INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
For Tien Nguyen, Chief Technology Officer at Wego, travel is something of a second nature
starting as a Senior Software Engineer in 2010 is one that he enjoys reflecting upon.The Middle East travel industry is a furiously busy
one, with travelers constantly looking for the best destinations as well as the most competitive prices when booking their travels
From popular destinations such as the UK, Maldives, and Mauritius, to more eccentric destinations such as Azerbaijan and Georgia, the race
is on to stay on top of the market while offering the best prices and destinations for travelers.We chatted with Nguyen to find out more
about how Wego is staying relevant to the industry, and what new tech challenges the company is gearing up for.What travel trends (if any)
have you noticed about travelers in the Middle East using the appOwing to the advances in technology, people of this region are so much more
comfortable using mobile apps to complete bookings as compared to about three years ago
They are also less finicky about hotel star rating and brand, and primarily seek out unique experiences
This is why a lot more boutique hotels and individual properties are gaining in popularity in the Middle East
MENA residents are also showing great preference for halal-friendly countries, low-cost flights, and experiencing the rich heritage of new
Additionally, off the beaten track destinations such as Sarajevo (Bosnia Herzegovina) are amongst the most searched by Arab users on Wego
mobile apps this summer.How is the Wego app able to comb through enough websites and sources in order to provide the best dealsPerformance
This is why we believe that a good system architecture is crucial
In fact, our metasearch back-end is a completely homegrown, in-memory engine which allows us to aggregate and process responses from
hundreds, almost instantly
And thanks to our data-driven culture, we are able to capture and analyze every single system metrics before making business or engineering
This focus on data analysis and interpretation also helps to constantly improve our platform.Tien Nguyen, Chief Technology Officer,
WegoPeople are chatting to messenger bots for support and queries - do you imagine that future travel bookings could be made this way Does
Machine Learning have a place to play in the future of travelOnline support is a pretty common feature when it comes to text/or voice-based
But for travel booking, the support function needs to be more dynamic as users are presented with a ton of options to choose from before
Personalizing every single conversation and quickly leading users to the end of the conversation flow is the big challenge that we are
We foresee AI/Machine Learning as the future of such conversational apps for the travel industry.AI seems to be a new trend that companies
contextual awareness, it is possible to understand the customer better and therefore tailor holidays based on their travel history and/or
AI-powered conversations.Staying with AI, could it be used to forecast busy seasons and recommend things like alternate travel destinations
or datesMachine Learning is commonly used for building predictive models or recommendation engines
But I think data will always be the core part of each ML pipeline
Once you have the right datasets with all useful features, the training becomes so much more straightforward
At Wego, we use pricing, seasonality, holidays, search density and a lot more data to build these ML models
For example by predicting the airfare price, we can suggest to the user alternative travel dates that are much more affordable.How can apps
processImproving the end-to-end booking experience has always been our focus and we invest a lot of effort into making it as easy as
For those who are not quite familiar with technology, introducing novel and intuitive ways of interacting with our app can really add
behaviors and expectations have been changing rapidly
Also, many a time, the user might want to interact with the app differently based on different contexts
Therefore we are currently investing heavily in building a more personalized, intuitive, and end-to-end experience, and adding new
interfaces such as voice and text.
