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Google and the future of travel: It’s all about data, not search

April 24, 2012 | Online Travel

Great article on what the future of travel tech really looks like to Google and others; how this will affect the travel sector and consumers; and what technology and business issues arise when a modern Web giant collides with an old, entrenched industry.

First, some back-story. ITA Software started in 1996, the brainchild of a group of MIT artificial intelligence guys, including Wertheimer. The company developed an airfare pricing and shopping system, called QPX, that it licensed to Orbitz and then to many other online travel services and airlines such as American Airlines, United Airlines, Kayak, TripAdvisor, and Microsoft’s Bing Travel (fka Farecast). Since 2005, ITA has been working on an all-encompassing reservation system for airlines, called PSS, which it just rolled out for Cape Air (its first customer) last month. ITA’s acquisition by Google was announced in July 2010, but it took almost a year for the deal to pass through an antitrust review. The upshot: Google has to keep providing ITA’s software to existing customers - some of them now competitors - for five years, along with some other provisions to ensure “fair” competition.

Meanwhile, Google is hardly new to the travel industry. Although the ITA deal was viewed by many as the search giant “getting into travel,” that is not technically correct. Back in 2004-2005, the company rolled out Google Earth and Google Maps, followed by local business listings, directions, and other information (such as Street View images). Google also has made strides in providing machine translation of foreign languages, user reviews of restaurants and hotels (both organically and by acquiring Zagat), location-sharing mobile services, and public transit schedules and data. Add these to Google’s advances in mobile and social sharing technologies, and you can imagine a lot of different aspects of travel getting woven together online - more on this below.

So, as of this month, Google and ITA have been officially working together for a year. What do they have to show for it? Critics and competitors would say “not much yet.” Last September, Google rolled out its initial flight search product, Google Flights - which uses ITA’s QPX software—to mixed reviews. People liked the speed and simplicity of the site, but wanted more options and airlines represented. Since then, Google has added more features, like flights from the U.S. to 500-plus international destinations, flights between smaller regional airports, and snazzier visualization tools.

Get the full story at Xconomy

Read also "Apple, the iPhone, and the future of travel"

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