How Artificial Intelligence Could Reshape How Travelers Book Hotels
Photo Credit: A team leader consults a computer engineer on an artificial intelligence project. Artificial intelligence could provide new technical infrastructure to streamline how consumers buy travel, said Fetch.ai, a British startup. Adobe / Gorodenkoff
Skift Take
Imagine there's no distribution. It's easy if you try. Imagine there's no commission. All bookings, peer-to-peer. You may say Fetch.Ai is a dreamer. But it's not the only one. This startup hopes someday you'll join it, and hotels will sell as one.
It's easier to talk about people, companies, or events than to talk about ideas. But one idea worth discussing, despite its complexity, is how artificial intelligence could reorder hotel distribution.
Some researchers are wondering if artificial intelligence could handle some of the more complex tasks of shopping and haggling. Could new algorithms and processes shrink the role of travel search engines and comparison apps? Could the cost of bringing buyers and sellers together shrink thanks to technical innovations?
"What is cumbersome and inefficient is the way we, as consumers, interact with travel businesses," said Humayun Sheikh, co-founder and CEO of Fetch.ai, a startup based in Cambridge, UK. "We need a shift of the technical architecture in the middle."
Sheikh knows a thing or two about these ideas. He was an investor in DeepMind, an artificial-intelligence company that Alphabet acquired as a sister division to Google. He's helped raise more than $21 million for Fetch.ai
