Learn how to innovate your core at AWS re:Invent 2022

“You can’t innovate around the core.” This has become a common topic of conversation with travel and hospitality companies that are saddled with legacy systems and platforms that are 30 years old or older. I spoke to this issue recently at the Skift Global Forum, where we shared survey data that found that 36 percent of travel and hospitality executives believe business disruptions would be caused by legacy/outdated technology.

If you’re also struggling to innovate around the core, you won’t want to miss this year’s re:Invent sessions, whether you attend live in Las Vegas or watch virtually. Multiple travel and hospitality companies will be on stage sharing how they’ve worked alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS) to innovate their core infrastructure and systems in the cloud to improve scalability and flexibility, lower costs, and enhance traveler and guest experiences.

See below for a short summary of sessions I think you won’t want to miss. You can also view the travel and hospitality attendee guide to plan the sessions you’d like to attend.

TRV201: The transformation of hospitality for the customer of the future

During this breakout session, you’ll learn how Choice Hotels migrated to the cloud to drive innovation and to lower its environmental impact. Shawn Seaton, senior director, enterprise architecture, and distinguished cloud architect at Choice Hotels, will share how moving the company’s data centers to the cloud facilitated the modernization of Choice Hotels’ global reservation system, Choice Edge, completely in the AWS Cloud. By collaborating alongside AWS to reengineer its reservation system from the ground up, Choice Hotels became the first major hotel company to engineer its own cloud-based global reservation system.

Kelly Dowdy, vice president of global digital commerce at Yum! Brands, knows the importance of building a resilient ecommerce platform in the cloud. Yum! Brands is one of the largest restaurant companies in the world, with over 53,000 restaurants. Their brands, like Taco Bell, are known for their innovative, limited-time offers and marketing promotions, so Kelly and her team knew that they needed a platform that could handle spikes of up to 10 times in traffic for planned promotions (like the KFC Christmas dinner in Japan) and unplanned (the viral Taco Bell Mexican Pizza return). Kelly’s team worked alongside AWS to build an ecommerce platform-as-a-service (PaaS) architecture that could meet fluctuating demand.

Join us on Thursday, December 1, at 11:45 a.m. PST to hear more.

TRV202: How AWS is helping travel to fly into the future

The secret to longevity is evolving to meet customers’ needs. During this session, two companies that are more than 100 years old, American Express Global Business Travel (AmexGBT) and Qantas Airways, will share how they continue to evolve and innovate.

AmexGBT is one of the world’s leading business-to-business (B2B) travel platforms, providing software and services to manage travel, expenses, and meetings and events for companies of all sizes in more than 140 countries. David Thompson, chief technology officer at AmexGBT, is an avid business traveler himself and knows the importance of rapidly developing and delivering innovative new products to improve the trip experience. He’ll share how AmexGBT migrated hundreds of apps to AWS and how the company plans to modernize its legacy mainframe–based system to deliver a better experience for its customers and agents.

Like AmexGBT, and many travel and hospitality companies that I speak to, Qantas Airways was ready to migrate from its mainframe and on-premise data centers. Sam Charmand, chief information officer at Qantas Airways, will share how the company’s migration to the cloud has provided it with a stable and secure IT infrastructure environment in which it can innovate, optimize costs, and exploit new technology capabilities. The migration to the cloud has provided Qantas with a stable and secure IT infrastructure environment in which it can innovate, optimize costs, and exploit new technology capabilities. Sam will also share how Qantas led its cloud journey by building an innovative flight-optimization solution that has reduced its fuel burn, reducing costs and contributing to its sustainability goals.

This session takes place on Tuesday, November 29, at 4:15 p.m. PST.

Travel and hospitality attendee guide

In addition to these breakout sessions, you can also hear from a wide range of travel and hospitality industry leaders, including Airbus, DoorDash, Expedia Group, Marriott, Miso Robotics, Taco Bell, TUI Group, and United Airlines. You can view these sessions, and many more, designed to help you innovate your core technology in the travel and hospitality attendee guide.

There is also a series of five hands-on chalk talks for travel and hospitality builders, including:

• TRV301: Maximize margins with AI/ML dynamic pricing models
• TRV302: How to successfully create a 360-degree view of travelers and guests
• TRV303: Unlock the potential of IoT in the travel and hospitality industry
• TRV401: Enhance the traveler and guest experience with computer vision
• TRV402: Deliver a connected travel experience with distributed data mesh

Breakout sessions and chalk talks fill up fast, so make sure to reserve your spot.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at re:Invent!