At the end of June, Eleanor Ford, LikeCube's co-founder, delivered the HEDNA spring meeting keynote in front of a large audience of senior executives from the leading online travel players, including Orbitz, Tripadvisor, HRS, Hilton, Pegasus, and Amadeus. She discussed the impact of personalisation on the web travel landscape, through the development of LikeCube's cutting edge recommendation technology for locations.

The keynote was followed by many questions, a confirmation of the interest of Online Travel Agents in personalization.

Quoted by HEDNA, Ford told attendees: “We are experiencing exponential growth in data that can be used for purposes that we have never thought of before”.
"Qype is a service that is putting user data to new uses. Its aim is to match a place you like, say a coffee shop, with other coffee shop reviewed by people that are very much like you. Qype epitomizes the trend of narrowcast rather than broadcast. Narrowcast focuses on explicit data geared toward the users’ preference".
"Hyper-targeting in advertising is an emerging trend, allowing for customized delivery of messages to customers", noted Ford. "And we’ve only begun to tap into the many ways we can utilize mobile to deliver relative consumer information".

So if you are an OTA (online travel agent) or TPI (travel partner intermediary), remember that the era of machine learning in travel and leisure has started - and LikeCube is there to get you through the journey.

For more, check out the keynote slides here.

 

Founder and Director of LikeCube, Eleanor Ford, will be delivering the opening keynote presentation at the HEDNA Spring meeting in Prague on 27th April, speaking about the power of personalisation and predictive taste, and the associated impact on conversion.

HEDNA, founded in 1991, is a not-for-profit trade association whose worldwide membership includes executives and managers from the most influential companies in the hotel distribution industry.