Expedia and IHG Lay Out Their Next Steps with AI
Photo Credit: Salesforce's Heather Unruh (left) with Expedia Group's Angela Vega (center) and Beth Burkett of IHG Hotel and Resorts (right) at Dreamforce 2025 in San Francisco. Skift / Adriana Lee
Skift Take
You may travel a lot with the kids, but AI should be smart enough to know when you want to leave them at home.
What does an online travel giant with a smorgasbord of AI do for its next act? Make the tech smarter and more contextual, said Expedia Group Managing Director Angela Vega at a Dreamforce session late Wednesday afternoon.
Vega laid out the priorities in a panel alongside Beth Burkett, head of CRM for IHG Hotel and Resorts.
“What I'm excited to see, especially as we start to think about collaborative contextualization, and where people are more willing to give information to get a better outcome, is how do we leverage that?” she said.
“Recommendations don't need to be based just on the products that I looked at, but the ... outcome of my trip that I would like to have,” said Vega. “And so I think that's the next layer.”
As an example, she brought up a scenario of four adults booking a trip to Cancún, and how that would not be the right time to recommend a visit to a children's museum. Likewise for a romantic get-away or a girl-bond
