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Mobility data: a gold mine for making the right decisions, and following them Infrastructure and mobility decisions play a crucial role in our daily lives. They have an impact on our ability to move, reach our destinations and interact with our environment. In order to make these decisions more relevant, effective and conducive to a better customer and citizen experience, it is essential to rely more on data on collective mobility usage and also those from private vehicle users, whose use remains largely (too much?) dominant. Especially when the time comes to reduce autosolism in individual cars. The collection and activation of usage data, with Origins – Destinations (OD) in focus, is an invaluable mine to understand the movement patterns of local populations or visitors. These data therefore include the points of departure and arrival, the routes taken, the travel times and especially by deepening the preferences of users for all or part of their journeys. By analyzing this information, decision makers can identify the busiest areas, peak hours and bottlenecks in the transport network. This allows infrastructure investments to be targeted more accurately, focusing improvements where they are most needed. But also the right chains of multimodal offers, with relay car parks, good incentive pricing and the most suitable communication campaigns, etc. Finally, this data must allow us to achieve, at the best possible cost, what we all aspire to: an accessible customization of the transport offer. And for the decision-makers of local authorities and companies, to achieve an improvement of what can be called the Decision-Makers Experience for decision-making and the follow-up of decisions taken regarding the mobility of citizens and employees. Impact Consultants and Mobility Metrix are joining forces to meet this challenge: help local players use and activate their accessible and regulatory customer data (GDPR) to better drive their mobility policies. Winning this challenge involves: An inventory of locally accessible data and the best organization to make them actionable in a practical, regulatory and also ecological way (fingerprint under control) Good procedures for the collection and “sourcing” of additional data in particular concerning the uses of individual vehicles The right restitution to make this data useful to the decision The right discipline and tools to track the results of decisions and train the following Contact us to talk about your mobility issues and ambitions, your data contains part of the solution. Laurent@mobility-metrix.com  Paul@impactconsultants.eu Share this page

WHAT PLACE OF CHATGPT IN THE TRAVEL AND TOURISM SECTOR? For professionals, ChatGPT presents several opportunities. For example, it can be used by a tourism office to search for and compile all the must-see sites in its area. Airlines, hotels, and rental agencies can use it to provide their agents with a wider range of answers to various questions. The tool can also be used as a travel assistant by travel professionals. Leading the way, alongside Kayak, the flight and airfare price comparison platform, is the TMC Navan, Trip.com, and numerous companies on the waiting list to test the ChatGPT plugin, the American travel company Expedia was the first in the industry to install a ChatGPT plugin. Additionally, with the launch of the test phase of a new travel planning experience in collaboration with ChatGPT on their mobile application, individuals with an Expedia account can have an open conversation to seek advice on their upcoming trips. That’s not all! By installing the plugin, Expedia claims to simplify the booking process, assist customers in emergency situations, and even enhance its ability to detect fraudulent activities. « By integrating ChatGPT into the Expedia app and combining it with our other AI-based shopping features, such as hotel comparison, flight price tracking, and travel collaboration tools, we can now offer travelers an even more intuitive way to create their perfect trip, » says Peter Kern, Vice President and CEO of Expedia Group. Expedia guarantees a « smart shopping » experience. Will AI replace travel agents? This is the question on the minds of internet users. Among the professions that may disappear with the expansion of AI, customer service agents are at risk, especially since OpenAI claims it can replace 5 million jobs in the United States alone. In France, ChatGPT could address the issue of a shortage of staff in travel agencies. Even though it is still in its testing phase, with the help of AI, Expedia has already assisted over 30 million travelers and saved 8 million hours of work for agents. However, it is essential to emphasize that despite the advantages offered by artificial intelligence and tools like ChatGPT, humans retain a crucial role in the tourism industry. Travelers often appreciate the personal interaction, warmth, and expertise of a travel agent. These professionals can offer personalized advice, understand the specific needs of travelers, and provide a human dimension that cannot be fully replicated by AI. Therefore, while AI technologies like ChatGPT can improve the efficiency and convenience of travel processes, it is crucial to strike a balance between automation and human interaction to provide a comprehensive and satisfying travel experience. Questions related to user data usage and privacy protection must also be considered. ChatGPT continuously collects and analyzes users’ personal data. Users must be aware of potential risks and take steps to protect their privacy when interacting with AI technologies. Businesses must comply with data protection regulations and be transparent about how data is used, stored, and shared. By integrating strong security and privacy protocols and providing clear options for data consent and control, companies can build user trust and promote responsible and ethical use of AI in the travel and tourism sector. Additionally, it’s important to remember that ChatGPT remains limited in its ability to verify the accuracy of online information and may have bugs. Furthermore, its limitations in accessing data, especially in its free version, which does not have access to data beyond 2021, should not be forgotten. Like any digital advancement, ChatGPT will indeed profoundly change our ways of working. Some professions may disappear, while others will emerge. In any case, the promises of efficiency and simplicity offered by the tool seem to indicate that ChatGPT has great potential to be the future of the travel and tourism industry, without neglecting the importance of human interaction. It’s up to industry players to reinvent themselves: online travel agencies (OTAs) did not kill traditional travel agencies but forced them to enhance their value-added services. The travel agent profession is alive and well today! Share this page

JOP 2024: A HOSPITALITY TEST TO WIN The JOP 2024 will also be a test of hospitality and an opportunity to optimize the customer/ visitor experience and make it a reference. We know that this will be the case for athletes, with or without disabilities, who are the subject of organization and prevention. The real stake is next to = make this event a tourist success for all 16 million expected tourists where hospitality, conviviality, security and happiness will be at the rendezvous.It is also the stake for us, French residents that this event does not alienate us and on the contrary strengthens our criticized hospitality. With more than 75 million visitors in 2022, France is the world’s leading tourist destination. The JOP will generate a surplus of visitors that France and its residents must assume, not only through infrastructure and organization but also through hospitality services. At IMPACT CONSULTANTS we participate in this dynamic by accompanying technological hospitality solutions in order to ensure their deployment to the greatest number . Technologies that recognize the vital needs, the «special needs» of tourists and visitors, amplified by the effects of crowds and stress that go with Major Events: need for information, need for mobility, need for security and need for assistance in order to be able to reduce latent or proven worry factors and soothe the mind and enjoy the stay. These technologies include Visitmoov, which automatically generates tailored tour itineraries adapted to mobility constraints and possibilities; Affluences, which tracks, predicts, and provides information about crowd conditions in transportation and visitor locations; Ezymob, which guides people with disabilities through mobility obstacles and public places; and Rewind, which enhances the support and guidance provided by audio guides. All of these technologies possess significant technological advantages, and their initial deployments have been noteworthy. Ezymob has been used during the World Para Athletics Championships in Paris from July 8 to 17, 2023. Rewind has been employed with visitors at the Grand Aquarium in Paris and on tourist buses in Lyon and Marseille. Visitmoov has been implemented in partnership with the Nice Metropolis to identify and model tourist flows. Additionally, there is the French startup Wever, which, drawing from its experience in France and Switzerland, addresses the issue of perceived insecurity by developing a companion service for tourists who may feel isolated. The keys to the upcoming months for these technologies to fully fulfill their mission of enhancing hospitality will be: Personalizing and improving the customer experience, with a focus on a humanized and capable user experience (in the visitor’s language). Easier integration into existing platforms, whether they are interoperable platforms like tourism office websites or single-operator platforms like those of museums, hotels, or transportation providers. Integration should be a matter of days rather than months. Widespread deployment, accessible to a broad range of users, from major attractions to local sites and hotels, through various platforms. These three priorities for the « before » period are guiding the support provided by IMPACT CONSULTANTS. In turn, these technologies will become tools of hospitality that event organizers, accommodations, transportation providers, as well as local residents, ambassadors, helpers, and passersby in France will be happy to have at their disposal to enhance their hospitality. Share this page

NDC, A NEW ERA FOR AIR TRANSPORT DISTRIBUTION? For the travel industry, NDC – New Distribution Capability – modernizes and facilitates the distribution and sale of airline tickets and attached services for airlines, aggregators and agencies.This standard, initiated in the early 2010s, takes time to be adopted by the various players in the sector: its implementation is indeed an opportunity to challenge existing economic models. An update on this key development that is shaking up the air transport and tourism sector. A bit of historyFor more than thirty years, the travel industry has relied on the GDS (Global Distribution System) to consolidate the content of airlines (number of seats available, schedules, tariffs, special conditions etc.) and make it available to travel agencies.But the model has two major limitations:– the cost of distributing GDS is very high for airlines– the technology used, EDIFACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration) dates from the 1970s and is now obsolete. Its limitations prevent the airline sector from evolving in the distribution of its tariffs and simply offering its new services. Hence the idea of a new model: this is how NDC was born. What is NDC? In 2012, aware of the limitations mentioned, IATA (International Air Transportation Association, representing all airlines) in collaboration with its active members, launched NDC (New Distribution Capability). The idea is to offer entirely new perspectives to distribution, especially increased personalization of travel offers for customers. More concretely, in this new model, airlines can differentiate the services they provide to their customers, with many potential benefits for them: making more informed decisions when choosing a flight, simplified access to all products available on a route. This new standard is very promising for airlines: it allows them to greatly improve the customer experience and significantly enhance the transparency of the search and booking process. The Challenges of Sector Transformation However, for other stakeholders, especially travel agencies and GDS (Global Distribution Systems), this technological and economic disruption does not come without significant adaptation. This new standard enables a direct link between airline inventories and agencies, potentially leading to a major reevaluation of the existing system and a reshuffling of the distribution chain. In fact, it obliges travel agencies and GDS to reinvent themselves: by improving the customer experience, enhancing their services, and emphasizing their value as distributors. As demonstrated by Air France’s recent report on the French market, this crucial transition is not without pain. But it also opens up new opportunities… Are there exciting opportunities to seize, or is it a difficult crisis to overcome for agencies that must adapt on multiple fronts? What do you think? How can this economic and technological disruption be transformed into a growth opportunity? Hélène Millet and Rodolphe Lenoir, Tuesday, February 28, 2023. For more information on the Business Climate Convention, click here! Share this page