Richard Turen
This week, I thought we might be able to insert some optimism into the travel landscape by looking at a few of the technological innovations that will continue to enhance our professional lives and the lives of our clients. This is some of what passes for progress as it relates to our industry.
Google takes over your house
As with all things, we begin with Google. At the Googleplex -- the term used to describe the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus -- the talk is about driverless cars, of course, but also something referred to as Google Home.
We might describe Google as a tool. Some of our travel industry gurus teach us how to use it as a powerful weapon in our skills arsenal, a good tool for agents. But here's the thing: Google Home is designed to be more than just a tool. It is designed to be a virtual assistant that can perform tasks, including many, I might say most, of the functions of a travel agent.
First of all, Google knows more about our clients than we do. It knows where they shop and what they buy. It knows when they are away on trips and where they are going. It even knows when they have friends over because their profile can be tied into their grocery purchases.
Google knows when you are working, and just how much free time you have and how you use it. But Google knows one other important thing that travel agents don't know: It knows where your clients would like to visit in the future. It has their entire search history.
Much of the press concerning what Google Home can do focuses on the sexy stuff. It can order food for you from the local Chinese restaurant, and it can control your home's lighting and heating. It can make some pretty nifty to-do lists. None of that will really affect our industry's future.
But there is more. Google Home and the current leader in this field, Amazon Echo, will be able to make hotel reservations, book flights, change reservations and gather any specific type of destination or review materials the client might require.
This is all predicated on whether or not we'll be willing to give up our treasured privacy to enable technology to provide us with an in-home travel planner. And it would appear that this particular horse has already left the barn.
Like Google's driverless cars, no one knows for sure when it will be fully available and what it will cost.
Having a Google-created virtual assistant in our homes doing our travel planning could be an expensive proposition. But the technology is already there, and it is clear that upscale home builders are planning to offer this technology in their specs. When our kids buy their first home, those who do not rely on Airbnb to determine where they sleep each night will surely find a virtual agent on the premises.
We can now review reviews
The ease with which online reviews can be faked or manipulated is one of the most serious blots on our industry. The "truth" can now be purchased. Kind words are for sale on every street corner, and every two-bit travel hustler can peddle blogging skills for a few extra bucks. Companies have popped up that remove unkind words, and important gatherings of marketing executives are dedicated to unleashing the best ways to defend your hotel product while slamming that of your major competitor.
But our clients, by and large, find their ingestion of online reviews to be the best source of travel information, and they scour them by the millions.
TripAdvisor is the largest, with 340 million visitors per month. Just think about that figure for a moment.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. TripAdvisor owns many other travel sites, including SeatGuru, Cruise Critic, SmarterTravel, Viator and Airfarewatchdog. So it is reasonable to guesstimate that millions of people on this planet find their travel information on one of the company's sites.
But who writes these reviews, and how do we as professionals advise our clients about what is real and what is fake?
It turns out that some help is on the way. Researchers at the highly respected Cornell University School of Hotel Administration have been working to design an algorithm that detects fake reviews by using both psychological and linguistic components to determine if a posting is fake or real. Their tests indicate that they can determine a fake review with 90% accuracy.
You can now test drive this site. Just go to www.reviewskeptic.com.
You cut and paste any online hotel review into the box on the screen, hit the "test it" button and the review will be filtered through Cornell's diagnostics to determine if it is real or fake.
You can even see why the review has been determined to be truthful or not, as certain words are color coded to indicate which ring true and which false.
If I were a hotel manager, I would run every review through this program and publicly identify the likely fakes.
We will be seeing more "reviews of reviews" sites, and the algorithms will only get better. Of course, soon, very soon, someone will invent an algorithm dedicated to fooling Cornell's algorithms, and the battle will continue on.
NASA is now in the weather game
Even the most die-hard climate change deniers might have difficulty debunking the weather-pattern data being collected by NASA, according to a report in Scientific American. Using advanced mapping technologies, NASA scientists have determined that this past March was the 11th month in a row to break the global high-temperature record. Calling this revelation a "shocker," they asserted that it is the technical signaling of a "climate emergency."
A knowledge of weather patterns and predictions is now an important part of the travel consultant's skill set. Do we want our clients on a tour in southern Italy or France during the warmest weeks of July and August with physically demanding daily excursions in near 100-degree heat and humidity?
Now that we have the technology to more accurately determine future weather patterns, what are we going to do with this information? I would suggest that we have an ethical obligation to warn any potential client of the possible health risks associated with travel during the stifling summer season. But we can't just expect Europe to close down during the summer months. Perhaps if we ask nicely.
Book a room and then resell it
Yes, technology is wonderful. Travel agents have a way of quoting cancellation charges by hotels and their own fees for canceled room nights. But now there's an app for that. In fact, there are several.
Cancelon.com and RoomerTravel.com have been set up to enable our clients (uh, our former clients) to discard previously nonrefundable hotel reservations. There is a new generation of travelers who do not want to own a car, a home, a child or a hotel reservation. It is a simple concept. You just list with one of these sites, set your price, and rooms can be resold so the original booker gets back some of his or her money.
The listings of rooms to be unloaded pops up on several major hotel sites, including Trivago and Kayak. The fees at Cancelon and RoomerTravel range from 10% to 15%, but Roomer claims that its average purchaser of a previously reserved room saves 45% off the original cost.
This is, perhaps, a nice option for clients in 100% cancellation mode. But good luck transferring those original booking reservation numbers along with the room name changes and credit card info.