Discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) among industry stakeholders, including its potential to undermine the industry and whether it exists There is more hype about AI than reality.
But with constant evolution and innovation, it begs the question: Are we in the AI bubble? Will it break?
Glenn Fogel CEO Glenn Fogel while on stage at the Skift Global forum on Tuesday night Booking holdSaid that what was happening reminded him of the peak of the Internet explosion.
“It seems like it's almost the same thing, it's a Cambrian explosion of something new you can do,” Fogel said.
When asked about the resulting point – COM crash and whether the world is now living in the AI bubble Similar conditionsFogel pointed out when he joined Pricelinenow part of the booking holder for February 2000, just before the March peak of Nasdaq.
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When the company went public in the spring of 1999, Fogel said it had a market capitalization of over $30 billion. It fell to about $15 billion, and by the end of 2000, it “declined to hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Even my mom thinks we're bankrupt,” he said. But eventually, things turned around.
However, Fogel is seeing a similar situation at the moment.
“I believe, yes, there will definitely be no companies. The valuation is crazy. It won't work, wait.”
Other industry stakeholders agree.
“The similarities are clear: high valuations, breathless claims and startups fail to deliver on their promises,” Janette Roush, senior vice president and chief AI officer at Innovation American Brandstell Phocuswire.
Gaurav Sharma, Founder and CEO Mosaic treatsalso told Phocuswire that he also saw bubbles in AI valuation.
“Too much money is chasing too many thin startups, and the AGI model is still operating in silos,” Sharma said. “In hospitality, adoption is scattered, still in its early stages, only as fast as managed intelligence allows.”
Roush expects to make a “correction” at some point.
AI bubbles are different from Internet bubbles
Industry members say the current situation is different from the internet bubble, regardless of its surface level.
Sharma says AI is already creating real utilities. According to Roush, the difference lies in the adoption and scale of AI.
“The Internet in 2000 asked people to change their behavior,” she said. “AI is entering the services and products we use every day, and that is already changing our behavior.”
She quotes Google and how its search queries get longer and longer as humans tend toward natural language and provide context for personalized results.
“We all have to be trained to find '10 restaurants' near me, but that never makes much sense,” she said. “Humans don't speak that way. It's natural to provide the background needed to get personalized results.”
Even if the situation is different, there are still risks. Sharma considers the dangers in distribution.
However, there are some things that travel companies can do better positioning.
“Leaders need to focus on four things: Discovery transfers to agencies and aggregates, integrating business data across revenue, sales, marketing and digital, and protecting brand voices when algorithms decide who finds us and maintains ROI discipline related to NOI and asset value,” Sharma said.
That's what he thinks is differentiating the winner from the losers in the AI game.
Even if a crash occurs, AI can still succeed
Even with bubbles, this doesn't mean that overall success doesn't stem from pop music, according to Fogel. Partnership with AI incumbent companies like Openai.
He said: “You can have bubbles in valuations, but if it’s a good company, it can produce great things.
Part of the AI will crash and the reset is healthy.
Gaurav Sharma, mosaic treat
Rush agreed, sharing his bubble experience.
“In 2000, the ticketing company I worked for was acquired by Broadway.com, so I took a front seat on the Dot-Com Bubble and watched companies like Pets.com Crash,” Roush said. “The company’s valuation is meaningless compared to the potential profitability of the service. But the bubble doesn’t mean that the underlying technology is a fashion. Pets.com is ridiculous; e-commerce is not.”
Rush said AI will become the foundation of the next era of technology and business.
Sharma actually sees the potential outbreak as a good thing.
“Some parts of AI will collapse, and resetting is healthy,” he said. “The hype will go away, but the foundation will strengthen. In hospitality, the risk is not a collapse, and it doesn’t matter if we can’t adapt.”
