Ever land in a new city and try to figure out what you can do while you're there? You might spend an exhausting 40 minutes combing through websites for options. You might call the hotel concierge to ask for a recommendation.
Or, you might consult a predictive online attendant that uses what it knows about you to recommend an evening to remember.
Meet Chillwall AI.
Chillwall AI is the next transformative step for Chillwall, the consumer application that combs through event websites in 2,000 cities worldwide, allowing users to discover events, map them, select them and book their tickets.
Since launching in 2015, company co-founders and co-CEOs Michael Campanelli and Dr. Ian Knowles says Chillwall has moved to the next level and launched the Chillwall business solution, a desire prediction artificial intelligence that will sit on top of any website, be it a single café or an entire region's hospitality program, and create individual an experience unique to every user.
It's that individual experience that has the potential to amplify revenue for business sites.
Today's consumers want unique, personal experiences, says Campanelli, but current web experiences, particularly in the Tourism/Hospitality sector, tend to be generic: everyone who searches a website uses the same searches and filters, and gets a common result. Many users turn away in frustration, and website hosts lose customers.
Chillwall AI was created by Campanelli, an expert in consumer behaviour and experience and two University of Waterloo alumni: Dr. Ian Knowles, a leading expert in human behaviour modelling and artificial intelligence; and Dr. Jon Callegher, a professor in millennial sociology. They combined their knowledge of human behaviour and desire with their understanding of AI potentials to create Chillwall AI, a desire prediction AI.
The business solution will be a "little widget" that sits on top of, say, a hospitality website, "that will help you turn your curiosity into a desire to experience," says Campanelli. "It's an AI discovery engine that will understand your emotions or your personal interests - or the emotions and interests of people like you - and then give you personalized recommendations. It's bringing your personalization to that website, and making that website more interactive and more valuable."
This knowledge comes both from the user's history with the consumer Chillwall, and analysis of demographics and human behaviour, says Campanelli. Knowles adds, "Chillwall AI will discover what you want before you know you need it."
Let's say a user wants to discover a "relaxing" or "exciting" experience. Chillwall AI reviews the user's past selections of relaxing and exciting events, and looks at the larger demographic community to understand the parameters of "relaxing" and "exciting," and then curates a list of events that turns the user's curiosity into desire. Then Chillwall can map, select, book tickets and calendar the event, with a minimum of clicks.
This application of human desire to existing public data, means that Chillwall is "monetizing open data in ways that haven't been done before. It's transformative technology because we're not asking a website owner to redesign their whole website, to rebrand and redo everything. We can bring Chillwall AI's intelligence and understanding to the website. That means it is very easy for them to execute."
Campanelli is bringing Chillwall AI to more businesses in the 2,000 cities where the consumer Chillwall now operates. The CEO says Chillwall has already closed a number of deals and is launching Chillwall's Concierge, a new feature to the platform, in summer 2018.
For more information on Chillwall, Chillwall AI or Chillwall's upcoming Concierge service, click here to contact Michael and Ian.
A key moment for Chillwall was its participation in the ODX Ventures 2016 cohort.
"ODX provided us with the guidance, the mentorship, the contacts to start to build - what we needed was the open data, because you can't start this learning process without the open data."
And, ODX Ventures gave Chillwall time: "Our product is one of those that takes a long time to gestate. AI has to learn. You just don't code it overnight and suddenly everyone is using it."
Campanelli says Chillwall and Chillwall AI are examples "of how you can use open data in new and creative ways that people maybe never thought of. That's the true entrepreneurial spirit and power of open data."
