Travel And Tour World: Share with us how Bookaway Group is managing ground travel services from local transportation suppliers worldwide?

Noam Toister: Bookaway Group is building the world’s largest online platform for booking and managing ground and sea travel services from local transportation suppliers worldwide. Our easy and reliable platform helps travelers to better enjoy their experience by simplifying the ground transportation process, enabling travellers to book buses, ferries, and trains online.

We use technology to provide operators with the tools and solutions they need to grow, helping the local transportation suppliers manage their inventory, leverage their untapped data, and increase their visibility and control.

Bookaway Group offers suppliers an innovative, customizable and centralized solution such that every new supplier integrated into the Bookaway Group platform has access to a wealth of information and the means to be able to scale and meet growing consumer demand.

We support local businesses by equipping regional transportation providers with the technology to digitize their systems to seamlessly manage their operations and handle their booking virtually, and help suppliers to provide scalable services through access to shared resources, systems, skills, and customers to grow their business and adapt to a changing, more digitized world.

Travel And Tour World: How Chat GPT or AI tools are transforming the travel and tourism business?

Noam Toister : When comparing the recommendations of ChatGPT to those of real-life travel experts, ChatGPT can certainly help prospective travelers with early-stage research but is not likely to replace the professionals any time soon.

Chatbot technology has been used in the travel industry for a while now. Booking.com, for example, has already reported almost 30 million chatbot customer support conversations. I believe the main use of ChatGPT in the travel and tourism industry will be for personalizing the travel experience for each customer. By training the AI with specifics of individual businesses and users, we will see an increase in tailored content and proposed itineraries. While ChatGPT may be a good starting point for planning a journey, existing travel companies like Bookaway Group have the unique advantage of real-life experience backed by cutting edge technology, unparalleled knowledge and customer support.

Travel And Tour World: Share with us about the future of Generative Artificial Intelligence.

Noam Toister : The emphasis of AI in the industry is on automation, and providing reliable, cheap, and fast ways to get travel suggestions or itinerary recommendations to the user.

AI systems currently in place are aware of the popularity of various travel options but lack deeper, expert knowledge that can typically only be achieved through working with a real person.

These technologies don’t have up to date industry information, but I believe that could soon change and we will see this technology able to make fairly reliable recommendations and generative AI features like these will likely be able to take a larger role in the industry to augment existing services and offload more automated tasks.

Travel And Tour World: Share with us about the role of existing travel companies like Bookaway Group in the worlds of travel industry.

Noam Toister: Most existing travel companies serve a specific subset of the industry, whether that be accommodation, experiences, or air travel. Sea and ground travel represents the last undigitized sector in the value chain of travel. 50% of flight and hotel tickets are bought online, while the market share for ground and sea transportation still remains under 15%. Due to a myriad of challenges this sector is extremely fragmented. Many local ground transportation providers are still using pen and paper or an outdated system which makes it difficult for travelers to book tickets conveniently.

We are the global solution for resolving these issues within the ground travel industry. We believe that booking a bus, ferry, or train should be as seamless as booking a flight or a hotel. Our digital platform closes the gap by bridging the world of offline and online (between local suppliers and world travelers), reducing overhead costs for local providers and giving them the tools and insights to optimize business earnings, all while helping travelers to get around with more ease and confidence.