Building the perfect travel itinerary out of 1000 choices

Although we started out as an OTA, we realized pretty quickly that without lots of data and knowing what to do with that data that we weren’t going to be profitable. About six years ago, we set out to engage with price prediction and got pretty good at it. Today, I believe we have the most detailed price prediction in the world.

Our goal is to create the perfect itinerary for our customer, so in order to do this, we started engaging with user behavior prediction. We record all user interactions with our system, web and app to build a 50-point profile of each user. With that profile, we’re able to target each individual with either the perfect itinerary or the perfect time for them to take a trip. We hope to learn as much as we can about our customers so that, out of 1,000 choices, we can offer them one itinerary which most closely matches what they’re looking for. This emphasis on customer service is at the core of all we do and informs how we develop our technology.

The Live Travel Space has been critical to our business success. Amadeus has been tremendously helpful in providing us with timely and accurate pricing information in their low fare search and by providing us with payable seats and bags by making sure that carriers are filing this information. Additionally, we appreciate Amadeus’ efforts surrounding NDC as well and driving it forward for the industry.

We’ve been working with Amadeus since 2009 and quite simply we chose to work with Amadeus ten years ago for two main reasons:

1. They gave us a very good deal in terms of being able to search and get the content we needed.
2. They were the leader then and now in terms of response times and the most reliable data, which is key to us.

Amadeus has always been patient and proactive with us. They’re concerned about our needs and provide solutions that fit our business. We get things done by working together and having open communication. We trust Amadeus to fight on our behalf and integrate the suppliers that are both in our best interests and travelers’ best interests. As a result, you get a lot of choice and that’s good for everybody, including the end consumer.

It’s a tough market but when you build something great and see that it works, it’s just so much fun. I’m so proud when that happens.