Acknowledging that the likes of Orbitz, Kayak and Expedia already dominate the booking part of travel planning, IBM’s Cognitive Computing group (aka IBM Watson Division) inspired Travelocity’s founder (and former CIO at airline ticketing giant Sabre) Terry Jones to launch WayBlazer, which is a self-described “intelligent search discovery system” designed to deliver “contextual, personalized advice and insights for travelers….” The company came out of stealth mode Tuesday with this news release issued out of New York City, where IBM Watson is headquartered and Austin, TX, where IBM Watson operates a lab and WayBlazer has its main office.

Jones is the very public face of the company. I prodigious public speaker, he was recruited by Kayak’s co-founder Paul English (who ironically is the founder of the GetHuman.com Web site which helps people reach live agents instead of interactive voice response systems) to be the travel booking sites first chairman. In a recent interview (here, scroll down), Jones explains that IBM Watson Group invited him to its labs last year to start thinking about how Cognitive Computing could best be applied to the online travel industry.

Discounting the power and popularity of sites like TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet, Jones concluded that “The number-one source for travel advice is still real people, like friends or a live agent.”  He expects Watson’s ability to learn and personalize responses to be a difference maker, making it the source of travel suggestions that can be 80% accurate because they are sourced from hundreds of reviews, fifty blogs and numerous tweets.

Manoj Saxena, former general manager of IBM’s Watson Division, is the acting director of WayBlazer. He is also chairman of the IBM Watson-based insight engine operator, Cognitive Scale. In an interesting arrangement which might be called “insights as a service,” WayBlazer licenses IBM Watson’s capabilities through Cognitive Scale.

The first customer for WayBlazer is the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Travel websites, cognitive computing, intelligent Assistants, IBM Watson