15 mins | Travel Profile - organizing Personal Preferences |
| Key Points and Discussion Highlights: - Self-Attested Expertise for Potentially Dangerous Activities (Skiing):
- Allows individuals to declare their experience level in activities such as skiing, offering flexibility.
- It can be a starting point for discussions (traveler/travel provider) when determining service offerings (e.g., ski resorts).
- There are concerns about the reliability of self-assessed expertise or abilities, as users may exaggerate their skills or underplay/underreport their limitations, which may lead to a negative outcome for the traveller (disappointment or injury).
- Using the example of self-attested downhill skiing expertise (as a Things-to-do/activity), Steven pointed out the relative nature of expertise (e.g., skiing on a "double black diamond" at Blue Mountain versus Whistler).
- Carly noted that regional variations in ski difficulty grading (e.g., European vs. North American) could complicate the value of self-attested expertise
- Pros and Cons of Capturing Personal Preferences:
Pros - Helps tailor services to individual needs, such as dietary preferences, accessibility, and activity preferences.
- Supports travel agencies and service providers in personalizing travel experiences, leading to customer satisfaction
Cons - Potential inaccuracies in self-reported preferences, leading to mismatches between service offerings and actual preferences.
- As Steven mentioned, as well as not being reliable, capturing too much specific data could become burdensome for users.
- What goes into your travel profile (cross trip/experience personal data/preferences) vs what is specified as trip/event-specific requirements and desires needs to be considered
- Feeding back travel/trip/event experience to the traveller to assist (or have AI assist) in updating their travel/traveler profile will become increasingly important.
- Travel Profile Issues:
- Carly and Neil discussed several challenges in the travel profile system:
- Gaps in addressing travel experience levels (e.g., ski proficiency) based on self-attestation rather than validated records.
- Limited focus on accessibility issues for specific activities like skiing with accessibility devices(GMT20240903-160111_Reco…)(GMT20240903-160111_Reco…).
- Undervalued or Missing Aspects:
- Carly suggested considering specific cases, such as blind skiers or other travelers with unique requirements.
- Agreed Actions:
- Neil Thomson will continue refining the travel profile framework, especially in areas such as self-attestation and the complexity of capturing personal preferences. He will collaborate with the participants to define the governance of ontologies related to these profiles(GMT20240903-160111_Reco…)(GMT20240903-160111_Reco…).
- Carly and Steven suggested looking into different regional classifications of activities (e.g., skiing) and how the platform could adjust for these variations.
Note: that is likely to be part of what each industry-specific segment (e.g., physical activities, such as walking, hiking and skiing) will have to do algorithmically to assess a traveller's preferences for a given specific destination activity location, etc.
|