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Good morning, everyone. You enjoying Sessions so far this morning? Good, good.
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My name's James Lemon. I'm Stripe's global lead for all things hospitality,
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travel, and leisure.
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And delighted to welcome you to this session this morning on unifying the guest
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experience,
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all the ways that we can make the travel hospitality leisure industries better
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for our teams and for our customers.
So I'm pretty
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lucky.
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I get to travel a lot with work and I get to see the best and the worst of the
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industry. A couple of months ago,
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I was at a hotel in Berlin and I was at the front desk and I had a long form
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to fill out and a card to hand over. And I thought,
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I've already given you my card online.
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Why am I standing here again feeling like I'm paying again?
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Later that night, I had already given my card over at the bar. I was in my room.
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I grab a sports massage. They didn't even take an online booking.
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So at this point I'm phoning them and reading my card numbers out over the
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phone. And I think by the time I was standing at checkout,
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filling in another form and handing over my card,
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this hotel must have had my card, I don't know, five or six times.
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And I thought there must be a better way. It's 2026. Why doesn't this hotel...
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Trust me. Why does payments keep getting in the way of my experience?
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And why doesn't my card just follow me around on my trip?
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And so we wanted to dig a little deeper into this.
So we did some research with
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Skift that many of you will know.
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We interviewed nearly 400 travel and hospitality execs around the state of
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payments and the way they were thinking about payments in their businesses.
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And one of the questions we asked them is,
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"What would a single connected view of payments do for your
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business?" And here's what they told us. Firstly,
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they could improve their back office reconciliation,
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just making life easier for finance and operations teams by having all of their
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reporting and reconciliation in one place, thousands of hours saved. Second,
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they could better personalize travel offers,
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find the right guest at the right moment in the journey,
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because when you've got a single view of payment data,
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you can really tailor what you offer and when. Thirdly,
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they could reduce manual fraud management.
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They could combine all these different sources of information and make sure they
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were keeping the bad actors at bay. Fourth,
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they could optimize costs and the financial efficiency of their business.
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And what I love is, lastly, is they could innovate.
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They could think about how to make the most of new revenue streams.
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They could automate that spa booking process.
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They could start inserting offers around room upgrades and in-trip purchases.
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They could create their own travel marketplaces and capture more of that trip
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spend. Now, here's the gap.
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While 86% of hospitality and travel execs told us that they
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would love to have a single integrated financial stack,
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they've really got the value of achieving that for their business. Actually,
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only 23% of their systems were fully integrated.
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So if you're sitting here thinking, look, I really know I need to do this,
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but I just can't figure out how, you're not alone.
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But that gap is also our opportunity as an industry.
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The companies that are closing it now are seeing higher booking conversions.
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They're capturing more revenues across the trip,
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and they've got happier staff across finance, tech operations,
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and technology.
What does that look like in practice that we're seeing? Well,
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they have a much smoother online checkout.
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We work with around 40 airports in the world. We work with Edinburgh Airport,
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and they saw a 3% uplift in conversion just by turning on specific local payment
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methods. I spent a lot of time with the Edinburgh Airport team,
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and they told me every time they turn on a new payment method,
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their revenues go up. They turned on Klarna for their car parking,
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and their travelers absolutely loved it. More revenues.
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So Tripadvisor improved their authorization rates by 1.5%. Now,
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for a global company of that size,
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they're recovering millions in previously failed transactions.
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Seamless traveler journeys. So Hertz have consolidated their payments,
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not only online,
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but with 11,000 different locations around the world using Connect.
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So drivers get the same consistent experiences,
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whether they're picking up in New York or LA,
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whether they're taking care of ancillaries or last-minute parking costs,
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or without ever re-entering their car details again.
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And much more efficient back offices. So with Stripe,
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Oasis Hotels reduced their fraud rates by 90%,
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which is just saving their staff hours of manual work each week. And a fun fact,
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a third of Oasis Hotels guests now check out with Link.
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So let me tell you what's going to come up in this session. First,
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I'm so excited to welcome Paulo Donà. He's the CIO of Staycity Group.
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And for those that don't know them,
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Staycity Group's one of Europe's leading apart-hotel operators.
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And he's going to be sharing his blueprint of how they unified payments from
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online to in person, right across the portfolio,
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and some of the lessons and tips that they learned across the way. Next,
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we're going to have a bit of a panel and we're going to zoom out and talk about
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what this means, not just in hospitality,
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but for the wider travel and experiences industry.
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So I'm really excited to welcome Peter Hammer to join the stage,
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who's the head of travel and hospitality at Slalom to talk all things about
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what's happening now in travel, but also a big theme of sessions,
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what's coming next for our industry. So with that, please welcome to the stage,
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Staycity CIO, Paolo Donà.
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Hello, everybody. How are you? My name is Paolo Donà.
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I look after technology for the Staycity Group. That means from AI,
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automation, data warehouse, IT infrastructure, a bit of everything.
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I split my time between Dublin Ireland,
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which is where the company is based and Italy, which is where I'm from.
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Like you can probably tell from my accent or like my 10-year-old son would say,
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say, "It's-a me. It's a
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Paolo." So Staycity redefines what accommodation can
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be.
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So we blend the space and flexibility of apartments with
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kitchenettes, with extra storage, with room to work, with multiroom apartments,
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with the concept of a hotel and the convenience of a hotel.
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So a 24x7 reception, gym, bar, laundry,
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and so on and so forth. We try to focus...
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We're very fastidious about guest scores.
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We want the guest experience to be as streamlined and flawless as possible,
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and that's where payments come into play.
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We want a very seamless payment experience.
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So they're very key to deliver the streamlined experience.
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Staycity is three or four times bigger than it was when I joined six years ago.
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We operate in 41 hotels across eight countries, from Ireland,
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UK, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands,
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about 20 different cities.
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And we have plans to grow 3x in the next few years.
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So we're opening in Amsterdam, Porto, Belfast, Warsaw, Berlin,
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London, Oxford, Bordeaux, Munich, Vienna, Dublin.
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And this kind of growth really puts pressure on the payment infrastructure,
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in particular because in Europe, every country,
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every jurisdiction has a different rules, different payment suppliers,
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so it's not as seamless to grow at this pace.
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We had a number of problems across the whole customer journey due to our
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old payment infrastructure.
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So in our ecommerce and website checkout,
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we offer a lot of contextual upsells from room
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upgrades, late checkout, parking and so on and so forth,
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but customers could not really pay in the wrong currency or with their preferred
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payment method.
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So imagine a customer from Japan trying to stay in a hotel in Dublin.
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They wouldn't be able to pay in Japanese yen.
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This created a discrepancy in conversion rates on the website.
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For example, for Germany, where a customer want to pay with PayPal,
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we saw a big drop in conversion there.
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We also had big problems with authorization rates.
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Our old suppliers had an authorization rate of roughly 75, 76%.
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So we were stopping people from actually buying our services just at the moment
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when they were committed and proceed with transactions.
Then we move on to the
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check-in experience. So you arrive at the hotel, we want to offer flexibility.
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So you can check in the self-service kiosk, you can check in at the front desk,
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you can pay multiple ways,
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but having payment terminals scattered across 30-plus locations
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was hard to manage,
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especially with the different jurisdiction and different suppliers.
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So we didn't have an overall visibility of the payment
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terminals or proactive maintenance.
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So whenever those terminals will malfunction,
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they will impact the guest journey without us being able to manage that
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directly from our central location.
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And then we move to the back office.
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So our experience is multichannel.
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So guests can book online, add an upgrade on-site,
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ask for a refund or through the contact center on the phone.
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And it's important that at all these touch points,
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the payment infrastructure converges to
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the same place.
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Imagine with a number of suppliers scattered across different touch
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points, a refund becomes very difficult.
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Reconciliation becomes very difficult.
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So the wake-up call really came when we had to
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expand to new jurisdictions and the current suppliers for the different touch
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points wouldn't be enabled in a given country.
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So we had to keep adding suppliers and keep patching and patching the tech stack
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to support our growth.
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We needed a partner and an infrastructure not only that was
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good for where we were, but where we wanted to go,
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so as they could keep up and enable our growth.
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So we chose Stripe for four reasons. The first one,
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it's obvious, is the unified architecture.
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So it's one single platform from API to ecommerce,
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to payment terminals, to back office that powers the whole tech stack.
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Then we had localized checkout. So specifically for every jurisdiction,
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we could offer the correct currencies, we can offer local payment methods.
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But while this is local, it is also global.
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So we have global fraud prevention,
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global compliance,
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and the ability to open new countries very quickly without having to go through
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KYC processes or merchant ID setup a very,
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very long process and tedious.
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And then very,
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very important for hospitality is a deep technical integration with our
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software. We use Oracle OPERA,
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which is the main software that's using to check in people, to keep reservation,
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prices,
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and all the information is the hub in a hub-and-spoke architecture
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for us.
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And Stripe were able to integrate very deeply with this
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OPERA system that was key to the development.
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So we used a number of products from Stripe.
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The Optimize Checkout Suite and the payment element UIs on the
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storefront. We also added Link,
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which is the Stripe accelerated checkout.
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Then we rolled out all the Stripe terminals across all the estate,
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the Stripe OPERA connector to our back office,
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and then we also added Radar for fraud prevention.
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We approached the transformation in three main phases.
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The first one is the technical one. So we unified the tech stack
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through the different touchpoints. Then once that was stable,
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we added new payment methods-Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal,
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local payment methods. And then once that was stable,
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we went into new revenue streams,
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in particular multicurrency conversion. Okay.
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In terms of deployment, we started with the storefront,
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so the online checkout.
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We replaced it fundamentally what we had before with different suppliers.
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That was fairly easy and straightforward thanks to all the documentation that
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Stripe offers. Simultaneously,
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we integrated with the back office, so the OPERA Cloud system,
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and we also simultaneously worked on the terminal deployment. For us,
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it was key to do this vertical integration. Again,
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because the customers...
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We're in a multichannel setup and customers can
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interact with payments at different stages.
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It was important for us that everything converged,
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so we had to deploy everything at once.
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We deployed the full stack to one test property first.
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We made sure that the experience was good and was streamlined,
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and then we started roll out hotel by hotel. We were a bit scared.
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At the beginning, it was one hotel per day, in a day,
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and then we saw that it was pretty easy.
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We switched to three hotels and then five hotels per day,
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and we only had one person in our team managing the full process.
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So with travel and so on, in three months,
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we could roll out this full new financial architecture across all of our
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estate. Once that was done,
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we moved on to new payment methods.
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So the payment element makes this very, very easy.
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You can go to the back office, you can start switching on
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new payment methods, obviously. So that's very,
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very straightforward.
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And we also wanted to use the Stripes accelerated
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checkout, so Link.
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That was great for us because with Link,
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every guest that has used Stripe in a Stripe-enabled checkout anywhere
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else, not only on our website, has a one-click checkout experience,
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their payment details are already saved.
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So that makes it much easier to complete at the moment of commitment.
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So that means less abandonment,
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a greater conversion rate on the storefront.
And once all these new
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payment methods were implemented,
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we started experimenting with new revenue stream.
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This is another payment method, buy now pay later, which is a Klarna.
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It was an interesting, a particular payment method that we wanted to
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try. Accommodation can be quite expensive.
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It's a type of payment that would benefit from having multiple installment
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payments.
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We weren't really sure because obviously the commissions are a bit higher,
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what the ROI of this payment method will be.
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What we could do with Stripe is go into the Dashboard,
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set up an experiment,
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and feed this new payment method to a portion of our guests.
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So we could see in this A/B testing what the return on investment
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would be,
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and try to determine what cohort of customers will benefit from this the most.
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And after our testing period, we rolled it out to the whole estate.
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Now that we're done with a basic and a few extended payment
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methods, we switched our attention to new revenue streams.
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With the previous suppliers,
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we have dynamic currency conversion at the terminals.
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So that's something that's been around for a long time,
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but our setup was very static.
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So it was a 3.5% markup if you were to pay
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in your own currency, and we would get, let's say,
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roughly half as a rebate. That didn't convert well,
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didn't work in every jurisdiction,
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didn't really generate a meaningful revenue stream.
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We moved this to the Stripe FX
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conversion,
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and we saw that we can control the markup so we can move it to 5%
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to 4% based and find the right level and we actually can get more of
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a share of the increased revenue through the terminals.
But really,
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where this shines is implementing it on the ecommerce platform.
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So on our website and booking platform.
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What we wanted to do is present all of our prices in a lot of
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local currencies in Japanese yen or
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pesos and so on. And we didn't want to penalize the customers,
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but we also wanted to make some money off it.
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We don't penalize the customers because banks already
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take that money.
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If you are a Japanese customer booking a hotel in Dublin or in the UK,
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your payments will be settled in British pounds.
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Your credit card is in Japanese yen.
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Your Japanese bank is going to charge you an inflated FX fee
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and an FX conversion.
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So you're still paying more than what the accommodation costs.
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Instead of letting the bank make their money,
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we control that through the FX Stripe APIs and
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make that margin rather than letting the bank have it without increasing the
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complexity of the system,
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because our financial infrastructure is still based on euro and British pounds
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because Stripe handles all the conversion and settles the money in our Stripe
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account. So the prices, the revenue management,
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all the difficult stuff and all the financial strategies still in our base
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currencies, Stripe locks in the FX rate,
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valid for an hour, 24 hours,
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so you can decide with published prices in all the currencies that we want with
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the markup,
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and then that flows through in our local currencies at the end
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with the markup.
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So what did we actually see from all this,
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the combined effect of all these initiatives?
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We saw a 70% decrease in checkout abandonments.
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We saw a 10% increase in auth rates.
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This flows to conversion on the website,
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which means that we can spend more money on advertising for direct sales.
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So the return on ad spend for the marketing team has improved,
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and we generated over a million dollars in extra revenue from multicurrency
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conversion. We're not done.
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We're looking at Pay by Bank, for example.
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So we have a cohort of corporate customers for which this will be very,
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very interesting, for example,
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and we can reduce our credit card bill dramatically by
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implementing this.
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And also we can expand and implement more alternative payment methods as we go
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based on traffic and based on return on investment.
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If I were to give you my advice for implementing and restructuring your payment
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infrastructure,
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I would start with a very solid business case.
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You can model it based on the conversion uplift and
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Stripe can give you data that it's fairly reliable on
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that. You calculate your conversion uplift, model it,
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versus the commission of the different alternative payment methods that you want
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to implement.
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You need to consider the new revenue streams like the multicurrency conversion.
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You need to model the reduction in costs for Pay by Bank, for example,
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and all the efficiency gains of having a single consolidated
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architecture with the reconciliation and the finance team doesn't have to
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deal with multiple suppliers and try to reconcile everything.
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When we did this exercise and tidied everything,
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the business case became very clear very quickly.
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I hope this was helpful for you, and thank you for your time.
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Thanks, Paolo.
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So I've been following Paolo and the Staycity journey for a couple of years.
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I think it's just such a great example of how modern hospitality businesses can
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really transform the guest and the staff experience. So that's hospitality,
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but two questions you want to answer next is, do similar rules,
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a similar thinking apply to the wider travel industry? And then also,
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what's going to be next for travel?
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How are we going to be thinking about some of the AI topics that we've been
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talking about over the last couple of days at sessions?
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To help us answer those questions,
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I'd love to welcome to the stage Peter Hammer,
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who's Slalom's global travel and hospitality lead.
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Peter's been working with travel brands over the years and has done this dozens
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of times and tons of segments. So Peter, great to have you with us.
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Cool.
So look,
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we've just been hearing from Paolo about how they've been transforming payments
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in hospitality, thinking about the guest experience.
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What patterns are you seeing if we step back across the wider travel industry
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around kind of unified traveler experiences? Do these themes hold true?
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Yeah, they really do. So let's take a look across travel and hospitality.
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If we look at airlines,
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they're the great aggregator of content through airline agreements.
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We see content now from airlines in the areas of hotel,
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rental car, adventures,
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others being all aggregated and offered by airlines today,
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certainly in a differentiated and more intelligent offered way than before.
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Hotels have become true destination experiences.
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They're able to leverage data and analytics to really personalize,
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offer customized, unique services, unique stays,
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unique experiences to guests even before they arrive and throughout their
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experience. If you look at rental cars,
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it's an amazing opportunity now that we're seeing really play out in the market
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where they are the real leaders in mobility and that broader concept.
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And finally, cruise, you think of it as an all- inclusive experience.
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Today, they're really able to offer not just that inclusive experience,
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but build up the experience so that it includes ancillaries that really meet the
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needs, the real-time,
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in-sale needs of guests,
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and really realize the true value of what that full ecosystem represents.
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Now, let's step back to a different part of the industry. The OTAs,
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OTAs are tremendous in that they are able to offer supply from all the different
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parts of travel.
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They're able to look across the entire travel experience from their vantage
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point.
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And what's most enticing is that they're really meeting the traveler at the
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point where the traveler is most apt,
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most interested in consuming and making those critical decisions along the
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way. But there's some certain things that OTAs really do need to get right.
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So one is,
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are they able to aggregate that supply efficiently?
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Are they able to leverage advanced data and analytics so that they're able to
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see and offer intelligently across that entire travel experience?
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If you also though look at what's required, it's their infrastructure.
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And the real question is,
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does the infrastructure stand up to offering that full
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opportunity,
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taking advantage of that?
Slalom is working today with a really
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interesting adventure travel company.
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If you want to go kayaking
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in adventurous places, if you want to see the big five in Botswana, for example,
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this is your agency.
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We're working with them to implement Stripe and Stripe's capabilities and that
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full ecosystem of payments,
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which is really exciting to see grow and increase its share of value.
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What's exciting about this is it's really offering two real critical points of
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value to that agency. One,
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it's experience.
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We're really leveraging experience and offering unique differentiated experience
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to the traveler. Number two,
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we're able to really efficiently make use of the staff of that company.
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No longer are we doing things like taking staff's time to be on
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the phone with that traveler, to process payments.
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We're able to now receive as a traveler an email,
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a text message with that ability to process payment in a way that's convenient
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for the traveler. The staff, on the other hand,
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is really able to focus on personalized critical points of engagement.
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So real differentiator in the market, real differentiator value creation,
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both for the travel agency as well as the consumer.
412
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Yeah. Thanks, Peter.
413
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I think it's just so interesting the way that travel feels like the ultimate
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ecosystem.
415
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One of the themes of Sessions of just these network effects feels like the more
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businesses work with Stripe, but the better, really.
417
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I think one of the things that we're seeing travelers get to experience is when
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one brand puts other partner offers into its ecosystem.
419
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So a seamless traveler of kind of booking,
420
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but actually behind the scenes you're booking with two or three suppliers.
421
00:26:21.750 --> 00:26:23.010
I always think when I come to San Francisco,
422
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I open up my Lyft app and I can order a Lime bike, right?
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It's that kind of network effect and they just automate with something like
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Stripe Connect kind of payouts behind the scenes. Paolo,
425
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we can't get away without talking about agentic commerce.
426
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So this has been a big theme of the last couple of days.
Potentially,
427
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as John was saying this morning,
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we are seeing a future where travel could be discovered, searched, booked,
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paid by agents.
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In a world where the customer relationship's so important for hotel brands,
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how do you think about that booking experience changing and the way you'd
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maintain the customer relationship?
433
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Agentic commerce and it's something that we're definitely looking into.
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Specifically,
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we're seeing a tiny percentage of the traffic on our website coming from agents
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at the moment. However, even if it's tiny,
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it's growing double-G digits month to month.
So what that means is we need to
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put a lot of effort into discoverability and exposing information that
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maybe before wasn't exposed through the website.
440
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Imagine someone makes a decision now looking at the pictures and say,
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"I like that hotel.
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00:27:28.730 --> 00:27:33.450
I like that room." How do you make sure that your brand translates to
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something that the LLMs can then propose to the customer to pick the right
444
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accommodations?
445
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So that's something that we're working very hard and we're learning on the go
446
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what to expose. But to go back to your point about the loyalty, I guess,
447
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element, for us it's still based on our stuff.
448
00:27:52.170 --> 00:27:54.750
So you know that the Booking.com scores, right?
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The properties nine out of 10 or so on,
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and then there's subscores about location and this staff scores that we have
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are, and I quietly proudly say that are world class,
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like we're amongst the best in staff scores.
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So we don't want AI to take that away.
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We still want to use people to make the difference, however,
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leveraging AI to try to expose and lift the brand through these new
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channels and avenues for booking a hotel.
457
00:28:26.870 --> 00:28:30.170
Yeah. I think that's I think such a great point. It's in a world of AI,
458
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actually, in a way the physical experience becomes even more important. Again,
459
00:28:33.510 --> 00:28:36.550
John was talking upstairs about the role of hardware, but in our industry,
460
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it's that staff experience, the touch points you have with the team.
461
00:28:39.830 --> 00:28:41.250
And I guess it kind of reinforces that point.
462
00:28:41.310 --> 00:28:44.230
If you can just make payments invisible, if you can take away,
463
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create an online check-in so it becomes much more about a greeting,
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help people access the ancillaries and meet staff at different points around the
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hotel.
466
00:28:51.810 --> 00:28:56.350
I think it really gives brands a chance to stand out as new distribution
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channels emerge.
And I guess this same true we're finding in the online space as
468
00:29:00.090 --> 00:29:00.923
well,
469
00:29:01.170 --> 00:29:05.730
we know that agents are starting to refer traffic to hotel sites and agentic
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commerce is coming.
471
00:29:07.230 --> 00:29:10.410
A kind of framework I've really thought about thinking about this is right now,
472
00:29:10.850 --> 00:29:14.010
travel brands need to be modernizing their financial infrastructure.
473
00:29:14.010 --> 00:29:17.290
Your systems need to know whether agents or humans are hitting your technology.
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Then you need to start experimenting with AI.
475
00:29:20.390 --> 00:29:24.770
Seeing more and more people thinking about ChatGPT apps or building agentic
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commerce experiences on their own site.
477
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What would happen if you gave someone a natural language prompt,
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showcased your content and gave them a one-click checkout on your own site?
479
00:29:33.630 --> 00:29:36.430
And I think it's those two kind of capabilities, if you like,
480
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that will really set the stage for those early adopters when third party agentic
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commerce comes,
482
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whether that be through startup travel agencies in the AI space or the big
483
00:29:45.930 --> 00:29:49.290
generic LLMs, I think. And Peter, on that second step,
484
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seeing travel brands experimenting on their own sites,
485
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what kind of use cases are you seeing across the travel ecosystem?
486
00:29:55.450 --> 00:29:57.950
Yeah. I mean, let's think about it. It's a really great question.
487
00:29:58.150 --> 00:29:59.990
Really important, especially today in,
488
00:30:00.230 --> 00:30:02.690
and we look at the way that capital is invested today.
489
00:30:02.870 --> 00:30:06.770
So let's break it out into three different phases or three different stages.
490
00:30:07.530 --> 00:30:09.670
So the first is search and packaging.
491
00:30:10.930 --> 00:30:14.030
So the ability to aggregate content, to inform,
492
00:30:14.230 --> 00:30:17.690
to educate and to lead.
493
00:30:18.330 --> 00:30:22.790
Today we're seeing all sorts of travel companies now provide insights,
494
00:30:23.070 --> 00:30:24.270
lead the consumer to
495
00:30:26.150 --> 00:30:30.510
intelligent informed answers about their booking preferences, booking needs,
496
00:30:30.650 --> 00:30:31.990
and meet those needs along the way.
497
00:30:33.230 --> 00:30:36.310
Here's a real example to bring this to light.
498
00:30:36.830 --> 00:30:38.990
Slalom's working with Norwegian Cruise Lines,
499
00:30:39.090 --> 00:30:43.310
we've deployed a tool that if you understand the world of cruise,
500
00:30:43.370 --> 00:30:46.570
the biggest question is if I'm a first-time cruiser,
501
00:30:47.450 --> 00:30:51.730
the cruise is so complex. How do I make a decision?
502
00:30:52.070 --> 00:30:53.630
What information do I need to know?
503
00:30:54.890 --> 00:30:59.430
How do I make decisions around ship and market and all these complexities?
We
504
00:30:59.630 --> 00:31:02.030
deployed an AI tool called Nora.
505
00:31:02.570 --> 00:31:07.510
Nora today for the guest that goes through the Nora experience and the guest is
506
00:31:07.590 --> 00:31:10.070
prompted through a natural language query.
507
00:31:10.830 --> 00:31:15.470
The guest has now represented or presented three different options that meet the
508
00:31:15.530 --> 00:31:18.050
unique needs of that guest while they're traveling.
509
00:31:18.870 --> 00:31:23.360
So what's interesting about this experience is that it solves this big problem
510
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:27.800
of cruise, but it really provides value to the guest. And today,
511
00:31:27.940 --> 00:31:32.860
the guest that goes through that experience with Nora, they are,
512
00:31:33.120 --> 00:31:33.953
number one,
513
00:31:34.200 --> 00:31:39.080
almost 60% more likely to purchase that cruise versus
514
00:31:39.140 --> 00:31:42.300
guests that go through the traditional channels. Number two,
515
00:31:42.720 --> 00:31:47.260
they're paying almost 30% more for that cruise.
516
00:31:48.220 --> 00:31:51.560
What's really interesting is at the end of the cruise,
517
00:31:52.300 --> 00:31:53.640
those guests are reporting much,
518
00:31:53.740 --> 00:31:58.620
much higher satisfaction rates and higher preferences to return to
519
00:31:58.700 --> 00:32:02.540
Norwegian Cruise Lines, so increased brand preference going forward.
520
00:32:03.120 --> 00:32:07.360
So really, really remarkable experience.
The second stage,
521
00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:10.780
so think of it as servicing and disruption.
522
00:32:11.060 --> 00:32:13.240
We've all been through that airline disruption,
523
00:32:14.060 --> 00:32:17.420
regular operation scenario and can certainly personally relate to this.
524
00:32:18.180 --> 00:32:22.920
We're now able to bring AI into that ecosystem and into the stage in a
525
00:32:23.100 --> 00:32:27.840
very critical way. One, to early-detect irregular operation scenarios.
526
00:32:28.520 --> 00:32:29.000
Number two,
527
00:32:29.000 --> 00:32:32.700
we're able to intelligently present based on the needs of that traveler,
528
00:32:33.840 --> 00:32:37.840
solutions, recovery solutions that best meet the needs of that traveler.
529
00:32:38.560 --> 00:32:39.140
Number three,
530
00:32:39.140 --> 00:32:43.840
we're able to take into account efficient operations such that where the
531
00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:48.580
traveler's not able to solve given the options presented perhaps through mobile,
532
00:32:48.820 --> 00:32:50.600
when they connect with the contact center,
533
00:32:50.980 --> 00:32:53.600
we're able to serve contact center agents,
534
00:32:54.080 --> 00:32:57.760
intelligent options to rapidly and in an intelligent way,
535
00:32:58.300 --> 00:33:02.500
different solutions to solve for that guest next-step travel needs.
536
00:33:03.080 --> 00:33:07.580
So incredibly remarkable results and seamless experience and
537
00:33:07.740 --> 00:33:10.780
uplifted experience to serve travelers.
538
00:33:11.580 --> 00:33:13.400
When I step back then to the third,
539
00:33:14.080 --> 00:33:18.060
it is an on-property or in-travel experience.
540
00:33:18.060 --> 00:33:19.860
And where cruise lines are able, for example,
541
00:33:19.940 --> 00:33:24.840
to offer intelligent offers not just on top of the all-inclusive experience of
542
00:33:24.860 --> 00:33:29.760
the cruise, but also in travel to offer unique experiences that
543
00:33:29.920 --> 00:33:34.000
uplift both the engagement and the experience of that traveler.
544
00:33:34.300 --> 00:33:35.133
Fantastic. Well, look,
545
00:33:35.460 --> 00:33:38.140
I think one of the things we're really learning is that when you talk about
546
00:33:38.200 --> 00:33:41.640
dynamic shopping, the servicing, personalization,
547
00:33:41.700 --> 00:33:43.860
it really feels like the whole industry, as you were saying, Paolo,
548
00:33:43.990 --> 00:33:47.340
needs to think about unified data stack, unified architecture,
549
00:33:47.720 --> 00:33:51.540
and a flexible infrastructure for scale. So thank you, Paolo, Peter.
550
00:33:51.630 --> 00:33:53.820
That's been fantastic.
As we wrap,
551
00:33:53.900 --> 00:33:57.390
I just wanted to kind of share the three horizons we think about when we think
552
00:33:57.410 --> 00:34:00.450
about the benefits of unified infrastructure across travel.
553
00:34:00.950 --> 00:34:03.210
The first is really about the immediate return.
554
00:34:03.270 --> 00:34:06.370
So driving better conversions on your sites, higher auth rates,
555
00:34:06.670 --> 00:34:08.730
incremental revenue growth across the business.
556
00:34:09.190 --> 00:34:12.570
The second of these compounding effects, so suddenly you have more loyal guests,
557
00:34:12.810 --> 00:34:14.930
your marketing spend becomes much more efficient.
558
00:34:15.650 --> 00:34:19.290
A consistent checkout experience drives more people to your site and then brings
559
00:34:19.310 --> 00:34:21.950
them back as loyalty members. And finally,
560
00:34:22.010 --> 00:34:27.010
I think flexible global architecture just speeds up that pace of innovation and
561
00:34:27.050 --> 00:34:31.270
market entry around the world.
And what comes next is this world of agentic
562
00:34:31.310 --> 00:34:32.910
discovery, booking through channels,
563
00:34:32.970 --> 00:34:36.790
thinking about how to get your content out into the world so agents and humans
564
00:34:36.850 --> 00:34:39.150
can find you. And I think if you get that wrong,
565
00:34:39.210 --> 00:34:42.870
you probably risk being invisible to the next generation of travelers.
566
00:34:43.530 --> 00:34:45.890
So here's where to start. Go back to your businesses and understand,
567
00:34:46.050 --> 00:34:48.030
where's your conversion falling off today?
568
00:34:48.490 --> 00:34:51.670
Where could you take some of the thoughts from Sessions and think there's so
569
00:34:51.730 --> 00:34:54.590
much more we can drive out of the value of our payment stack?
570
00:34:54.930 --> 00:34:56.470
Which markets are underperforming?
571
00:34:56.530 --> 00:34:58.550
Where are we not getting the direct bookings that we want?
572
00:34:58.930 --> 00:35:01.130
We'd love you to kind of dig into our data a little bit more,
573
00:35:01.190 --> 00:35:04.750
so feel free to scan the QR code and grab that Skift report that we've done.
574
00:35:05.230 --> 00:35:08.830
If you could please join me in thanking our guests and sharing their insights.
575
00:35:08.830 --> 00:35:10.310
It's been a great session and thanks so much.