How AI Agents Are Transforming the Global Travel Industry
Session Overview
Travel is a structurally fragmented industry β from discovery to booking to actual use, it runs through a tangled web of stakeholders and systems that creates chronic information asymmetry. Small and mid-sized suppliers in particular struggle to connect directly with global sales channels, leaving them stuck with disconnected information and manual, inefficient workflows across a complex distribution structure.
Key Takeaways
- Why travel suffers from chronic information asymmetry and fragmentation, from discovery to booking to use.
- The structural constraints facing small and mid-sized suppliers trying to connect with global sales channels.
- Yanolja NEXT's two core pillars for solving this: cost efficiency and global scalability through AI.
- A staged rollout strategy β applying AI agents first to the areas with the biggest workforce bottlenecks.
- Yanolja NEXT's AI infrastructure strategy and know-how in building proprietary global data.
Speaker
Seungduk Kim spent six years as a Senior Software Engineer at Google's headquarters, where he led search engine and innovation incubation programs as a global tech expert. He now heads the engineering organization at Yanolja NEXT, the R&D arm driving AI transformation (AX) across the global travel and leisure industry, spearheading global-facing solutions and infrastructure that use AI to break through the industry's chronic challenges of fragmented data and infrastructure.
Hwansung Yu currently serves as Head of DX Planning and Head of E-commerce Business at Kolon Industries FnC, following leadership roles at Kakao, SK Telecom, and Musinsa. At Kakao, he worked across the Search Development and Data Platform teams, building large-scale log processing and ad/recommendation systems, and later designed recommendation systems at SK Telecom's AI Center. At Musinsa, he led the Data team and built out data governance and organizational infrastructure through more than 5x company growth. He now oversees e-commerce and DX at Kolon Industries FnC, focused on building an AI-driven, automated e-commerce environment.