By: Gadi Bashvitz CEO and Co-founder of OLSET Inc. the travel industry’s leading personalization provider. You can check out OLSET at www.olset.com
In case you have been living under a rock the past few days (just kidding, I know it’s not headline news just wishful thinking) Cornerstone has teamed up with my company, OLSET Inc. and we plan to do something big. OLSET is my baby, a baby born out of frustration with the current state of business travel. Prior to my startup founder role, I was Head of Business Development for a rather large software company. With this role I traveled about 50 weeks a year and amassed over 2 million miles traveled in a period of less than 10 years. As I fumbled through an hour long booking session between two meetings one day I thought to myself, “there has to be an easier way for employees to discover hotels for their business trips.” Why is it that we can log into Netflix and get amazing suggestions on movies we should watch but I log into #@$%&#@ (name any hotel booking tool and it’s the same) and it’s like I’m living in 1999 and I’m a first time visitor even though I’ve used the same tool for years. Where’s the personalization?
So I set out to create a solution that uses the massive treasure trove of user reviews that’s readily available online and let a computer brain do the work for us humans of scanning through these reviews to find relevant data. Just tell me what I need to know to make educated decisions, right? Well, after 2 years, we finally got there with OLSET, a big data personalization engine for the travel industry. We use a patented search algorithm, world-class Natural Language Processing, and an incredible machine learning brain to create a first of its kind technology for our industry. With our technology, Cornerstone can automatically create a traveler profile for each of their clients’ travelers based on their previous travel history. Whenever the need to travel is detected by our system, say by noticing a flight booking, we will look at that traveler’s profile and at the hotels available in their corporate booking system. We then compare the amenities of these hotels by looking at the 105+ million (and counting) review sentiments written by other travelers from around the world. In a matter of seconds the end user will get back a few top hotel recommendations and a report card on each one that details why that hotel property is perfect for them. A few clicks and they’ll be booked. It’s that easy.
This is the beginning of a revolution, a revolution in time saving and information. We’re working with Cornerstone to enable all of their customers and partners to benefit from increased hotel attach rates based on personalization. We want the hours-long hotel booking process to be a thing of the past. We want your clients to focus on what they do best, their jobs!