We have tried sales funnels that filter hotel rooms and resorts, by amenities and even travel themes like family holidays or adventure vacations, and keywords like romance.  Inf act is been done to an extreme, so much so it has become almost a platitude, or at the very least so overdone it hardly defines a property, place or holiday as unique anymore.

So emotion, personality and personalized behavior responsive travel systems are looking at emotional appeals and one of the biggest events is the news expert systems developed by the folks at http://holiday.barbados.org.

Now Apple is planning to buy a company called Emotient and there is a lot on press about more emotional selling. So As Apple and others get emotional where might travel fit? 

The question, as far as we are concerned, is back to front: It really matters how travel can use more emotion, and the answer is in new forms of differentiation based on personality traits and expert system that include behavior responsive technology and profiling. This is all part of the move to building more intelligent travel planning systems.

According to the  Wall Street Journal Apple acquired Emotient, for its  artificial intelligence and the technology that “reads people’s emotions by analyzing their facial expressions. A spokesperson for Apple said that the company “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Emotient has patented a method of “collecting and labeling as many as 100,000 facial images per day. “The process allows computers to recognize different facial expressions better. So this technology is  bit removed from the day to day travel planning and on line booking systems like the OTAs. In that respect it is a face to face or facial monitoring system that might have travel planning implications at the front desk for check-ins and check-outs and ticketing etc. Emotion can be expressed more discreetly also as in the behavior responsive travel planning and personalized tourism systems referred to above – see http://holidays.barbados.org

The trechnology is also cover in the Slideshare document of Travelers Insights Magazine article on the new travel planniung systems see below: