10 NEWS
10 NEWS Berlin Travel Festival: A Forum for Creating Unique Experiences Happening during ITB Berlin on March 9-11 at Arena Berlin, the Berlin Travel Festival will reinforce the importance of “people, places, and memories” in a highly digitised travel market. Bernd Neff, Berlin Travel Festival co-founder and managing partner, talked to ITB Berlin News about the inspiration for the festival. The travel festival idea came about because not only has the way we travel changed, but we have as well. We believe it’s time to bring travel planning back from the digital realm into the real world. Travel fans are spending way too much time online trying to plan the best days of their year. The combination of information overload with how easy it is to get lost in the booking platform jungle, means that travel planning consumers feel left alone. And they’re starting to get frustrated. Travel is about people, places, and memories. Everybody in the tourism industry seeks to create unique experiences; but at the actual beginning of that journey there’s only room for discussions around distribution technologies, scaling effects and channel management. With the festival, we’re bringing together brands and experiences. We’d like to foster conversations and offer travellers a place where they can have oneon-one conversations with travel experts. Who should come? We are kicking off on Friday, March 9 with a retail lab where we are aiming for guests from travel agencies and other industries involved in retail business. Globally, we are witnessing the return of travel agencies, however current retail concepts don’t necessarily contribute to this phenomena. This is where our emphasis will be. We’re offering ITB Berlin Trade Ticket holders complimentary access and, Friday from 12:30 – 4:30pm, there’s a shuttle bus from the ITB Berlin fairground to the Berlin Travel Festival. On Friday evening, we’re celebrating our public opening with street music and the theme of “vanlife”; while on Saturday we have a series of events looking at the outdoors, adventure, sustainability and mindfulness. Sunday brings the focus to family, with live cooking shows and talks from full-time family travelers. The full programme of over 80 speakers and events and 100 exhibitors is on our website Bernd Neff Co-founder and Managing Partner, Berlin Travel Festival Plunging into the Netherlands’ Golden Age and city walls as well as Delft, Dordrecht and Harleem, centres of art and craft. The Netherlands Tourism and Convention Board has also planned special events in 2019 for the 350 th anniversary of Rembrandt’s passing In the 17 th century, the Dutch Republic enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Remembered as the “Golden Age”, it was a time of flourishing trade under the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and wealth for Dutch cities. It was also a major period for Dutch painting with artists such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals or Vermeer. For tourists wishing to explore this important period of Holland’s history, a “Golden Age Trail” has been created. The trail stretches from Middelburg in the South to Hoorn and Enkhuizen. Tourists will discover VOC cities such as Middelburg, Hoorn and Enkhuizen with their canals, churches, townhouses Hall 10.2 / Stand 102 Oostpoort, Delft ©1972 M. M. Minderhoud ITB BERLIN NEWS • Friday 9 th March 2018 www.itb-berlin-news.com
ITB BERLIN CONVENTION 11 Sergi Mesquida Head of Innovation and New Ventures of Hotelbeds Group ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN DISTRIBUTION. AN OXYMORON? Category: eTravel World Date: March 9, 2018 Time: 1.30pm – 2pm Location: Hall 7.1c, eTravel Lab Airbnb CELEBRATES 10 YEARS OF RAPID EVOLUTION At the ITB Berlin Convention on Thursday, Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, spoke on the subject of “The Evolution Of Airbnb and How Global Travel is Changing”. ITB Berlin News spoke to him backstage to find out more about a business model that achieved phenomenal success during its first decade in business. We started by asking about the accommodation group’s key markets? The Robots Have Landed Today, at ITB Berlin Convention, Sergi Mesquida, Head of Innovation and New Ventures, Hotelbeds Group, will look at the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the hotel distribution chain and how hotels and travel intermediaries need to prepare for the changes ahead. We asked him what the future holds for AI in this industry. The digital revolution is already here. Websites have been rewritten with design thinking principles and looking for the best user experience possible. A lot of processes have now been embedded into smartphone applications that people use routinely. According to SKIFT and the Gartner Group the next revolution is ‘travel as a service’, where new companies will offer multi-modal journeys on a single ticket that will allow us to go door-to-door with the help of an intelligent assistant that can also handle delays, cancellations, and so on. How will AI impact on the hotel distribution chain? AI will impact in three main ways. With process automation, AI will ensure that a lot of back office administrative tasks are automated; cognitive insight will detect patterns in large volumes of data (such as detecting fraud in real time); and cognitive engagement with intelligent agents that offer 24/7 customer service in the customer’s natural THE NEXT REVOLUTION IS ‘TRAVEL AS A SERVICE’ language, such as Connie, the first IBM’s Watson-enabled robot concierge in the Hilton McLean in Virginia, USA, or Jibo, a speaker available in hotel rooms that can speak, learns to recognise faces and voices, asks questions and tells jokes or bedtime stories. What will the effect be on the workforce if AI takes off and becomes mainstream? Most of the AI initiatives that target workforce reduction per se do not succeed, due to the huge change management required. In most cases, machines are enhancing humans in order to allow the workforce to focus on higher value tasks. What we see is an impact on outsourced work being replaced by AI since they are, by definition, lower value tasks Airbnb is in 81,000 different cities; that being said, we are going deeper into certain key markets. I have taken on a second title – Chairman of Airbnb China. We have an office in Beijing with more than 150 fulltime employees. China is a big, competitive market, so we’ve been investing a lot into our success there and are seeing a lot of good results too. What about the challenge of doing business in cities like Berlin, which has banned the rental of entire apartments to tourists through Airbnb and its competitors? In Berlin, where it has been very strict, we’re seeing positive movement – the backdrop is that 400 cities around the world have changed their policies to accommodate house sharing, with guard rails of course. We certainly want to be a good partner to cities that we are building a lot of business in. WE ARE GOING DEEPER INTO CERTAIN KEY MARKETS Rural stays are a growing area for Airbnb, how is business in this space? In rural areas we have actually added capacity that really didn’t exist. In a lot of rural areas there simply are no hotels, there is no place to stay, so people are putting their homes up on Airbnb. Last year, across 11 countries in rural areas, we drove bn in visitor stays. I think this is a great way to help people not just visit the iconic destinations like Paris and Rome, but also get out into the countryside and have those kind of travel experiences that are really unique Nathan Blecharczyk Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Airbnb ITB BERLIN NEWS • Friday 9 th March 2018
