Recovering from COVID. Severe staffing shortages. Climate change. These unprecedented challenges will define the course of our industry for decades to come, Christina Heggie ’10 told attendees of Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC) in April 2022. But Heggie was hopeful: Answers to each, she said, can be found in technology.

Heggie, who is equally passionate about technology and travel, connects Google with the travel industry as the company’s commerce GTM (go-to-market) strategy manager for travel. “The industry needs to embrace technology because that is our future,” she said. “It’s a future where technology does what it does best so that humans can do what we do best—where humans are freed up to provide the incredible service experience— the warmth, the welcome—that we’re so great at.”

And while technology allows us to “meet today’s consumers where they are,” she said, “we can also use it to shift behavior so that people travel a bit differently and make more sustainable choices.”

One shift she hopes to see is a greater focus on “authentic travel that allows you to truly connect with a place. I love Mark Twain’s quote about how travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” she said. “I really do believe that if everyone traveled more, the world would be a better place. But that only happens when we travel well.”

A World of Opportunities

In her HEC keynote address, “The Future of Tech in Travel and Hospitality,” Heggie made the case for leaning in to tech. “While the industry has created an incredible experience, we risk getting left behind if we don’t adapt and bring technology and innovation into our jobs and our companies,” she said.

Innovation, she noted, is not about chasing trends or developing flashy solutions; it’s about the problem. That’s where opportunity lies. And there’s no shortage of problems facing today’s travel industry.

The first opportunity she highlighted was adapting to the changed environment following COVID-19— and doing so with decreased resources. “We have fundamentally changed how we travel, where we travel, what we need when we travel,” she said. “Consumers’ top concerns are now health, safety, and flexibility.”

According to Heggie, flexibility, particularly in terms of booking, needs to be “baked in” to the system. Flexibility and dynamic inventory require dynamic pricing, management, and distribution, she said. “As companies, we need to think through how to best repackage inventory before it expires and distribute it at the right price point across many channels. We can’t do that at scale with just humans; we need the right technologies behind that.” As an example of tech innovators in this space, she pointed to Canary Technologies— cofounded by Harman Singh Narula ’09—which enables touchless check-in and checkout.

The workforce crisis resulting from pandemic layoffs and people leaving the industry presents a second set of opportunities, she said. “We need to rethink how we manage our talent and how we position this industry as an incredible place to work that offers amazing careers. We need to focus on continuous learning and development; diversity and inclusivity; enabling and empowering workers; building more flexible workforce models.” She pointed to the housekeeping startup Shiny— cofounded by Rebecca Robinson ’07—which is creating an innovative commercial cleaning marketplace.

Finally, she said, climate change presents “the critical challenge—and one on which the industry can mobilize. We can educate consumers about the impact of their proposed travel and offer more sustainable choices.” Google Flights, for example, has partnered with the airline industry to provide carbon emission estimates for every flight; Google also is working with travel partners to measure the carbon footprint of hotels. “There’s a side of our industry that has a significant carbon impact, so it’s our duty to make sure we reduce that in informed ways,” she said.

“We also need to think more holistically about building for sustainable tourism: how do we encourage consumers to take better trips, spending money in a broader area of the destination, outside of top tourist spots? Travelers continue to look for sustainable choices. It’s up to us to provide ways to take action.”

Her Pivot to Tech

Along with travel and tech, Heggie’s career has spanned consulting, venture capital, and startups.

After graduating summa cum laude and as class salutatorian from the Nolan Hotel School, Heggie spent three years as an associate consultant at the firm Kearney in New York City and London. “I didn’t work with hotels then, but I lived in them,” she said.

She left Kearney to earn an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, an experience that “opened my eyes to the world of technology.” Driven to get back into travel, she completed internships at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Airbnb. After receiving her MBA, she worked for a startup that sold software to hotels.

From 2016 to 2019, she was an investment principal and founding team member of JetBlue Technology Ventures, the airline’s corporate venture-capital arm. During that time, she was named to the 35 Under 35 list of the travel research company Phocuswright and received a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Star Award.

In 2019, she joined Google and assumed her current position in January 2022, overseeing a new team to build Google Travel’s product go-to-market strategy.

In 2022, Heggie was named to the inaugural class of U.S. Travel Association Emerging Travel Industry Leaders.

Looking Back—And Ahead

When Heggie first “walked through those golden double doors” of Statler Hall, she hoped one day to become a Four Seasons general manager “because that was as big as my 18-year-old self could dream up. Through the range of experiences I enjoyed at the hotel school—meaningful alumni interactions, internships, and classes—I walked out saying, ‘I want to run a travel company.’ I’ve had the CEO role as a goal ever since.”

At Cornell, she was a Merrill Presidential Scholar; a finalist for the Joseph Drown Prize and the Center for Hospitality Research’s Emerging Scholar Award; a lead teaching assistant; president of Ye Hosts Honorary Society; and a leader with Cornell Hospitality Consulting and Hospitality Students International. “I am incredibly grateful to the Nolan School—it fundamentally changed my life,” said Heggie. “It gave me the challenge I’d been looking for and the springboard into a world I never knew existed.”

That world, she said, will be shaped by technology in the years to come. “For the Nolan School to maintain its edge, we need to train, educate, and then position Hotelies to work in travel technology. Travel is an incredible space because of people like Hotelies, who have a spirit of service, drive, and passion for the industry. Travel needs Hotelies to be part of these changes and lead the trends.”