HOSPITALITY TRENDS
businesswire | May 19, 2023
Global payments provider Elavon has partnered with The Digital Line (TDL) on a voice-activated solution for the hospitality industry.
The solution – Audico – utilises the Amazon Alexa device to deliver a variety of voice-driven services. Elavon is the exclusive payments provider for the Audico solution in hospitality, globally.
Hemlata Narasimhan, Elavon Merchant Services President in Europe, says, “Virtual assistant technology is the future of hospitality, and we’re thrilled to be powering the payments behind Audico. This is all about improving the customer experience, and a large part of this is seamless payments. We’re pleased to be partnering with Amazon’s approved partner The Digital Line to make this happen.”
Audico is unique in the UK market, and has already been implemented at the world-famous Ascot Racecourse in Southeast England, where premium customers can call for betting services, order food and drinks, and purchase merchandise from their private boxes all with a few simple words to Alexa. The audible command is then relayed to staff as a Card Not Present transaction, and payment is made using a pre-determined account preference such as a credit card.
Audico is also being explored as a room service solution in hotels, and in premium hospitality areas at other venues and stadiums, as well as providing a landmark series of services in the health care industry.
George Vaughan, The Digital Line’s CEO, says, “This partnership represents a unique opportunity for two recognised brands to collaborate on initiatives that will revolutionise multiple business verticals, including hospitality, venues and health care, delivering a level of digital transformation not seen before.”
About The Digital Line
A commercial research, information, and technical innovation consulting firm, The Digital Line (TDL) has a specific interest in venues, hospitality, retail, education, and healthcare. TDL offers a full range of professional services to help companies in various industries create their plans for upcoming technological endeavours and support the deployment of critical projects in a more creative and cost-effective manner.
TDL also collaborates with cutting-edge businesses, products, and institutions, placing it at the forefront of the latest wave of technical advancements and because of its intelligent integration of private, public, and academic entities, is able to push the limits of disruptive digital technologies.
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DESTINATION AND TOURISM
geekwire | April 06, 2023
For many travelers, technology long ago supplanted travel agents for the basic booking of flights, hotels, and excursions. But how quickly will artificial intelligence replace humans for trusted travel advice?
That’s the larger question behind Expedia’s announcement this morning that it will offer a new “travel planning experience” powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Debuting today on Expedia’s iOS app, it’s part of a growing wave of AI-powered travel- and trip-planning technologies from a variety of startups and app developers.
Travel advice is already one of the most commonly cited scenarios for people using ChatGPT in its raw form or in Microsoft’s Bing search engine, for example. However, Expedia’s significant presence in travel makes this rollout especially interesting as a gauge of AI’s potential to serve in a role traditionally left to human expertise.
One of the ways Expedia is trying to differentiate its ChatGPT implementation is by automatically saving hotels discussed during a chat session to a “trip” in the app to make it easier to book a stay.
This capability will expand later to other forms of reservations, including flights and rental cars, Expedia CTO Rathi Murthy told the Wall Street Journal.
On the topic of privacy, Expedia won’t share customer data with OpenAI from ChatGPT searches in the app, but it may use the data in the future to further personalize the experience, Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern told the WSJ.
For now, Expedia is classifying the initial feature on iOS as a beta, which means it’s not necessarily ready for prime time.
For example, Lance Ulanoff reports on TechRadar this morning that he encountered a bug in which the app didn’t save his preferred hotel after he tested the chat function to plan a hypothetical family vacation.
Expedia says it will “rapidly evolve the experience” based on how people use it.
“It’s also important to remember that while many measures have been taken to limit inaccurate results and inappropriate responses, at times the experience may not work exactly as expected,” the company adds. “Feedback from both our employees and all those using the experience will be continually looked at to make sure responses meet our standards.”
In other words, your mileage may vary, perhaps literally.
Ultimately, this rollout promises to be an important test for this emerging era of generative AI. Just be sure to double-check its accuracy in the meantime before spending thousands on a trip to Europe.
About Expedia Group
At Expedia Group we believe that travel is a force for good it opens minds, builds connections, and bridges divides. We create transformative tech that fuels partner growth while enabling unforgettable experiences for all travelers, everywhere. Our trusted family of brands are known and loved by millions, and we power more trips than anyone else. To learn more about our vision of a more open world through travel, visit www.expediagroup.com.
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BUSINESS TRAVEL
prnewswire | April 17, 2023
Tripadvisor, the world's largest travel guidance platform, released the third edition of its Review Transparency Report, revealing detailed trends around review contributions and the steps taken to ensure the integrity of user-submitted content.
The report, which is published biennially, analyzed a full year's worth of community contributions - over 73 million reviews and opinions in total - to give readers a deep dive into global submissions. The report also reveals how review trends have shifted since 2020, when the previous edition of the report was published. Key trends include:
Strong growth for reviews and business listings
The report reveals a significant increase in the volume of reviews left on the platform during 2022 - up +20% from 2020 levels to 30.2 million - as the world's explorers returned in force following two years of lockdowns, and restrictions. During 2022, Tripadvisor also saw business owners respond to over 10 million reviews, while community members asked and answered more than 940,000 questions from fellow users.
As global recovery continued in 2022, the platform saw an influx of new listings created, with 1.3 million new businesses added to the site, leading to a record 11.1 million listings at year end, up +16% from 2020's total of 9.6 million. Regionally, two out of five newly listed businesses were located in Europe, while Asia and North America each accounted for about 23% of the total.
Success in combating fake and paid reviews
Only a fraction of total review submissions from 2022 (4.4%) were determined to be fake or fraudulent, totaling just over 1.3 million. Of these, Tripadvisor's robust detection and moderation processes prevented 72% of submissions from ever making it onto the platform, a significant improvement on the 67% prevented during 2020.
Reviews from paid review companies represent an even smaller proportion of fraudulently submitted content, but have the very real capability to negatively impact consumer trust. In total, Tripadvisor removed 24,521 reviews associated with paid review companies in 2022. Nearly half of these originated from just six countries: India, Russia, U.S., Türkiye, Italy, and Vietnam.
Once fraudulent content has been identified and removed, Tripadvisor takes a range of actions against offending businesses, including content bans, ranking penalties and for the most severe cases, red badges. The Review Transparency Report reveals that Tripadvisor applied a ranking penalty to more than 33,000 businesses for fraud and issued 341 red badge warnings in 2022, each of these enforced with a ranking penalty.
"Tripadvisor is built on trust, and we will never stop improving our systems to ensure our community has access to reliable content and the businesses listed can compete on a level playing field," said Becky Foley, Vice President, Trust & Safety at Tripadvisor. "The findings from this report show that our approach is working; we're catching a higher proportion of fraudulent content before it is published, with nearly three-quarters of fake reviews never even making it to the platform."
Progress in helping to keep travelers safe
During 2022, almost 600 reviews were posted by Tripadvisor's community that described a serious safety incident during a travel or dining experience. Listings associated with these types of reviews, are subject to additional measures, aimed at increasing awareness among travelers.
Tripadvisor is able to place additional filters on listings associated with reviews that contain warnings or serious allegations, helping users more easily identify potentially problematic businesses. And this approach is clearly working, with reviews that reveal a serious safety incident over 10 times as likely to be read, than reviews that do not.
"I'm incredibly proud of our efforts to shine a light on the more troubling review content submitted by our community," added Becky Foley. "Sharing details of distressing incidents requires courage and all those who have been brave enough to share their experiences will hopefully take heart from the fact that their reviews are being seen by others and are making a real-world difference."
About Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor, the world's largest travel guidance platform*, helps hundreds of millions of people each month** become better travelers, from planning to booking to taking a trip. Travelers across the globe use the Tripadvisor site and app to discover where to stay, what to do and where to eat based on guidance from those who have been there before. With more than 1 billion reviews and opinions of nearly 8 million businesses, travelers turn to Tripadvisor to find deals on accommodations, book experiences, reserve tables at delicious restaurants and discover great places nearby. As a travel guidance company available in 43 markets and 22 languages, Tripadvisor makes planning easy no matter the trip type. The subsidiaries of Tripadvisor, Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIP), own and operate a portfolio of travel media brands and businesses, operating under various websites and apps.
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