Digital Transformation Project – TripAdvisor [group 78]

14

October

2016

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Everyone knows TripAdvisor. It’s a internet site where you can view and add reviews. Recently you can also actualy book  at TripAdvisor.

Before we go to the emerging technology of TripAdvisor, we first asked stakeholders what they think about the travel booking industry.

The stakeholders mentioned that going to a physical store is more time consuming, but it adds more value. Online is not time consuming, but there is no personal assistant and currently there’s too many information. So, the flaw of the current technology of  the company and other online booking agencies is that their services are not personal to its customers.

To go back to TripAdvisor, to make it more personal, we suggest the development and implementation of a virtual personal assistant application. It should be voice-enabled, and in the long run it should the travel planning tools will employ artificial intelligence (AI). We understood that the CEO of TripAdvisor said that apps are the key to future success. In short, based on personal information, preferences and search options of the customer, it will search and combine thousands of reviews and search the best trip for you.

The basis of TripAdvisor will exist: the rating system. The consumer can be influenced by other’s opinion or observational learning and customers tend to change their decision based on the external informations provided by others.

Alma Janssen   – 386425
Hajar Azrioual – 356326
Pucun Zheng    – 384441
Amir Kalloe      – 356526

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Technology of the Week – Electronic Market & Travel Industry

6

October

2016

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Link video group 78: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXX7Ly2r0NY

 

Thomas Cook was was a baptist preacher who lived in the 19th century. In 1841 he made a deal with the Midland Railway to organize a trip for his society. After that, Thomas cook organized a lot of other transportation trips. He became the first recorded travel agent. Without making use of any technology, Thomas Cook organized travels for 165,000 people a year.

Nowadays, we can’t imagine the travel industry without technology. Firms just like Booking and TripAdvisor are online travel agents. Because of these firms, people don’t have to go to a physical store anymore.

TripAdvisor.com

TripAdvisor was founded in 2000. It started as a portal for professional reviews and by now it’s the biggest travel website. They search the cheapest trip for you. You can also write about your experience about a hotel, flight, restaurant, etc. and view comments from others. In this way you will be sure about your choice.

Besides their website, TripAdvisor also have different applications. They have TripAdvisor for both mobile and tablet and three application where you can see different  information about flights, weather and restaurants.

 The biggest strength of TripAdvisor is that they has a strong international presence with 300 million (unique) monthly visitors. Point that are less good are the controversies regarding the validity of the reviews and the chance of theft of email addresses.

Booking.com

Booking is an online accommodation booking website started as a small start-up in 1996 at Amsterdam. Now it has become the world’s number one online booking website. Booking has a similar but different value proposition to TripAdvisor: Booking is mainly focused on the hotels.

In contrast to TripAdvisor, Booking have their own online booking system, where people can directly pay on booking.com. As the biggest online booking website, they’re also able to connect the hotels around the world which is supported by rich resources and information.

Prediction

Because people prefer the cheapest price, the biggest success factor in the future is to build consumer habits and expectations that they will find the cheapest hotels at the right price when using the review sites.

Using the hype cycle, we believe companies like TripAdvisor and Booking.com are ‘at the peak’ and that the services are at the end of ‘at the peak’. The service will reach the stages where negative press begins. Media hype is currently building and with the brand expansion, supplier proliferation is increasing.

The review sites aim to handle users regardless whether they visit through its apps, or desktop. According to TripAdvisor’s CEO Steve Kaufer, people prefer Apps. The future for the online travel review industry is one with a greater emphasis on the helpful button as well as the ability to achieve higher overall expertise levels.

The future of creating an online community should encourage the forum posts, destination experts, seeing where your friends have been, giving the chance to directly ask other users about their reviews, and more overall social interaction.

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Website registration.

30

September

2016

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These days many websites require you to log in, otherwise you can’t get access to the website. Before you can log in, you have to register yourself. When registering you give information about yourself to the website.

Some users will be concerned about giving their personal information to a website. They don’t know what that website will do with their information. Still a lot of people will register. According to the article ‘ What Drives Users’ Website Registration? The Network Externalities versus Information Privacy Dilemma.’ from Li, T., and Pavlou, P (2016) this is due to word of mouth and displaying popularity. They call this positive network externalities and they would outweigh the negative effect of privacy concerns.

However, there is another option for registration. More and more websites allow their users to register through Facebook, Twitter or other external websites. This has multiple advantages. First of all, the convenience. You only have to click on ‘register using Facebook’. As long as you have a Facebook account, this step will be much faster than an original registration form. Second, people are used to Facebook and they already set their privacy preferences . Third, for the developers of the website this will be much easier to implement. As well as the information saved to the website will be less, making the website cheaper for the owners of the website.

In my opinion, if I want to access a website that requires me to register I will register either way. Nowadays, I have so many accounts that all my personal information is already out there. Another website knowing I’m a female won’t really matter. Furthermore, if a website is so popular that I want access to it, I wouldn’t care about my personal information, otherwise I wouldn’t get access to it. You can compare this with cookies. If you don’t accept them, you can’t go on the website. And how many of you read the terms of conditions of these cookies?

 

Bibliography
Li, T., and Pavlou, P. (2016) What Drives Users’ Website Registration? The Network Externalities versus Information Privacy Dilemma

 

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Face scans

21

September

2016

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Soon passports are no longer needed. Face scans will become more common in the future. Some companies are already working with trial periods in which they are going to apply face recognition in their systems. Face recognition can be used for different purposes.

  • Schiphol airport will quickly identify customers with face recognition and hope to reduce the queues at the gates.
  • The credit card company Mastercard was busy testing the login and pay opportunities using face recognition in the Netherlands.
  • The transport company RET wants to use face recognition cameras against people with a public transportation ban in order to prevent nuisance makers.

Face recognition can be useful for many companies. These three companies are therefore not the only ones who are considering to apply it. Even though we heard this concept just recently in the news, the facial recognition techniques are not new.

In 1964 the first steps were made. Small fragments of images were compared with an image from a large photo. People still had to point out the nose, mouth and eyes on the photo by themselves, but since 1971 there has been developed a system that could take over this job.

So, face recognition has its advantages for businesses and their customers, but there are also disadvantages. Because what about privacy of the people? When everyone becomes followed by cameras, their information can be transmitted to a central database and government can track every individual directly.

According to security expert Bruce Schneier, we don’t need to worry about it. By law, the government cannot attach files unless it comes to the security or fraud. ‘”We use the information only for the purpose for which it was collected” says Schneier. Furthermore, certain images may be used only with permission of the persons concerned to identify that person in the Netherlands.

Even with this reassurance, face recognition can and will come with some problems. For example, one time in America a car driver was arrested falsely. His driving license was confiscated and he was being held for ten days. This was only because an automatic face recognition system mistook him for another person.

 

Sources:

http://www.nu.nl/internet/4108496/mastercard-test-inloggen-met-gezichtsscan-in-nederland.html

http://www.nu.nl/gadgets/4323612/schiphol-doet-volgend-jaar-proef-met-gezichtsherkenning.html

http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/2613144/ret-voegt-gezichtsherkenning-toe-camerabewaking.html

http://pc-en-internet.infonu.nl/software/103817-gezichtsherkenning-nooit-meer-anoniem.html

https://www.computable.nl/artikel/achtergrond/overheid/4130887/1444691/gezichtsscan-door-overheid-is-privacygevaar.html

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