0:00 um uh have to rewind every day. So they took this idea of the quartz watch to the leaders of the Swiss watch industry and said this is tomorrow. This watch is tomorrow and they laughed at them and they said we are the best watch manufacturers in the world. There is nobody who can replace us. Later in the year at the annual watch convention or conference uh in the United States, these two gentlemen presented their idea and it was quickly taken up by Texas Instruments and Seco of Japan. After that the rest is history. Today we all wear a quartz watch and now it's is
0:45 going to the next level with Apple and various other watches coming in. So fundamentally if you don't embrace technology uh you you will end up um having to catch up. I won't say you will end up being the loser but you will end up having to catch up because technology is um is the new mantra for success. It's not new, it's very very old but is the only mantra for good long-term success. With that, I'm going to hand over to um uh to my friend Anil Porter uh who will run you through a presentation. Uh the plan is that he will finish his presentation. Please keep your questions ready. Uh
1:32 enter them into the chat box on your screens and we will take the questions one by one. I'm sure there are going to be a lot of questions. So we've kept almost 45 minutes uh for a Q&A session uh to make it meaningful for you and meaningful for all participants on this um on this webinar. Over to you um and when and um over to you Anil uh and I'll catch up later now. >> Thanks. Thanks. And I would like to thank my uh mentor and guru Anil Parasha. Uh whatever that I do is the directions thoughts that I receive from him. Uh
2:18 before I start Mr. Parasher has uh his view of how he looks at purely from a business perspective. Mr. Parasa before I start with the technicalities over to you. >> Thanks uh thanks Anil. Uh thanks uh Runip and all our friends on the call. I'm you know delighted that we could play a small role in supporting the big topic as Runi described as orbit going to orbit is literally like that we get bombarded day in and day out and I would like to take much time because it's Anil's forum really I want to thank Anil uh to put this together along with all of you as well as Ionos who are our partners and significantly helped us they're a artificial intelligence expert
3:05 company and they have helped just put this presentation together. Uh as we all know you know AI as it's called is a very complex subject. So we are trying to break it into phases. Uh I know questions will come and they are welcome to come. I would only u urge you to take this subject a step at a time because it is complex. Uh Anil has broken the issue into some problems that are faced by yourselves. uh there is always a talk about people not required and there's requirement of you know the cost and the safety and the governance and the controls and whatever you have. So it's I will not go into all of it. Uh I just would uh welcome you
3:52 all and uh hand over to Anil and I will happily step in uh whenever it's required. Thank you and over to you Anel. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you sir. Thank you so very much. Uh Re will you be so should I be sharing it? I have to share ahead. You you can share directly. Yes. >> Okay. Just
4:46 Just a confirmation. Hope uh my screen is visible. You can all see the presentation. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, we can see. >> Great. Wonderful. So, thank you everyone. Um welcome to this webinar. uh we're kind of uh putting the context agenda has already been put in. So there have been multiple technological waves that have hit various industries. Uh Rooney uh talked about the watch industry as an example. Uh there's a famous example of uh how you have to be relevant. Technologies will come, they will go. uh it's how you conduct business and how you evolve.
5:33 Kotak uh as a company who used to make film rolls. We know earlier uh we used to carry these film rolls very carefully take photographs. They were industry mammoth. After digital coming into play, digital cameras coming into play. We see that that particular company has vanished. Nokia who was the leader when the mobile handset industry came out mobile revolution started nobody was able to touch them see where they are Apple is ruling the world followed by Android and they're no more to be seen so there are enough examples what really comes out is not technology it is how you evolve you
6:18 have to adapt you have to keep on moving forward I think the Darin's theory uh which is also changed that it's the most adaptable who will survive and I think that's the whole essence of when we go through this uh AI wave so to call what are the things that are happening so in nutshell this is where it is so if I put in more perspective in terms of how travel industry overall has evolved over the years I won't go back to 50s and 70s but we've seen multiple eras most of the people on this call would have seen the CRS era uh all of us are seeing or have seen the GDS when it started the internet era mobile social networks and now the AI
7:05 world has that brought two significant things one people who get onto that wave they move to the next level people who do not get they get buried somewhere in the history there are logos uh who are doing well not doing well people who have evolved keep on evolving. uh while initially it used to take a lot of time for eras to change or shift and I think what's happening now is uh with with technological obscence increasing the time it required to get onto a wave is significantly reducing which means that you have to keep on uh being on the move keep on adapting keep on evolving
7:51 looking at how you conduct a business uh through multiple waves of technology And we're talking about now the AI era, artificial intelligence or actual intelligence. Uh difference is not much but I think from from a technology standpoint it is artificial but from a human standpoint it is always actual intelligence. Actual intelligence will never be overtaken by any technology and and I think that's how we need to look at various interventions that are happening and will continue to happen. uh how does it AI and and and our end consumer and customer uh how he has evolved how he's evolving even further how knowledgeable he's
8:37 getting how researched so we talked about various eras uh 3 4 years 5 years back it was called the data era uh data is what is something which is the new oil so to of all what is this oil uh fueling information today's traveler is well informed we know that for a matter in fact just to kind of give an equivalent correlation whenever you try to visit an hospital because of any ailment or any trouble that you have you are well researched you will look at what are the symptoms what are the diagnosis you you well informed and then is finally you are approaching a doctor similarly when a traveler decides that he would be
9:23 traveling or even if he's doing window shopping, he's well informed. There are more than enough channels that are available today uh to decipher the rates. Rate is never going to be an issue. He is already informed. There are meta searches available. There are AI bots available. There are so many direct websites, so many links, information that is flooded. He is more than informed and at times even better informed than any of us when he decides to approach any of the intermediaries. So these are the statistics. The statistics are not to uh psych you but this is what the reality is. So there are enough and many choices that are available. It is the informed choice
10:10 decision which travelers do and this is going to get magnified even further. So the knowledge aspects come from this particular uh philosophy uh which we are covering as part of our uh I would say main tenants of how we look at how to evolve AI or to use AI in certain use cases what comes in. So end of the day we are here how AI or any technology for that matter helps or will help us or can help us. End of the day we are all here to serve uh our customers. Uh and obviously we get our enumerations our uh profits our bread and butter from
10:55 what he transacts to us. So there are various stages with every technological evolution. Those stages are only getting transferred in IT industry. We talk about security. All of you also know that it is very important secured systems from an IT part. The next security is not about just information security. Information security is transforming into trust. Trust into systems. And that is also the key. And what stitches this slide? We know that there are breaches, there are hacks that happens, there are frauds that are happening, people are very uh skeptical when it comes to new links or new services.
11:43 What is the fundamental thing which makes people uh spectacle is the trust factor. Today if the systems or the technologies, solutions, platforms that we provide to our customers, they are not trustworthy. They will never be used and I think this is the next which is trust and human judgment which really comes in from actual intelligence and the platform which is built using trustworthy technology which deciphers myth from actuals. And this is the pyramid where information and transaction used to be an economy. basic stuff what is the price that is coming uh it's it's a commodity everybody knows
12:30 this is the price plus minus few hundred rupees here and there uh ease of doing there are OTAAS there are mobile apps uh there are everything is led through people or through technology trust of human judgment that's where it really comes in and that's the value that AI cannot solely bring and that is where the hybrid nature of work that we all do really brings in that value. You need a human end of the day when you need them the most whether it is through a regular operation or some crisis that you go through and that's the value that trust and experience defines what is the loyalty
13:16 what is the repeat customers saying how much delighted they are and how do they transform and how do you transform a business and really make it a brand so I think this is the top three are the which will define why will our customers continue to pay us. We still not talking about technology which is artificial intelligence so to call but these are the basics of going forward and always been how do you conduct a business how do you get a remuneration there are few uh use cases that we brought out that what's happening in the globe uh there are uh certain I would say people who have evolved across the world in terms of what they've done So
14:02 Joker who's a who's a Belgium based company has u implemented uh AI bots which is basically to replace the static content form filling information that can be given uh where you really don't need a human to kind of tell certain things. Now today when travelers go they go on to different at least research says that a traveler before taking a informed travel choice decision goes on to 25 different intermediaries to look at every basic detailing of just not fairs brands rules fair rules uh pricing what is available the ratings uh how how good that particular flight or or an airline or a hotel property or a
14:47 destination is what are the various social feeds that are reviews, peer reviews. So those are the things which are easily available. You don't need anybody or somebody to go through and explain this to our customers. So these are the lowhanging fruits which lot of these companies which you see on your screen have done. Whether it is about uh voice interactions, whether it is about uh having uh information dissemination, creating itaries or having support. So the first or I would say the lowlying uh areas where AI can be quickly adopted where the human intelligence is not really being used much but you can
15:33 leverage uh AI. So the purpose of putting this slide was that there is enough and more that is happening globally also in India where there are adoptions of uh agentic bots happening just not only in the travel space but also in lot of other use cases. Uh we know we've been hearing about uh technology businesses being hit big time with more and more companies adopting artificial intelligence which is basically generative AI. Hope you would have heard this generative AI use cases where coding is happening through machine. The lowlying basic coding software engineering which is basically code writing is not being done by humans. It is done by machines. So the lower end which doesn't adds
16:19 really any value to an individual or to the business or to the end consumers are the one which have which are kind of perfect use case for AI adoption and this is what is happening in the world. So the next market leader is not how fast they adopt to AI but it is how best they pick up the right use case or the business problem which they want to solve using this technology. And this is the fundamental whenever there is a technology to be used it has to first fit does it really solves your business problem. Does it adds value to you as an organization as to people? If it does then it is right fit. If it doesn't, it is not what you need to really uh invest your time and money on. Uh
17:05 AI how we see in terms of artificial intelligence being used uh across the travel stage or journeys that we call it. So whether it is about inspirations uh if we talk about uh Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen X whatever you may call it. So as a matter of fact if we see India as a country, the demographics of the country are so young uh where almost close to 70% of the population is under 31 years of age. It's a very very young country. uh their inspirations, their aspirations, their way of life, how they
17:50 look at things is hugely different than what uh you see on the panel people who are conducting this webinar because they come from a different upbringing altogether. They always prefer experiences. They want to live their life. They're not into uh the rigmoral of what we've as uh oldies gone through in terms of creating wealth or struggling to build up. They're more affluent. They have disposable incomes. This is the one reason why travel is booming because they want to travel just not within India but across the globe. They want to travel. They want to experience life. They want to see new destinations and they want to live life fulls size. So dream and discovery really comes from
18:36 that aspirations. How can AI cut across various stages and bring value? Now if you have to entice a dream as as as a tour operator, >> you don't need to kind of go >> you you really don't need to kind of uh explain things. You have to leave it for people for their own imaginations. There are enough uh platforms that are happening uh which kind of bring this research and comparison basically it's about where the good bad ugly how a destination is what are the various ways to use the destination we've seen lot of OTA a lot of use cases coming where transactional bots are there uh you tell us the budget we'll curate an itenary for you machine does it human does it
19:22 inquiry planning is basically doing the uh raki of what it what will it take how much money, logistics, all that stuff. Then finally is the booking stage where you finally decide where you have to do through which intermediary you will do pre-travel planning during travel experience and uh the post travel. Now if we look at various stages which stage matters the most which stage helps us uh do a lot of the I would say which is uh uh handholding and uh ways that we can help uh our travelers to be repeat loyal customers.
20:09 Till the time the journey is going smooth nobody really bothers but we know with lot of uh I would say uh IROPS irregular operations that are happening whether it is uh man-made geopolitical or any other uh uh I would say uh weather related or any other Arabs that happens where our travelers then need the most AI cannot solve that. Unfortunately or fortunately, AI cannot solve that. And that's where actually the during travel and experience really matters. AI will never be able to address at least in the near foreseeable future because they can only prompt. There are
20:55 weather APIs, weather information, geopolitical, there are prediction model that are there but ultimately it is the human judgment and that's where uh we have to be very cognizant AI is there but not every stage needs either an AI intervention or a human intervention or your intervention and this is the myth myth that we have to decipher what is best for technology. what is best for human? How do you bring in value and a hybrid approach to address this chaos that we see today just not only in travel but various other industries uh that that are hit by AI wave.
21:42 At this stage, I would like to take a small pause and ask for u uh feedback, questions, anything that you uh want to ask any of any of the uh participants. Uh before I take up the next uh stages of how AI would transform or or can transform. Run, are there any questions available on the chat? >> One second. This is an automated student. Would you be able to share real examples of AI being used in crisis and disruptions? This is from Rama Basapa.
22:30 >> Okay. Yeah. So there are there are yes there are but uh it's more on the predictive model. uh AI can only prompt that there is a probability uh of a particular booking which could face irregular operations which could be either a destination or a weather event or any geopolitical or related to say an airline. So there are multiple data elements that gets into such things. Uh what is the on-time performance of an airline? uh what are the weather events that are affecting the destinations? uh geopolitical we know before even you embark on a journey that there is a geopolitical issue but weather is something which is unpredictable whether
23:16 it is volcano whether it is uh typhoons storms on time performances of an airline whenever these things so there is a probability model that are exist which can take and feed it cannot 100% of the time tell you this will happen or this may not happen and the probability models put things into perspective to a travel consultant to a human who then deciphers and says okay fine there is a very high probability or there's a low probability I need to be prepared so it's not a question of whether there are existing use cases to address this the more important is based on this predictive model how well we get prepared to service our customers that is the
24:02 essence can we be more proactive rather than our customer telling us we know that there is a probability of this flight getting delayed. There are subsequent uh itinaries on the land front which would require certain modifications. How do I keep my customers informed? How do I proactively look at the other stages and give them a better experience or a delight? This is something which is more important than having a predictive model in place. So and this is how we need to go about when whenever we talk about AI to be used in various problem or various areas that we as a group thought that this would bring in value. So can I can I start with the presentation is there anything or you
24:48 asked this question did it answer you do let us know. >> Uh my name is Bismmeta Saka uh I am a tour operator. Yeah. uh uh can you know that uh what are the tools are used in the AI? What are the tools like for weather forecasting or like how do you uh generate the clients? What are the tools that will be more relevant for us this information? >> Sure. So bisha we'll take this question uh at the end uh tools that are there what are the the existing tools which are are available. Uh so we'll park this question uh for the Q&A session that we'll be having. >> So just put it in the chat box please. >> Okay. Thank you.
25:34 >> Thank you. >> Now if we go through our uh normal BAU business as usual life uh how things happen what all we do as tour operators. So from from a traveler's perspective we know that there is inquiry and planning. uh we would get leads hundreds of leads but out of 100 uh real uh leads which then have a probability of converting into sales that funnel keeps on reducing most of our time really goes into uh in responding to inquiries planning u so that's the journey stage what is the operate what what is the problem that we face is the speed to respond the quotes that we have to give the timeliness of the quotes so that we are
26:22 able to address if so there are 100 uh leads that comes in can we respond to 100 of them in an accurate and a timely manner. This is one area that is of priority one which we see or problem one the highest problem that we all face. Now we face this problem because there are certain lack of automation, there is lack of standardization, there is lack of responsiveness in terms of SLAs. There still do you think as a group does it qualifies to be an AI use case? There are other technologies say for example robotic process automation you would have heard it RPA so to call. So while
27:07 we go through the content of this presentation, we also have to be very clear which is uh which is uh the right technology to use when it comes to putting a right technology to fit that area where it's a concern. Second which is again about inquiry and planning which is basically relating to knowledge. Now as a tour operator we would have x number of staffs x number of travel consultant who respond to such queries. Is there uh there is always a variance
27:55 when it comes to knowledge. There are high performers. There are people who are in more uh I would say knowledgeable when it comes to that destinations or they have been into the system for many years by virtue of which they have a uh I would say effectiveness in terms of responding or being cognizant about how to respond. There are newcomers who comes in. But at a business level, what happens is that the experience which a inquiry or a traveler would get from an experienced staff versus a new fresher that varies for from from an employee standpoint. It is the value that he gives, how good he can learn and transform and be equal or be near equal to the other who are there. But from a business standpoint,
28:40 how can our interaction be consistent always when there is a customer who has come in for an inquiry or wants to plan a travel? This is problem number two as a group that we all discuss that we can put that up in terms of how we can make knowledge consistent so that the experience of our travelers whether it is pre-book, book or postbook is consistent. During travel is another area which is basically how do you uh get in touch or be in touch with your travelers so as to assure him that there is somebody behind the scene who is always available uh if at all there is a need for any crisis or anything that he would need uh and
29:28 especially when it crisis it when there is say a a booking which gets uh cancelled uh due to whatever reasons How do you reaccommodate back? How are you more proactive uh for the next stage or next travel itinerary which whichever he is consuming as part of his journey. This is problem number three and this becomes so very important in ter because there are tools available as I talked about that they will give you predictive or probability models but using those models the uh automation that is there at hand how well you can recover from a crisis. So this problem number three is a mix of automation, knowledge, AI which is the number three
30:13 area that we see uh can be of a use case of mix hybrid technologies for tour operators. Fourth is about dreams and discovery digital snapshot. How do you carry your experiences? How do you add value to the experiences of your travelers so that they are repeat customers to you? And I think this is uh something which gels more with the uh Gen Z, Gen X, Gen Y because everybody wants to have those digital memories available which is more accessible, more sharable. How do we make just not only post-tra
31:01 but pre-travel pre-travel in terms of enticing travel? Can we use uh various Instagrams, destination uh knowledge, destination videos, property uh videos to ex let the traveler experience before he embark embarks on that journey that this is what awaits him and also entice travelers for more travel to be consumed. The fifth area is about post travel and loyalty. uh how do we make our uh post travel experience loyalty increasing the loyalty to have more repeat business and and the last one is about which is
31:46 pre-book supporting opportunities uh which is again part of the subject of CRM customer relationship management how well we know what are the emerging needs of our customers how fast how preemptive we can be uh to address those emerging needs that will happen because there are n and enough providers that will respond to that. But what technology can help you to be more relevant when those emerging needs comes in. We'll go step by step uh into each use case in terms of what does response speed and code time really means. I have
32:31 certain statistics available on the bottom of the slide uh in terms of what it takes for a human-based uh itinary creation and to respond to any traveler query that comes in. Today it takes anything between uh while it says 4 to 8 hours pro people who've been doing this day in day out can do it within less than 15 20 minutes half an hour or 1 hour at most. But by and large uh the average across tour operators varies from 4 to 8 hours. Can we bring that 4 to 8 hours to 15 minutes which is the time it takes to respond in an accurate more accurate content wise uh
33:18 ratewise information and turn it around. Uh there are example that you receive a call at 9 and by noon you may be able to respond to it or maybe it get buried among unread messages and you never are able to respond to that which is missed opportunity. Uh by virtue of reducing the time it takes to respond obviously we will have uh more inquiries being handled. We anticipate that you will be able to handle to 4x more queries because for any business today if we talk about and especially the outbound uh or inbound it is how much queries that we handle because it's a funnel you would receive 100 but not 100 will translate into transaction business
34:04 transaction. So we have to make avenues through technology irrespective of which technology that we use is to have the biggest funnel available and respond with more accurate more structured timely responses having accurate destination information with accurate rates more structured more legible there is a higher probability of conversion. So research says that if everything is structured responded timely there is a 20% conversion uplift that can happen this is enough to justify as an ROI return on investment if this area is addressed through AI RPA and other automation technologies that are available quality
34:52 consistent in every responses there are not repeat question that comes in because you have given every information that is needed for that persona Now there's another element that comes in. Uh we gave quotes which are same for everyone. How can we use AI to address what we have based on the persona of the travel? Most of the time it is leisure. Leisure which is could be a standalone individual traveling alone friends and families. What is that persona needed? And then can you make your quotation a nightmare based on that persona? Needless to say obviously when you are able to increase forex responses your profitability increases. So this is
35:39 first use case that all of us as a group thought that if we use AI RPA combination of certain technologies to improve on the business where because end of the day any intervention any investment that are needed to adopt a new technology money is needed money will only come from the same business that we working in. How do we increase our uh business volumes to fund uh various technological waves that will keep on coming? Any questions on this before we move to the next use case? So um Anil there are couple of questions which have already come so you want to take I'll call them out up to you when you want to
36:26 respond to them. What are the tools of AI? And the second question is the way I the way AI helps travelers find the right trip or curator suited to them. Is there a preemptive way that AI can help agents find their right audience or does the value of AI lie purely in operations inquiry and planning? >> No, no, no. Yeah, very very very very good question. Uh and there are three parts to this question. Sorry. Go ahead. >> No, no, you go ahead. I'll take the next one after that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So when it comes to AI as a technology, AI as a technology is not something which is a GUI graphical user
37:11 interface product at the back end. While you see chat GPTs, Gemini perplexities of the world where you get a user interface and you start interacting with it, it fetches information, knowledge or answers queries. But at the back end it uses various uh search engines uh various sources uh algorithm of the model itself because for every AI there is a LLM large language module which works behind then is the uh other aspect of marketing. Now we know that in the internet era there was SEO and SEO which used to
37:56 drive the website ranking uh they were defined by Google that you need to be having header information HTML header used to have this the body needs to have this information structured in this way and that's how your SOE and SEO ranking used to improve or reduce based on this whenever there is a search done whether it is on uh Google or on Yahoo or on any of the browsers your website would rank up and down then they were sponsored things that come up whenever you do search now what's happening is that when you use a chat GPT or a Gemini they're also creating the same search business in an AI world so for AI
38:44 SEO and SEO is like history they look at the uh accuracy the quality of the information that is available on your platform which is again powered through some large language module or an AI intervention for a lack of better word those will get searched and from there these chat GPDs of the world will fetch information and will also give you source so one is the aspect of technology it is all in APIs which has to be consumed and made into a UI or given a UI for people to interact. The other is sources of information. How do you rank yourself and then where uh the other part was of how to put that
39:31 technology to use. So this is again a journey there is no fixed tool to it and that is what we intend to kind of uh make available subsequently whenever we decide. So existing if you go to any of the uh OTAAS or any of the platforms they've all come up with something which is they've given say for example make my tip has given Myra uh where you can chat you can put in uh natural language and then you will get a response. So those are agentic bots. But in nutshell uh this the problem number one we talked about is about information dissemination structural of information making it available for consumption whether it is through humanled consumption which is
40:16 traveler interaction or a agentic board using that information and giving it to some other users. So these are the aspects which are needed and that's why it is problem number one for us and uh we have so that that's why it is ranked number one. Coming to the next area which is knowledge we talked about uh staff uh consultants uh who are at work. How do you make their knowledge consistent? Because a person who's a fresher may not be able to give that experience to the traveler court or to a traveler in customer interaction which could lead to uh say dissatisfaction or iteration of a customer because then
41:04 it is very difficult to do service recovery knowledge when you train models. So the models have to be trained. There are already existing train model. We talked about LLM and large language modules. So for AI to really come up and to be a use case in any any of the industry, we have to train the model. It doesn't happens on its own. You would have seen certain news article that uh certain companies in the US and Europe are making uh factory workers wear variable uh cameras who read and sees how a worker is doing certain job. So that tomorrow robots can do. We've already seen robots in uh automobile manufacturing who do the welding. Now the welding is not done by
41:50 humans anymore. It has not been done for last six seven years more than that in automobile manufacturing. Those are done by robots. Robots are also form of artificial intelligence because they are more accurate. The quality of welding is better. Human will uh have different uh nuances because there is variance. Why there is variance? Because each person does a job slightly differently. While there is training processes that are given but still because you're using your hand mind uh visual there will be variances but when it comes to machine once you have trained the machine it will thousands of times or lacks of time will perform the same function accurately the very same way like for example calculator it will always calculate the same way there is no variance a formula will always calculate
42:37 in the same way no variance so when it comes to knowledge as the number two intervention which can be used using AI is to train. So whatever knowledge as a business that you've accumulated over so many years of operations, how can you bake that into AI so that that becomes the interface to give consistent responses, consistent customer interaction which gives a better outcome or repeat customers. So this is the number two interventions uh of AI which can be used in our operations and then there are certain outcomes which certain people or certain organizations have seen elsewhere in the world is improve improvement in productivity gains.
43:22 Uh 34% gain on the least experienced staff. So his productivity immediately improves. uh faster completion of task the more number of queries that you're able to handle as I told you that you have to have a very big fun the mouth of the funnel has to break so that you get more inquiries you'll only be able to get more inquiries because uh if you have knowledge consistency you have automation in place to handle those queries and as we go forward into the various use cases. So everything the five top use cases that we as a group decided that yeah these are uh good uh points for AI adoption and this is where it adds more business value. End of the day we have to keep on increasing our
44:08 business. We have to keep on increasing our relevance and continue with this way. Third is the inrip during the trip communication. how well you are uh more in touch I would say not overly in touch with your customer but in touch when it is needed uh there's another element is which I talked about earlier also the iRocks and there was a question also there are models available there are services that are available which can be consumed to have a predictive model and to predict whether there will a irregular operation or some crisis
44:55 with this traveler or a group of traveler during their travel because of weather, man-made, geopolitical or any other event that could happen at a particular destination or I talked about uh flight delays related to having uh missing certain other connections or some issue with booking that could arise. This is quite complex because then you have to consume multiple feeds, have the right predictive model and this I personally feel is a very high techend um problem to solve which also has equivalent rewards for it because if your model and your predictability is accurate, you have the
45:40 right predictive model, the value that you as a inbound outbound tour operator will be able to provide. No technology can provide because now you have actual intelligence taking over predictive model and bringing that value being proactive to your travelers. And that's where you get your loyal travelers because he or she would know that you are always on the job not sleeping while they're enjoying their travel. you are looking at their travel that it goes smooth, effortlessly frictionlessly. So this is something which is the most active because this is what differentiates humanled travel consultants and travel businesses from
46:27 the other businesses uh which are purely technologyled. So uh so uh Anil can I ask a question please? Yeah please please. Okay. So let's say I'm operating a group, right? And uh this group has gone to Jaipur and now there is some disruption in Jaipur either at the airport or at the hotel that they're staying in uh or let's say in the more recent incident there's there's the war which took place in uh the Middle East. Now my obligation to my customer is to for one for me to know if any of my
47:12 customers are in any of those properties where this um this war has taken any toll or impact and then to find a solution for him to come back home. These are my two two fundamental roles and responsibilities. So when we talk about intrip communication and crisis management crisis management is there a way that we can know um through AI in the last where are my passengers at this point in time and are they impacted by this unoured incident or not >> right very good
47:59 Uh is there any other element that you want to add to this question or this is it? >> No no not that I was moving in that direction but yes so there are two two parts to this question. One is uh what are the information sources that are available which you can use to build a predictive model. Then there is another element which is pure operational. How many of my travelers are at this point of time or in the next 8 hours, 1 day, 2 day supposed to be in which part of the world? Yes. The the second part of it which we've already solved, we do provide uh this information. And we have automation in
48:45 place where on a click of a button uh a travel agency can know uh out of whatever active P&Rs that are there which traveler is where and you combine these two and be more proactive because most of the time you go through various P&Rs do an LD entry look at where they are where not they are you will geopolitical is something that you will know you have enough feeds available news channel you keep on looking at it weather events is something which is unpredictable uh which is most likely or some man-made thing which has just come up. So there are feeds and there are technologies. So it's a combination again consuming various API feeds whether other alerts systems that are there airline APIs uh
49:32 flight informations flight radars delays and then looking at your own P&Rs. So yes uh we al we did a we with an initiative at ITQ couple of months ago uh which we call it ITQ labs. It's a genai platform and this genai platform is only doing automation of generating codes. Uh we do consultation with our uh customers. They give us a use case a problem we quickly there are subject matter experts who will quickly generate a exe and give it to them. Okay this is your automation just to give you an example. Yes. So to answer you Reit yes both if you bring both of them together then is where you are actually doing a perfect uh I would say servicing or
50:19 delight to your travelers to your customers to make them loyal and be part of the repeat uh business. >> Yeah. So, so just to uh summarize what I'm looking at is one information whether the the any of my travelers are in that city. Two, if there is any uh you know any situation where they need to be transported back then I should quickly be able to give them options etc for them to come back and the these can be prompted by me rather than prompted by the customer. That's that's the way I see the value of this. >> Absolutely. So if we go back to the number one problem >> when we say quotation management, it
51:06 management time to respond. So what are we doing in that? We're taking all your contracts, all your feeds whether digital, non-digital into the system. Now as part of your operations, you would know yeah there are uh say feed operator who provide chatter. Now scheduled flights have stopped uh but charter is available because there is a group effent enough and you have to take them out. Is a charter available whether your own contracts and the way that we are addressing we addressing this through an association. Can we collaborate as an association that there are certain niche services niche content that all of you may have and can be consumed across your members.
51:53 You may not have a say a charter contract but say uh Homer would have a charter contract. Can you dip into his contracting, use that service and provide to your travelers? That's which is called uh uh uh social or co-creation. Yes, you can do it. You can do it with much more ease, much more speed, much more accuracy. Okay. >> So this is all what it is when it comes to intrip communication crisis management. It helps you uh when you are doing obviously the I won't say that you are looking at profiting out of misery but you are basically helping and making your customers be more dependable and loyal to you and that's how I look at it
52:39 and that's how you add to profitability which is again led by technology digital shopfront is about again point number one in terms of how much you can digitize and make your content and available uh how you can have more AI generated uh answers, AI generated experiences, pre-booking experiences uh consistent uh information across channels uh again ARVR which is augmented reality, virtual reality can you make them experience if somebody wants to go for say uh let me put a better example somebody wants to go on a sbatical for a month. Now if this
53:27 inquiry comes in, how will you you've been kind of handling events, you've been handling uh post wedding, uh honeymoons leisure family family four, five days, 10 days, 15 days. Somebody kada I want to plan a sbatical. How do you respond through an ARVR augmented reality virtual reality? This is a unique example of how you can create new business revenues with more and more uh Gen Z, Gen X, they want to take frequent breaks. There there are Gen Z who say I'm off for 6 months. I don't want to work. I only want to chill out. How do you address this? So I think this digital shopfront is something that just not only contracts that you have
54:13 which is for uh destinations uh the private fairs that you have or uh any other thing that you have which you can digitize you can do it through RP also you don't need an artificial intelligence for it but using that and adding knowledge and context address it to the traveler type is something which then becomes an AI use case and with experiences with pre-experience ra to call it uh you have more business that can come in there's an old Hindi saying if you show then only it'll get sold uh this is what in nutshell if we call it your digital shop front not just rates
54:58 experience or pre-experience in terms of a AR and VR any questions before I move to The problem statement number five >> uh how can small and mediumsiz travel agencies adopt AI without heavily investing? I think we should take that little later. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Okay. Manual operation uh ceiling and repeat business. Basically we know that uh cab is late, check-in is delayed, uh nobody flagged it. Uh so these are typical operational problems that we see
55:44 you being seeing day in and day out. uh follow-ups uh corporate contracts, renewals, these are typical manual in nature uh which has a lot of bearing on repeat business. This was another use case that we thought is is good for AI intervention which is again combination of RPA automation. We know that let me put put a use case. We know our travelers. We have their profiles. Uh they last did this uh travel with us which was for some event. Now we know that his passport is expiring, his visa expiring and if he
56:30 has to qualify, how proactively we can kind of reach out. We know that our rate with a DMC or destination is expiring. This is the validity. We've given quotes. How do you manage and balance your validity of contract, your customer profiles, uh their validity in terms of visas passports uh events that are coming up, marry them to have more repeat business. This is what is is a complex problem because you're looking at many variables. the validity of quotations across you've given you've say taken advances you have to do uh backend uh arrangements is that
57:16 contract valid while you've taken money now once you've taken money you can't say no you have to accommodate it so putting all your contracts all your validities customers validities of various things uh corporate contracts all that and how do you have more repeat businesses something which is uh again a AI use case that we thought is good enough. Uh it has huge bearings on your profitability and bottom line. So this is the reason and obviously it improves your quality, profitability, productivity and and that is where uh the concage come which is basically bot comes in. Loyalty comes in re-engagement
58:02 comes in. So combination of CR uh CRM uh this is all what happens. Uh so this is problem statement number five. Any questions on this? Uh >> okay. So go ahead. five. >> So we've done with the five use cases. Um so the rest of the journey for more uh stages uh is basically uh AI research concage AI booking or coordinators, trip assistant, augmented reality and
58:49 virtual reality. So these are emerging opportunities worth exploring depending upon the maturity of how the world is, how we mature as a group is something which would then happen subsequently as as we progress in our journey towards adoption. These are the various smart uh sudden start small scale your business not to do everything in one go. It's not possible. Uh there there has to be acclimatizations and benefit uh being accumulated or so to call ROI at every stage. So I think how we as a group see it is
59:36 what are the quick wins that we can do which can perfectly fit into uh our AI intervention is itonary quotations email writing summarization lead captures chatbot and creation of AI based content which is getting into our uh emails whatever contracts rates services that we have. This is quick wins uh which will uh bring in a lot of traction at least have some ROI coming in improvement in productivity which is immediate lowhanging fruit medium-term is uh talked about customer relationship CRM and AI put together knowledge assistant which is increasing the knowledge of having knowledge consistency marketing automation which is through improvement of our portals or
1:00:23 having more AI ready content being available so that whenever there is an inquiry which is coming through a traveler using a AI chatbot a chat GPT of perplexities blah blah of the world it uses more structured information available through our chat bots that are available and long-term is AI concage uh predictive analysis we talked about crisis management and all hyperpersonalization is something which is the next frontier how we can personalize it how we can know the psychology of a travelers And that's another use case of how information is put into our uh AI models to know that run as a traveler his likes his dislikes. What is his psychology?
1:01:09 How how do I need to interact with him? How can I uh sell him a content sell a trip? How will it happen? So that is hyperpersonalization. Dynamic packaging. We talked about uh as a group somebody having uh say uh contract uh charter contracts available in a destination not everybody would have how can we create this dynamic co-creation of packaging just not only what we've contracted but as a group so that collectively we are able to bring better services AI revenue optimization looking at profitability at every stage that these are the missed opportunities the are the further things that can be improved to increase and stay relevant. Uh so this is something
1:01:55 which is future ready or kind of look at how uh various intervention and progression could happen. Uh we just brought in some u perspective uh of how ready uh as as a group we are or where would be. So traditional agencies are more beginners at this stage because they have excellent manual operations uh WhatsApp and phone call which is more manual nature. Then there are people who are ready which are digital ready which have website CRM social media integration uh online payments that is digital ready. Then there is a third level of agencies which has which is using chat GBDs or EI content or AI deliverations those are kind of looked as growing.
1:02:43 Then there are AI integrated who have done integration that have talked about various use cases. Those are advanced and then there are uh then there are people who are native and fortunately we have uh fellow panelist Umar who is AI native who has already done certain work in AI and is at a very advanced stage. So these are the various stages that comes up uh in terms of how we define where do our business stands and I will leave it up to you to define where you stand uh at these uh five stages of AI adoption.
1:03:33 This is a pretty busy slide. uh part of it uh in terms of various uh the five slides that I covered had these in terms of what are the outcomes uh which is time it reduces the benefit it becomes knowledge consistency faster responses more pro profitability and if we go through level one level two level three and level five this is what the business stands to gain as part of getting onto the AI by way. So I'll just leave it for all of you to kind of see this slide. Try to see the numbers on your right hand side. Does it make sense? Does it make sense as a group as as an individual business of where uh
1:04:20 you can benefit out of the intervention which part is trying to do or trying to do for its member organization and this presentation will be available to you uh who people who have participate so that you can go back and go through the various content and statistical figures that are available to you uh being presented uh during this webinar. This is more quantifiable what we talked about in the last slide. Various stages level one, level two to level five. what
1:05:05 is before and what it will be after just to quantify uh whenever we as a group decide okay fine this is what we will take up what it is today and what will it be tomorrow so um first is customer inquiries AI captures qualifies instantly whether it does a window shopper or really good intent or just kind of doing uh or not serious and non-s serious uh quotation turnaround under 15 minutes. That's the KPI. Uh quality of proposal which is based on good knowledge, consistency, customer communication, proactive follow-ups, support in terms of bot uh routine queries handled by immediately by the
1:05:52 bot qualified where it requires human intervention goes to human knowledge productivity gains repeat customers and ultimately looking at business scalability. So this is what are the outcomes that we expect at after the interventions if we take up what are the areas when we as a group would be looking at there are various providers uh who is the right AI partner not all who you see uh there are various sponsored links that you keep happen to be coming every now and then uh first and foremost does he understands the business vertical that we come in. Does the AI partner understand travels?
1:06:39 Travel just not only one part of the operations but everything that comes in uh as part of industry knowledge. Can it start small? We talked about five stages. We just didn't said that we'll do everything. No, it is step-by-step approach. How to integrate existing systems for example you all use GDSS whether it is uh say a T port you use LCC's you use various hotel aggregators you use various other DMC's how well those systems can be integrated security I said that security information security is not going to
1:07:26 trust because our customers our travelers expect data privacy they trust asked us that is why they come for repeat business. Can we scale up? We starts we start small. Can can an AI partner scale up fast trainings? Training is just not only online trainings, presence, feet on the street, handholding it all part of trainings. Business outcomes, measurable business outcomes, not only in terms of numbers but in terms of what it will deliver. In the previous slide I explained that this is the outcome that is expected or this should come. So these are the various uh I would say KPIs for a technology
1:08:11 partner selection. Uh I think this is from my side. Um uh you all know ITQ ITQ has been serving all of you uh travel trade for last more than 30 years. A IS is a partner to us who specializes only into AI. So AI is artificial intelligence on operating system. That what AI on OS means. Uh our uh friends we work uh on a lot of interventions together. Uh we've done work already on AI. Uh in terms of we've done uh AI intervention on fair rules.
1:08:57 uh we've it's a patent pending application that ITQ has developed along with the INS. So there is enough uh I would say knowledge acumen and willingness to do certain interventions. Uh with this I will thank you hand it over back to Runip. Thank you so much for having me uh allowing me to uh speak my mind out. Thank you so very much. Thank you Mr. Parasha. Back to you Runep. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, uh, Anil, I think you've left a lot of food for thought on the table. Uh, and, uh, people are going to have to mull over, uh, what they've heard. Uh, we're happy to share your presentation
1:09:43 with them. um and and if they want a recorded version, I'm happy to share the recorded version so that they can they can quickly come up to speed and ideas on how they want to proceed further. Um I think uh some of them will access you uh for uh for the future. Uh and that's uh only a good sign because uh those are the people who are ready to embrace um uh embrace AI as quickly as possible. Uh so you know this AI is not something which I can say we can bring to you in a conclusive manner. It's an ongoing um uh process which will continue to
1:10:31 change. What we see today on AI may not be there 6 months from now or a year from now. Maybe there's a different model as far as AI is concerned. >> That's the fastest depreciating commodity. >> The fastest depreciating commodity in the world today, >> right? So >> so I think start starting I think I know the um the expanse of people who are attending this webinar largely between medium and uh medium large uh entrepreneurs. Uh so uh start small. It's it's a good way to begin. Test yourselves out. Test your team for its adaptability. Uh test your appetite for
1:11:16 investment. uh and then take the next step and or the leap that you want to take uh because at the end of the day this will engulf you in some form or the other and if you move first or sooner than your competition then you will only gain from it. Um uh so with that I think I want to also thank gentleman called Sumitra Stoi uh from Inos who's worked very closely with me uh and with Anil in developing this uh presentation for you. I can tell you now this is the seventh iteration. This does such presentations don't happen uh with one shot um of the bat. So um there's a lot
1:12:02 of work put into this. Again, thank you to my AI think tank team uh for having put uh provided their inputs and of course to Anil and Anil and Anil for that matter in terms of um supporting us um because you know u it's taken manh hours I know Anil has invested manh hours uh from his precious time um uh for uh for bringing all of this together and Um uh uh he I know he's doing it at Anil Parasher's bidding but now I think I can come to him directly in the future. Thank you very much gentlemen. >> Thank you very very much. Uh is is any is Sanjit on the on the chat or uh or
1:12:52 Jatinder on the chat would you like to say anything? >> Any any questions that is left unanswered? Runn >> one second. Hang on a minute. I think I see another one. Uh, no. Thank you so much for your time. Got to go. What are the tools of AI? Uh, tools of AI are primarily models, LM models which are used at the back end. Yeah. >> Yeah. uh recorded version. Thank you for
1:13:41 all right I don't think we have any more questions >> there is a question there is a question the way AI helps travelers find the right trip curator suited to them is there a preemptive way that AI can help agents find their right audience yes I talked about the new marketing uh previously when we talked about website the SEO and SEO course that needs to be improved for you to get ranked in Google searches or Yahoo searches or uh any of the searches. Now when you have your website your portal when you augment it with the right AI engines right AI information the accuracy and quality of output that's how so this will basically be a aentic bot interacting with your
1:14:26 agentic bot and when those bots are of quality that's where it improves in ranking and that is now how you will get travelers because travelers will not come and visit your website they will be interacting ing with these AI bots and this is the new way to or or the new way of marketing and reaching out to your travelers. Back to you. >> Yeah. U I thought I uh did we answer this one? Um Anil, the way AI helps travelers find the right trip curator suited. >> This is what I answered. >> What you answered? Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Then I don't think I >> Nish are the questions that I also want to ask a question. Please go ahead. There are a couple of them who want to ask here. Please go ahead.
1:15:12 >> Go ahead. You have to unmute and ask those questions. Here as a small company, we are using chat GBTe for >> for itinerary. >> So where is the difference of what you do and what your traveler is doing? you would use the same thing. He'll also do the same thing. Where is the value that you're bringing in? >> Uh Mr. Parasher cannot unmute himself. Uh can somebody unmute Mr. Parasha? >> Um okay, I'll ask somebody to see. >> Yes, I can unmute him just to thank you.
1:15:58 Thank you. >> When you use only chat GBT which is freeware available for anyone and creating itary. Yes. But is there any uniqueness or any value that you will bring beyond an end traveler who's also using chat GBT and this is something that we need to be mindful if he can do it on his own what is the value that you're providing your value is on all the five things that we talked about collectively is that what will take you ahead of the curve yeah so so does my think tank have any questions Rohit Gulp Jasmine and Jatender. Does anybody have any questions? Um
1:16:44 so I think yeah I would again would like to thank Mr. Parasha uh because he while he says very proudly that he doesn't understand technology but the way he understand business will put the best of technology in that shape. Thank you. very yes. >> Thank you. Thank you Ronnie. Thank you everybody. Uh you know thank you Sumit AOS. Uh basically I just want to say two three things from my side as partying. Uh this is a complex subject and do not get overwhelmed by this artificial intelligence. If I was to say in a nutshell,
1:17:30 what it does is takes you from a reactive mode to a predictive mode. And how it does is more and more information is fed into what is called LLMs and that information becomes a repository and it tests a situation, picks out that solution and throws it to you. So it's a learning program. It's a game of patience. it'll come. Uh there is there are complexities involved with this. Uh already people are moving away from the words that I've been reading on the chatbot to the Chinese models because they are cheaper. Now there are security issues, governance. I'm not getting into all of that because that's for another day. All I want to tell all of you that
1:18:16 you know we are part of the same industry. If you have any questions, send it to Run's office and let them put it together and we can have more sessions as many as you want. We can get into practical mode because it has to be unraveled slowly. It's not something which can be like you know first day I'm going to do it. Nobody can do it because that the the very word itself means more and more information has to be fed to get information back. So do not I know every single place artificial intelligence is being thrown at you. Every client wants to know up AI career. First of all I can tell you with confidence many of the things which are being
1:19:01 touted as AI are actually automation and nothing more than that. But you know because there is a fashion statement about it. So I'm basically trying to calm all of you down that you know relax. It'll happen. It'll happen. It's a phase program concern office we will address that specific issue offline online so that all of us come to page over a period of time and do not get overwhelmed because everywhere this is the fashion statement and do not worry about it too much. Thank you so much from my side. Thank you Anil and thank you Anil uh again for all your all your diligence, support, encouragement and I think the
1:19:49 last words of wisdom from Anil Parasa are very practical. Um it's it's a journey that we have to set out on. Um the sooner we uh join the train uh the bandwagon um the the better it is for us. I can't say the easier it will be for us but the better it will be for us and uh because you can't escape it. Even if you want to escape it, you cannot escape it. Um uh the the old ABC under your armpit days are far far far behind us. We we now have to uh have to give the customer what he is used to, what he would like for us to present to him. So with that, thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. Thank you team AI uh and
1:20:36 uh thank you ITQ and INOS very very grateful for your uh time and inputs. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. >> Thank you.
…
