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Kayak CEO Steve Hafner anticipates a significant shift in the travel industry by 2025 due to a potential partnership between AI engines and major travel companies, likening it to a ‘dam breaking.’ He expressed concerns over traditional travel sites becoming obsolete as consumers lean more towards AI-driven solutions and social media. Meanwhile, Kayak is building its own Large Language Model and aims to harness social media’s mass-market potential, while recognizing the growing influence of social media influencers in the travel sector.
The Kayak CEO, Steve Hafner, said “feared” 2025 will see the first successful business between an artificial intelligence engine and a main player, and then “it will be a bit like a break in the dam. “
“Once one of the AIS operates it with a wonderful player, everyone will run to collect,” said Hafner, mentioning Airbnb and Kayak Booking. com sister as in this main category of travel activities.
Hafner speaking on the occasion of Skift Megatrends 2025 in Manhattan on Tuesday about “What’s Award for 2025”.
Hafner said it had to be established how AI will be announced in terms of “which requires credits for a genuine reserve. “
For example: do you pass the booking through Google Gemini to the hotel or airline, or do you pass through an intermediary such as kayak?
The evolution of customer habit and upcoming regulations will also help the long realization of AI and travel, he said.
Hafner said he’s concerned about whether traditional travel sites will be a casualty of changing consumer behavior.
“My concern is that they will avoid going to classic sites through visiting them or downloading an application, and they will count more and more on social networks,” said Hafner. “This is where they spend their time, then the cat and those models of ia where you get answers. “
Hafner said that kayak construction its own wonderful language style, “many other corporations do the same,” because prices fall. But also supplies Google Gemini.
“But just because the Kayak of AI is greater than the taste of kayak in Gemini does not mean that other people may not use Gemini,” he said.
As Megatend Skift pointed out, “influencers are the new agents on a trip. “
Hafner agreed, the influencers are “really moving the needle” and have replaced reading reviews as their generation did in TripAdvisor.
He said Expedia is the ultimate complex company to travel to in using influencers because it “left with an organized list of creators. “They make recommendations that can be booked on the platform.
The Kayak CEO said his company will take a different route. “We’re going to try to go the mass market with it,” Hafner said. “You can share your favorite destinations, and if someone actually buys through that, you get paid. Pretty cool. So we’ll take social media, try to turn that into performancemarketing channel.”
Tags: AI, Google, Kayak, Megatrends 2025, MT25, Newsletter, Skift Live
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