IBM Watson-Powered Augmented Intelligence Seeks an Edge in Travel Marketing
Skift Take
Five years ago, no one thought about IBM as being a big seller of digital marketing tools to travel companies. That's changed. Big Blue has landed some big deals. Yet the easy wins may be behind it.
Since 2010, International Business Machines has gone deeper into marketing -- including travel marketing -- through a series of acquisitions.
IBM acquired web analytics firm Coremetrics, multichannel marketing tool Unica, mobile push technology vendor Xtify, and email marketing platform Silverpop.
Then it synthesized these solutions into a new services division, Watson Marketing.
Its star travel clients include Air France and Intercontinental Hotel Group.
But it needs more success. It has to do more to land other travel brands, such as American Airlines, Hilton, and United, that work in other areas with IBM.
Adding Watson Artificial intelligence
Watson refers to IBM’s cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) platform.
Watson is best-known for tricks like defeating contestants on the U.S. quiz show "Jeopardy!" It can interpret questions users ask it in plain English, sift rapidly through digital records for clues, and then evaluate those clues and combine them into answers that it can explain in natural language.
A year ago IBM began adding Watson to its marketing suite -- putting some of its marketing industry competitors on notice that it intends to be a serious player.
In the travel sector, IBM Watson Customer Engagement (which Watson Marketing falls under) is attempting to help airlines, hotels, casinos, and resorts with campaign automation, real-time personalization, and similar digital marketing tools.
Jay Henderson, director of Watson Marketing, explains in a phone interview: "We help marketers streamline how they acquire and retain customers. We also help marketers deliver more personalized interactions with their customers, and make it easier for them use natural language questions to get the dat
