler were able to have a completely frictionless travel experience. Travel should be fun, seamless and memorable, and sometimes, bad experiences happen. If I had a magic wand, that’s what I would change.
How do you expect travel technology solutions to change in the next five years?
- Travel technology is advancing at a rapid pace, especially with AI. This presents a lot of opportunity but also real challenges.
- I think we’ll start to see a lot of change when it comes to personalization at scale, streamlining travel operations and even allowing travelers to plan trips based on photos they take ... or reels they see on Instagram, which is now possible with Expedia Trip Matching.