Episode Transcript
Hunter Zhao (00:00.587)
OK. Welcome to the AI Chronicles. I'm your host, Hunter Zhao. And today, we're going to dive head first into how Expedia Group is using AI inside their own business. And we're going to share the exact steps you can use in order to implement AI for yourself. Now, with over 20 years in learning and development, including years at General Electric and CETA Consulting, Fabio Sakuman.
is the vice president of learning and development at Expedia Group, focusing on empowering teams and creating engaging global learning experiences aligned with business strategy. Passionate about AI for its potential to drive innovation, personalize learning, and enhance efficiency, he brings a global perspective and genuine enthusiasm for leveraging technology to help individuals and organizations reach their potential.
Now before I dive into that, listen closely. Are you looking to implement AI inside your own company or are struggling to get your AI to stop hallucinating? Speak to GPT Trainer. GPT Trainer literally builds out and manages your AI agent for you, eliminating hallucinations for good. Go to gpt-trainer.com and I promise you it'll be the biggest time-saving decision you've made all year.
Fabio Sacoman (01:23.918)
Thank
Hunter Zhao (01:28.043)
Trying to set up AI on your own is like setting up a house from scratch. Sure, you could do it, but the time and frustration it's going to take you to get it finished just isn't worth it. It's 1,000 times faster and safer to hire professionals. Schedule a consultation today. Once again, that's gpt-trainer.com. All right. So welcome to the show, Fabio.
Fabio Sacoman (01:56.184)
Thank you so much, you, thanks for your kind introduction. I'm really excited to be here with you and our audience.
Hunter Zhao (02:03.349)
Likewise, Fabio, it's an honor to have you representing Expedia Group here at the podcast. Now, Fabio, tell me, why did you decide to join Expedia Group?
Fabio Sacoman (02:13.688)
That's a great question that really, it is really close to my heart. Our mission here is to create memories for our travelers, Hunter. And I'm a traveler. I want to be part of a company that has that type of mission, right? So that's the big, big, big one. The second one, when I did my transition from having my own consulting, my own learning consulting team,
From that to be part of this large tech global company, I want to be part of this ecosystem to really drive change, to be part of a story that will help our employees to learn, to develop themselves, and of course, all of this connected to how we keep the business growing. So that was my personal slash professional motivation to join a company such as Expedia.
Hunter Zhao (03:14.643)
Interesting, I see, I see. So it is something that you personally relate to and eventually turn into a work that you enjoy, right?
Fabio Sacoman (03:24.11)
Absolutely, So best of the world here, man. I love learning, I love people, I love development, I love business, and I love travel. yeah, all came together.
Hunter Zhao (03:36.159)
Nice, nice. So I know you guys are using AI at Expedia. mean, nowadays, Wish Corporate isn't trying out AI, right? And I'm assuming that it's something you've already put into production to a limited capacity. And it's fantastic what you're doing. But before we dive into that, do you mind telling me, why did you decide to start using AI in the first place? And what challenge or problem were you trying to solve?
Fabio Sacoman (04:03.802)
I would say my very first chapter of my journey using AI, I use AI as, let's say, Google on steroids. Right? A big, big search helped me with getting everything that I probably could have gotten using Google. Right? I assume that. That's true.
When I start doing that, and then of course when I start using by these means, I start after checking my texts, my emails. So I use it for that specific part until I had this big relation when I saw that AI could do much more than this. Instead of being a tool for me, I start treating AI as my
So my coworker, meaning help me with strategic thinking, asking questions that I wasn't aware of, helped me with the way that I would approach my stakeholders. So I can customize my approach, right?
with emails or my communications or talking points that I should have in my mind. So things like that, that is really strategic. And again, it's a co-worker, right? My role here as part of talent development, I need to design, right? Design sessions, design solutions, design experiences. And it's, mean, there's a brilliant co-worker that I can refine what I have in my mind and bring new perspective.
Hunter Zhao (05:50.401)
Thank
Fabio Sacoman (05:51.502)
Those are the type of things, those are two, I would say two examples of how that thing, my AI is really a co-worker, right? Not a human being, but a really, really thoughtful co-worker.
Hunter Zhao (05:58.067)
I see.
Hunter Zhao (06:02.965)
That is quite interesting. mean, Fabio, to follow up on that, these days we're talking not just about chat GPT anymore. We're not talking about just a chat bot that's trained on your data, perhaps, but agentic solutions. We're talking about end-to-end workflow automation, even at the enterprise level. So are those some things that you've tried or piloted in Expedia?
you something that you're interested in exploring perhaps.
Fabio Sacoman (06:33.278)
Absolutely, absolutely. is, I mean, this is the present, this is the future, right? When you think about all those things. And again, each individual, they started their journey or they will start their journey in AI different stages. Most of them, including myself, as I said, using this just as a search, right, tool. What you are describing here is much more, is deeper. You see that as how you are, all those examples that you were saying, how you...
rethink about your role, how you rethink about your processes, how you rethink about the value that you can add to the company that you're part of, right? So as you said, I have my own agents here. They are doing some task or some activities that I used to spend hours doing that per month. I don't need to do that anymore. So, that part, they are helping with
freeing up time, but also mental space to analyze the output that can come out of that, right? And when I think about my work and how is that connected to my peers, for instance, my data goes to other folks. So an example, when I think about talent or learning, it's connected to talent development. So we need to go to the talent management side of the house with some data, some insights that we need to.
Hunter Zhao (07:55.841)
home.
Fabio Sacoman (07:59.874)
put all together, imagine that I have my agent providing insights, inputs for the talent management side of the house, and then we connect those things, and my beer, we can sit together and take decisions on that. That's because of AI, because of agents, we can spend more time on the conversation, we can spend more time thinking about how we're gonna engage people, how we're gonna lead the team, how we're gonna communicate with the team instead of.
going that in spending time in our Excel spreadsheets or our PowerPoints things like that. That's one super concrete example in a more executive level, right? How you manage change and you lead and you use AI to provide you that data. The things that I can control, but you can probably see the ripple effect if my team and my team, they have the same mentality using those agents and those sources and different modalities.
Hunter Zhao (08:43.445)
Hmm.
Fabio Sacoman (08:55.234)
to increase their ability to deliver faster and more thoughtful results and outcomes through AI. Again, coworkers, they coworkers and redefined, redesigned their roles and what they do here at XPE.
Hunter Zhao (09:12.513)
I see. I see. Thank you so much for the insightful response. Now, when it comes to agentic systems, I know Expedia is obviously a very large enterprise at this point. So do you guys usually consider building in-house solutions, getting your own team to craft and maintain, using third-party models perhaps? Or are you?
Fabio Sacoman (09:34.424)
Mm-hmm.
Hunter Zhao (09:36.309)
more familiar with buying products off the shelf and trusting third party vendors as partners.
Fabio Sacoman (09:45.241)
Both, right? For sure both. have this like internal, and we have promoted this as you can imagine, right? 70, 75 % of our workforce is basic engineers and tech folks, right? So they have this expertise. So they're using our playgrounds. We have more than 30 models there that we can use and that we can explore. And everyone is invited, not only those more technical folks, but everyone. So my area, HR, right? People, team.
Everyone is I mean is invited to do that and have like a recent number around 80 85 percent of our our team experimenting and using that to create those agents to create those Resources and and do that they will be useful for it for for for that for themselves But also of course we need to be really Connected to what's going outside. We know that outside Expedia right we know that
It's super fast, Hunter. I mean, something that I learned in the last week, I know in two weeks it will be obsolete, right? Or we have something better or faster or whatever we call. So that's why we have a specific group here connected to what happens outside. And then we have different models outsourcing or bringing that technology that we can experiment. But I would say with that, right, from the learning and development point of view,
we expect and we empower every employee to use, to test, to learn, to fail, just to ask themselves how can AI help them to be more productive and add more values to our clients, our travelers as part of this full chain.
Hunter Zhao (11:33.683)
I see, I see. Awesome. Now, what are Expedia's upcoming AI initiatives, Fabio? Where do you see AI playing a role in your operations next?
Fabio Sacoman (11:45.346)
Yeah, you can divide into two different areas. The first one is, for short, create more value, meaningful experiences, seamless experience for our travelers and our partners. So that is top of mind for us, how we embed that AI to our experiences. That's one point. The second one is our internal productivity, right? Productivity, how we can do things faster, better.
How do we use AI to say, hey, we don't need to do this anymore? You know what I mean? So how we really rethink the way that we operate. So that's, I would say, the two major parts of how AI is a lock, lots of benefits for all of us. That's, I would say, super business oriented. There is a third element here, Hunter, that is AI enabling people to learn faster, to learn better.
to learn things or help people to learn what they know and learn new things. It's really exciting to see this type of aha moments that people are near and that's part of the strategy, continuing using AI to do that as well. Because we know that we enable the two first topics that I said, how we create value to our customers, clients, and we unlock internal productivity.
Hunter Zhao (12:50.326)
Yeah.
Hunter Zhao (13:11.167)
I see, I see. That is very interesting. I mean, it seems like you have in mind both use cases of AI in customer-facing interactions, but also internal productivity improvements. So I guess it translates to both the revenue generation side of things and also the cost savings. AI certainly has potential. as agentic systems become more mature, more robust.
Fabio Sacoman (13:20.557)
every
Fabio Sacoman (13:26.008)
That's it.
Hunter Zhao (13:39.702)
the utility is only going to increase.
Fabio Sacoman (13:43.246)
Exactly.
Hunter Zhao (13:45.769)
Yeah, so where should people go to learn more about Expedia aside from maybe Expedia.com that everybody already knows?
Fabio Sacoman (13:54.614)
Right. Expedia group.com is our website. Expedia.com, and for the US folks, but also we have our global websites. That's how you can buy our products, right? But also we think about a career development, expediagroup.com, that we have all those. You can learn more about what we do. You can learn more about our culture, right? The way that we see things and the way that we really
lead our mission to create memories for our travelers. That's the place to go to learn more about what it
Hunter Zhao (14:31.421)
Awesome amazing amazing. Thank you so much Fabio. It was great to have you on
Fabio Sacoman (14:37.026)
That's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much for the invitation and all our audience for your time listening to this podcast. Thank you.
Hunter Zhao (14:47.393)
Great. remember, if you're looking to implement AI into your business today, don't try and do it yourself. The time and stress that the AI will cause just isn't worth it. Schedule a call with GPT Trainer and let them build out and manage your AI for you. Go to gpt-trainer.com to schedule your consultation. Signing off for now, have a wonderful rest of your day. And looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of AI Chronicles.
