Beyond the Booth: GBTA 2025 with Fox World Travel’s Sam Hilgendorf

Speaker A: Welcome to doja Live, the place where top minds in travel and hospitality check in to share insights and breakthroughs shaping the industry. Brought to you by Ankora, your trusted partner for AI, cloud and data driven innovation. Enjoy your stay.

Speaker B: Hello, Everybody. Welcome to Dojo Live and GBTA 2025, Denver, Colorado, here once again with Fox World Travel and CIO Sam Helgendorf. Thank you so much for joining us. Last year was our first conversation.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: This year we're here again and again. And I'm excited because last year we were talking about a lot of the AI, like what's going to be happening. And this year it's.

Speaker C: It's happening real.

Speaker B: It's real.

Speaker C: It's so fun.

Speaker B: So fun. But before we dive into that, let's give the folks a chance if they do not know you yet or Fox World Travel level yet. High level, what you, who you are and, and kind of what you guys as a company are up to.

Speaker C: Perfect. Uh, so, yeah, Sam Hogendorf, I'm the CIO for, for Fox World Travel, or like the way I like to think of myself is kind of the overlord of the nerds. Uh, yeah. So it's basically I own everything that's technology for Fox. Uh, so any of the custom, you know, products that we create for, for customers, uh, our AI strategy, distribution strategy, all the tools and, and functions that we provide.

Speaker B: All right. I love it. You know, here at gbta, I know that Fox has unveiled two, two kind of major updates to the FoxConnect platform. One being the unused ticket management and I believe the group air manager. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Are you spotlighting those?

Speaker C: Absolutely, because those are two places that we see customers consistently struggle with. Uh, group travel has always been a pain, especially when you start thinking about unprofiled travelers and all the different, uh, forms of payment you have to deal with, folks extending a trip, all of that. So our group, uh, air manager product, uh, allows for some of that flexibility. We get a lot of the information from our travel managers and their programs up front. Allows us to automate a lot of the experience for those travelers so that they know what to do, what the next step is, uh, etc. Uh, so no, it's definitely a huge, huge, uh, release. And yeah, unused tickets, again, another major, major pain point for, uh, travelers and customers. And just trying to ensure that, hey, I've got all the residual value for tickets that I've spent on and then I want to make sure used. So, yeah, that's another Platform that's brought into, right into FoxConnect. So, uh, that a travel manager or travelers know, hey, I've got, you know, this fund available to me. I want to use it, you know, first and foremost prior to, uh, you know, paying on a credit card.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Giving people the ability, uh, corporations, you know, businesses the ability to fight as hard as you would if it. If it was your own leisure travel.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: I love it. You know. Now, um, let's talk about your baby. And I'm gonna excuse my plan words here. Your baby, your pup, your kit. Right, that. That is, that is Colby, the AI assistant for travel planning. Share the vision behind it and, um, how it's helping both travelers and travel managers at the same time.

Speaker C: Absolutely. So, yeah, when, uh, when ChatGPT hit, you know, back in 2023, it was like, all right, now's the time. This generative AI solution is, is real and it's able to be used, uh, across, you know, customers and, and travelers. Uh, we really had the initial idea for, for Colby back, uh, in 2019, of all things. Yep. And we even built a little mock up, uh, to show. All right, here's how, uh, an AI personal assistant built right into Microsoft Teams exists.

Speaker B: This is what it's called.

Speaker C: Exactly. Uh, and, uh, and so we put together that prototype in teams to be able to show what Colby could be. Um, and unfortunately, at that point, because the alums hadn't. Hadn't existed yet, uh, anything that we taught it, it was truly just Q and A back and forth so I could teach Colby, like, hey, you know what, what's the greatest football team in the world? The Green Bay Packers. Uh, but I had to literally tell Colby that was the answer. Uh, so it never would scale, it never would be that solution that I wanted. So then when chat GPT hit, you know, at the end of 2022 and early 2023, it was like, all right, now we're ready. Uh, so we went live with our very first, uh, implementation of Colby in September of 20, uh, 23. So it was still new at that point, but then Colby was right there in our agent's hands. Uh, and it was such a neat experience because, you know, you, when you roll out technology, you know, oftentimes you struggle with adoption. It's like, all right, how do I get people to change behaviors, moving their cheese, things like that. With Colby, there was no adoption curve. Soon as folks found it, they were like, hey, this is, this is better than, quite frankly, chatting with my co worker. I'm, uh, getting a Better answer, uh, our vacation, uh, agents who again, historically are technology resistant, they found it. They were able to do the planning of itineraries like, hey, I want to do a seven day itinerary to Scotland. Here's, uh, the, the family's interests, here's their ages, uh, here's the kids, you know, all those types of things, and then build a custom itinerary right on the fly with them. And things that we now know we can do in ChatGPT. But at that point that was new. Uh, so it was fun to watch how folks have really embraced AI once they had it as easily accessible to them as it was in, uh, uh, Microsoft Teams. And that basically started the iteration process. So once we had it, it was like, all right, now let's make some changes. So we added SOPs so our agents could do research around, hey, how do I, how do I issue like a confirma virtual payment card? Here's the step by step instructions. I could just quickly gas Colby. Colby would come up with that answer. Um, we, uh, we rolled out a version, uh, of Colby to our travel managers to allow them to have a conversation around reporting. So instead of, you know, going to a website, you know, opening up a bunch of cards, inevitably exporting that data into a raw Excel spreadsheet, then running a pivot table on three or four data sources, well, how can I have Colby do all that work for them? So Colby for travel managers are able to, you know, they can put a query in, you know, compare my, you know, top four, uh, uh, nope, I'm recording pleasure.

Speaker B: Say hi to the camera, Sam.

Speaker C: Stay up. It's a pleasure. So Colby could, uh, basically for that travel manager, I could ask, hey, compare my top four airlines, uh, over the last quarter. Colby will present a table. Here's your spend across each. And then I can start the why questions. I can start asking things like, well, why is my spend with one supplier higher than the rest? And then Colby will go through and bring out things like, you know, here's the number of tickets that you purchase, here's your average ticket price, here's the lost savings, uh, that you missed out on based on the purchasing that that was all happening. And I can dig in further. I can ask, well, all right, why, uh, really what are these lost savings opportunities? And it'll break it out between like first, first class, business class tickets, uh, or you know, uh, you know, traveler choosing to say, you know what, it's my preferred carrier, I'm just gonna pick it anyways to be able to show the value of those decisions and then tie it back to. All right, last question. All right, well, what cost centers are the, you know, are, you know, missing out on the most lost savings? And they'll take that data, combine it all through a conversation.

Speaker B: Crazy.

Speaker C: And that stuff is awesome.

Speaker B: So, uh, I, I get my AIs confused and so forgive me if I, I'm off base here, but I think to me an interesting next phase, if this is going to be happening, would be the causal AI piece. Are you going to be able to play around with it conversationally to see what would happen if.

Speaker C: Yes. So I actually did that just the other day. I asked, all right, I'm like Colby, because I hadn't tried before, uh, based on my last year of spend and things like that, how could I lower the spend I have on a certain carrier? And Colby came back with, hey, here's your largest areas of waste. Here's the things you could do. So one of the things I came back with is like, all right, here's ah, the number of tickets and the cost of those tickets that were booked outside the 14 day, you know, window as, uh, an example. So I didn't prompt it to say, that's what I was after I open ended, how can I lower my spend?

Speaker B: And so it's just kind of doing this. This is kind of on its own. It's coded and it's learning, going back to the LLMs. And it's just like. So the, the generative is now becoming causal all on its own.

Speaker C: Correct.

Speaker B: I'm not sure if that's exciting or frightening.

Speaker C: It's a little bit both. It's definitely exciting. Again, I mean, just seeing, I, uh, mean, I hate pivot tables. Every time I have to do a pivot table, I have to relearn how to do it again. Knowing that I've got this ability to do these types of things is amazing to me. And that's. So that's the part that's exciting that the, definitely the risk side is all right. Either when I get something wrong, you know, hallucinations, how do I make sure that there's enough transparency to show, all right, how the uh, query played through so that our engineers can get to the bottom of where, where did it. Pulling correct information, uh, or you, uh, know, travel managers, data team that they can see. All right, here's the source of this information to validate it. So you know, all those things. You still need some of that check and balance.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, today you participated on the, uh, from friction to flow A panel that was dedicated to AI's influence, specifically on NDC. And uh, I'm just curious some of your takeaways there. You know, what you discussed, the role that you see, what was most exciting came out of that conversation with, with our, with second Sam, our interrupter Sam.

Speaker C: Yeah, they're Sam that stopped by. Yes, exactly.

Speaker B: All right, but what, what was, how was that experience for you? What were some of your, like, oh, this is, this is right on.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, it was great. It was, uh, you know, the thing that really I took away both going into it and kind of coming out of it is search is going to change dramatically. You know, the things that we take for granted with search. You know, going out to a booking tool, going out to a website, doing all the filtering and things like that, that's changing. Uh, and I think you're going to see the conversational attempt at search changing, and it's going to create a lot of volume on looks. We talk about looks to book in, uh, travel a lot. How many queries versus a ticket and the cost of those queries compared to a ticket. We're just at the beginning part. I ran a, uh, query on ChatGPT just last night, uh, around. All right, I want to find the five cheapest ways to get from Milwaukee to Denver on this date. And I want you to look not only at round trips, but, you know, price out one ways in both directions. And sure enough, what came back was the cheapest option was two one ways. Both, uh, ways. Now a traveler is never going to do that search on their own.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker C: But to be able to have.

Speaker B: Maybe I'm cheap, so I might.

Speaker C: Fair enough. It, uh, yeah, I would never cross my mind to do that as a, as a search. Uh, but again, that the power of these systems and the power of this, uh, the technology can generate those searches at, you know, far beyond the human capability. So now there's a system though, that has to respond to all those. So every time I ask it to query, you know, a round trip or, you know, multiple one ways, all those queries generate traffic. All those require power, they require processing,

Speaker B: which is one of the dark sides.

Speaker C: It is one of the dark sides of this. And that is the stuff that is going to evolve with how we think about search, uh, when it comes, uh, to both, you know, AI, NDC and just general business travel, you know.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I was going to ask you kind of to continue on this theme and project a little bit out in terms of opportunities for, you know, travel technology in the next 12 to 18 months, but I think you already answered that question and. All right, so anything else you'd like to add or shall we move on?

Speaker C: If I think about that, yeah, that traveler shopping experience. Uh, so one of the, you know, growing up as a kid, reruns and game shows. I mean, I remember watching, you know, name that Tune. So, like, huh, can you name that tune in less than five notes, less than three notes, etc. Uh, and to me, I think that's what's the. The change is going to be for the shopping experience. Once these AI, uh, integrations with travel get to the point where I can. I can get the itinerary I want in three back and forths or less. That's gonna be better than going out to a website.

Speaker B: Yeah. And eventually, just by saying it and not even typing it.

Speaker C: Not even typing it. Right. Just being, say, saying it. Yep. Give me, you know, start with five options again, from Milwaukee to Denver, based on my history. Based on what, you know, the, the profile information that I've got. Start there and then I can say, hey, I want something a little bit earlier or I want something a little bit later. You know what, Give me a couple more options and then. All right. No, this is the one I like.

Speaker B: Sounds great. Book it.

Speaker C: Exactly. Sounds great. And then book it. And that's the agentic AI side. And that's the stuff around. You're going to have, you know, you're going to have an AI do a search and then it'll have to hand off the actual booking to another AI because that search AI is not going to do the booking. Um, and that's. Oh, yeah, they're all going to have to interconnect and I think is going to be the fun that we're going to see over the next few years.

Speaker B: I love it.

Speaker C: I love it.

Speaker B: You know, now bringing it a bit closer to home here. Fox World Travel does have that reputation for putting people in service first, I think, starting first internally and then of course, to your. To the clients that you have. How do you strike that balance between the deep tech innovation as well as maintaining the human touch? What are your thoughts around that?

Speaker C: So I believe we're still at a point where AI enabled people is still the right path forward for a lot, a lot of needs. Uh, you know, taking the experiences that an agent has around, all the different types of disruption they've had to solve for customers, all the wisdom that they've developed from what's really, you know, a risk versus not a risk. AI is not going to have all of that experience behind it. Uh, it'll, it's, at the end of. It's a prediction engine. It's going to take all the information that it had and predict the next step based on your conversation. It doesn't bring out the wisdom, uh, of the, well, this. Yes. Or the care. Yeah, you can do this, but you necessarily shouldn't. Unless, um, you're okay with these risks. Those are the aspects that people are still going to bring to the table with all of this. But if I can have those agents leveraging AI so that they can focus on the risk conversation, to me, that's the win. Uh, then they're still the travelers getting the benefit of the, you know, the efficiency and the, and the productivity of AI, but still with that genuine, caring concern that a person would bring.

Speaker B: I love it. And now ending here with a fun question, but a very important one. Window or aisle?

Speaker C: So it depends. Uh, it's, uh, if I'm on a direct flight that's three or four hours early in the morning, I'm taking that window seat all day long. Go to the bathroom first. And, uh, and then, because that is like, I don't want to be bothered, I'm just going to sit in the corner, try to take a nap and go, uh, if, uh, if it's middle of the day and I want the, I, I'll sit on the aisle because I do want to get up and move around a little, things like that. So. So yeah, it depends on the time of day and the distance and direction.

Speaker B: It's been a mixed bag. I'm going to, I'm going to throw it out there and we'll see what people come up with. But I do get that it depends a lot. And then there's some, like, hardcore. Nope, this. This one.

Speaker C: This is it.

Speaker B: You know, it has been a true pleasure, Sam, to talking with you again at gbta. If anybody else would like to talk to you, reach out to you, your team, learn more about Fox World Travel. What's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker C: So, simplest way to reach out to me is LinkedIn. I'm easy to find. Sam, uh, Hilgendorf. Uh, otherwise, reaching out to Fox. Our website is www.foxworldtravel.com. you'll find all the contact information there.

Speaker B: All right, wonderful. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your GBTA tomorrow.

Speaker C: All right, fantastic.

Speaker B: Bye for now.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Bye, everybody.