How AI is Personalizing Consumer Experiences

If you have traveled at all lately, you know that the industry needs a reboot and Jeff Katz is trying to do just that. ??Having rebooted the travel space as founding chairman and CEO of Orbitz, he is looking to do it again as the ?CEO of Journera, a travel technology company recognized as one of the most innovative travel companies, offering real-time, complete views of a traveler’s journey.

With a fresh round of capital from A16z, B Capital Group, BCG and PAR Capital, Journera is creating a new category in the connected tissue between travelers and travel companies.

Frequent travelers know that the sector could use more innovation like what AI powered companies Hopper and Journera are delivering, so I invited Jeff to join me for an episode of The Reboot Chronicles to see what’s next.

Listen to The Reboot Chronicles wherever you get podcasts or watch the episode here:

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With a goal of making meaningful change for travelers, Journera came into existence looking for opportunities around the disconnected data ecosystems. Jeff’s idea was that travel could be improved if companies involved in the travel journey connect and use their data. He focused on how Google, Amazon, Facebook were evolving -to be sort of world’s data owners. “Let me work with these big companies to get them in a position that they understand the value of data they have and can do two things. One is, they can create dollars from it knowingly; and secondly, they can use it to create way better customer experiences.” Engaging with travel related companies to help them realize the power of data, was clearly the high level problem that led to this disruption in how travel brands could henceforth interact.

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Journera helps companies involved in a customer’s travel journey harness the power of data and bring it all in a platform that paves the way for a meaningful change for travelers.

???????????????????????“The way it works that’s unique is, we ingest all the data that’s important to a customer’s travel from our partners. It’s all encrypted, and there’s no personal information at all in the Journera platform. Using machine learning algorithms, we are able to say hey, this customer who has got a Hyatt reservation looks like the same person who has a reservation in American, and we can bring them together. We do this real-time. Every time you make a change to your profile or your airline travel, it’s all kept in sync in real-time. This allows us to bring data from a restaurant, an insurance company, a luggage storage company and so on - and that allows us to create this encrypted view of a single traveler’s journey and it’s live.”???????????

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From a black hole to integrated experiences

Partnering with forty to fifty major players in the travel segment to date, Journera’s goal primarily has been to offer a seamless and more personalized experience to customers. When big players like Marriott hotels, Hilton hotels, Intercontinental group and airlines like United and American form part of that network, that accounts for 35% of all U.S origin travel - and the platform becomes the infrastructure for the customer to build a relationship with the brand. As Jeff puts it, ”the only entity that can communicate with you the traveler, is the brand you want to work with. When they use this stream- the journey view, to make things better for you, before you’re traveling, while you’re traveling and after, it lends a magical view of the journey.”

When a customer changes a flight, the connected experience offers the unique ability with this platform to see further onto their rental reservation, hotel reservation and much more. Being the connective tissue between the relevant players in the ecosystem has been the niche the Journera platform has managed to carve, and capitalize on, from a bigger picture. A traveler who makes a change to their flight, resulting in even a destination change, may need everything downstream in their journey tailored to match the change of plans. That’s where picking up a rental car at a new location, and having the new QR code for it becomes decisive - something that the Journera platform has been able to facilitate.

“What the big pivot has been, where everybody has been struggling to survive now, coming out of the pandemic is, there’s insights in the data that I need, because my whole knowledge about even my customer base is zero. Loyal travelers aren’t loyal travelers anymore, they may not even travel. They don’t know who’s valuable, who’s not. So we pivoted around the customer demand, which was the need for data insights, and have started to grow revenue based on these insights from that “ecosystem”. And those insights are real. I can use it to find who’s valuable, who’s not valuable. How do I get more benefits with my partners and so on.”

Taking travel to the next level

In the modern day scenario where we download plethora of apps onto our phone, a platform that offers such a seamless experience and one that’s real-time, adapting to changing dynamics of travelers, especially business travelers is a game changer. Journera is not just escalating experiences for travelers, but offering opportunities for companies and the brands involved to turn a new leaf on customer satisfaction levels. Creating never before seen experiences, leveraging potential that datasets dictate, is a vastly beneficial and contactless aspect every traveler would appreciate. “Insatiable demand for travel exists and travel demand is going to grow dramatically” says Katz. With more optimism in travel post-pandemic, ability to attract customers is only easier for brands, now that Journera has rebooted sharing customer data securely, via unheard-of interactions between travel verticals.

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About the Reboot Chronicles Podcast

Hosted by Dean DeBiase. The Reboot Chronicles is a popular no-holds-barred podcast on iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and YouTube that has been bringing together CEOs, entrepreneurs, authors, and global leaders, for over a decade, to discuss how organizations are rebooting their leadership-competitiveness of everything from growth, innovation, and technology to talent, culture, and governance. Tune in wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://www.revieve.com/rebootchronicles.

About Dean DeBiase

Named a Growth Guru" by Inc. Magazine, Dean DeBiase is a Faculty Member at Kellogg School of Management and Silicon Valley serial CEO, where he has served in chief executive and chairman roles of more than a dozen emerging growth companies, CEO of Fortune 500 subsidiaries, and a director on public, private, family-enterprise, CVC, PE and VC boards. He is a Technology Fellow at Northwestern University, a Board Leadership Fellow at The National Association of Corporate Directors, and an Advisor to the National Science Foundation. A Forbes Contributor and co-author of the best-selling book The Big Moo, Dean, is working on his next book, Dancing with Startups. Connect with Dean here: www.dhirubhai.net/in/FollowDean.

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