Ahead of his speaking on the WIT Main Stage on Tuesday, October 24, Oliver Heckmann, Vice President, Engineering for Travel and Shopping, Google, shares what’s top of his mind on how new technology such machine learning/AI and voice can make better travel.
Oliver Heckmann: “About 50% of the content online is in English, but only 20% of the world’s population speaks English. That’s why translations matter, particularly in Asia where there’s a huge diversity in languages. For instance in India, we recently expanded translation support for seven Indian languages, and saw a 55% increase of app users in just a couple of days.”
Q: As you get set for to speak at WIT 2017, what’s occupying your mind right now about the travel industry?
I’m really looking forward to connecting with others in the industry, and learning first-hand about how consumers are engaging with travel products in Asia. Asia is ahead of many parts of the world when it comes to mobile, and that impacts everything from consumer expectations for faster, more seamless experiences to how we structure information in our products and how companies can assist travelers and improve the customer journey across screens and devices.
Q: As VP engineering for travel in the world’s largest search and tech company, how do you think tech has made travel better generally in the last year?
A: As an industry, I see us getting better at delivering better insights to consumers, experimenting with business models and embracing new technology. Companies like MakemyTrip offer seamless mobile experiences to customers living outside of major cities or those using lower-end devices in India with Progressive Web Apps, and players like Grab, Ola and GoJek are transforming ride hailing on regional levels. Many other new start-ups bring competition, which is always good. The abundance of options and activity ensures that all those in online travel need to stay as user-focused and innovative as possible, which is a great outcome for all.
Q: What new tech is getting you most excited about how it could make travel better in the future?
The Google Pixel buds will translate 40 languages in real-time.
A: I’m excited about how machine learning will improve not only travel, but all industries. Machine learning is already having a big impact on our lives – one example is Google Translate. When we converted most of the Translate traffic to an AI-based system, we saw overnight gains in quality roughly equal to what the previous system had accrued in its entire lifetime. Neural machine translation is now available for over 90 languages, including many languages in APAC. Not only is Translate a critical product for travel and facilitating translations, but it also helps bring down language barriers and makes access to information easier. You may have also seen our recent hardware announcement, in which we introduced Google Pixel Buds to the world. In addition to bringing the Google Assistant to your ears without needing to pull out your phone, Pixel Buds will translate 40 languages in real-time – it’s like having a personal translator wherever you go.
About 50% of the content online is in English, but only 20% of the world’s population speaks English. That’s why translations matter, particularly in Asia where there’s a huge diversity in languages. For instance in India, we recently expanded translation support for seven Indian languages, and saw a 55% increase of app users in just a couple of days.
As consumer expectations continue to rise, machine learning also creates opportunities for companies to deliver better experiences at scale. The potential for machine learning in advertising to help uncover new insights, predict consumer needs and assist travelers along the journey is huge.
Q: You’re responsible for the whole suite of travel products at Google. First, is travel a business unit or a product for Google? Second, which two new products are you most excited about especially when it relates to Asia?
A: Travel is an important vertical for us. People use many of our products such as Search, Google Maps and Google Photos for travel. We also have teams dedicated to travel to help make our products work well for both users and partners, and build products in areas where we think we can offer a better experience. In travel, we’ve launched hotel search, Google Flights, Destinations on Google and Google Trips to help travelers across the travel journey.
I’m excited about all of our travel products, but two with strong applicability to Asia are Google Flights and Google Trips. Google Flights has been available in India, Malaysia, Japan and Indonesia for some time, and earlier this year we launched in Australia and New Zealand. Throughout 2017, we’ve released new insights and tips to help users find the best deals, and have found that almost 10 percent of the time that a Google Flights user sees a tip, they choose to change their original travel dates.
Last year, we launched Google Trips to make it easier for travelers to discover and plan the best things to do on vacation. This year, we went from an English-only app to one that also covers French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. Relevant information to your trip is automatically curated and can be downloaded for offline use, which is important in a region such as Asia where connectivity can vary by destination. One of my favorite features is Day Plans, which automatically suggests half or full day plans for what to do in a given destination.
Q: When developing product these days, do you think “Asia-first” in terms of how the region is developing differently from the rest of the world?
A: We build products for the whole world, but many trends such as mobile are extremely prominent in Asia and help set the tone for the rest of the world. We’ve seen a 26% increase in mobile searches in Asia-Pacific across various travel categories such as destinations, flight and accommodation options, travel packages, and activities to fill their itineraries. When we saw that mobile was the next big trend, we pivoted to creating mobile-first experiences to help partners connect with users in more structured ways.
It’s important for our teams to see what’s happening here in Asia, to learn from these trends, and try to find out how we can better engage users and partners in different parts of the world. That’s one of the reasons why I’m looking forward to this trip – experiencing more things first-hand and meeting with our partners.
Q: Give us an example of a specific localisation problem you solved in a market in Asia.
A: Asia is an extremely diverse market. How people in Australia engage with our products is very different from those in Japan and from those in Malaysia. I’d say that we have more of a country-specific strategy than an Asia-specific strategy,
We’d still like to do much more in Asia, but one example of how we’re adapting products to countries is with Google Flights. In countries such as India and Indonesia, where we know that users often prefer one-way tickets and using different airlines for their outbound and return flights, we default to showing one-way fares. We hope that customizing the experience even in these small ways can still provide a helpful, efficient user experience.
Q: Google has declared itself an AI first company – how do you see AI impacting travel? There are some who say the applications are still limited in travel versus say, medical or finance.
A: AI indeed has great potential for healthcare and the finance sector ––from making it easier for doctors to diagnose diseases to helping finance institutions detect credit card fraud. What’s amazing about AI though is that it has all sorts of useful applications, improving business intelligence, personalization and assistance across industries, including for travel.
A year ago, our CEO Sundar Pichai shared our vision for AI and a world where computing becomes universally available — be it at home, at work, in the car, or on the go — with the ability to interact with all of these surfaces in more natural, intuitive and intelligent ways.
These emerging surfaces will massively influence how people travel, and there is a tremendous opportunity for all of us to simplify and streamline the entire consumer journey. We can help travelers get whatever information they need about a new destination, flight, hotel or activity as quickly and easily as possible, with smarter recommendations that learn and evolve over time. We still have a long way to go, but the friction in travel experiences makes it ripe for innovation and AI.
Q: Voice / Assistants – what trends is Google seeing in assistants and do you see this getting traction in Asia? How big is Google Home in Asia now and how big do you see it getting?
A: We’re seeing tremendous interest from consumers in terms of virtual assistants. In a recent study that we conducted with Phocuswright, we found that over one in three travelers are interested in using a digital assistant to research travel and/or make travel decisions.
The Google Assistant is already available on more than 100 million devices. Earlier this year, we shared that almost 70 percent of requests to the Assistant are expressed not just in natural language, they’re actually conversational. The Google Home, which has the Assistant built-in, is currently available in seven countries, including Australia and Japan. It’s been doing very well so far, and we recently announced Google Home Mini, which brings the Assistant to more places in your home.
We’re very excited about the potential of the Assistant on phones and its travel use cases but at the end of the day it’s all about making people’s lives easier. We’ve seen over and over again that keeping this in mind is what drives consumer behavior and shapes experiences for the better.
Q: Some in the industry have suggested that Google has an unfair advantage in a vertical such as Travel, in promoting your products over others. How do you address this?
A: We always aim to provide users with the most useful responses to their query. That might be a link to a website, or it might be an image, or a news story or an offer to purchase a product. We build these responses for users, and that means ensuring that we provide the best results we can, in ways that we know we can keep improving over time.
Of course, there are many ways to organize and display information, and consumers have many choices to find the information they are looking for. Competition online is flourishing; for example, when it comes to travel or online shopping, many users can go to Agoda, MakeMyTrip or Ctrip rather than Google. And when browsing from your smartphone, you may elect to circumvent the web altogether and find what you’re looking for in an app instead.
The abundance of options and activity ensures that all those in online travel need to stay as user-focused and innovative as possible, which is a great outcome for all.
Q: Personally, for you and your family, what new tech is going to make life better for the next generation beyond travel?
A: I can’t wait to see where we can go with machine learning and building applications for software such as the Google Assistant. I’m personally really excited about potentially being able to ask the Google Assistant for help not just with researching travel, but also with completing bookings in a more seamless, comprehensive way. It would be great in the not-so-distant future to be able to say something such as, “We want to go to Singapore. How much does it cost to fly there on June 1st for a week?” And “What if we also want to go to Malaysia?” and “What if we want to stay in a kid-friendly hotel?.” and so on. Hopefully in the near future, I can have a conversation with a virtual assistant that knows me, my travel preferences, and can confirm all of the details.
There is a tremendous amount of knowledge and data that goes into not only understanding what you’re referring to, but fulfilling that request seamlessly and getting the full experience correct. It will be awhile before we get there, but I can’t wait to see what’s next.