Everything AI in Travel

Square pegs and round holes is how we've cobbled together the travel industry over 3 or so decades online.Actually chatting to Stu Waldron of the Open Travel Alliance, it goes right back to the 70's.Stu breaks down all things open source in travel for us. We talk about why many things are not a competitive advantage and therefore there is no reason to try and build your own new wheel and even how those with good intentions and totally open to the open source world, can still make errors by not seeing the totality of the industry of which they are apart.One of the most fascinating conversations on a subject I've always wanted to know more about. Hope you like it too! We also have special offer for those looking to attend the ⁠Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences⁠ in early October, happening in Washington DC. You'll hear about it early in this episode.Use Promo Code: FOATOCRDC to get a special discount just for our listeners.I'll be attending so join me this 29–30 September in Washington, DC for the Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences — a hands-on, intensive learning forum built for destination experiences leaders serious about applying AI in meaningful, measurable ways.

Jason Kismet is a man working his way from the inside of the hotel industry to the outside of travel technology .Jason is solving problem he and his teams feel personally and intimately everyday.His business, Kismet is at the cutting edge of helping his fellow hoteliers, especially those special independents, at getting discovered in the new mode of search - AI agents.In this episode we talk both about the technical side of how that discovery can take place but also what you need to expose about your business to ensure it is a match for the query that started the search in the first place.This is not just a hotel problem. This is an everyone in travel problem.

Gam Dias is at the leading edge of Agentic Commerce—where digital wallets, personal data, and AI agents converge.He is the author of the book Agents Unleashed and has used travel as a core case study in much of his research and examples.We sat down with Gam to break it all down for us as to why AI agents are such a transformation shift in commerce and what it means for travel specifically. Not one you want to miss!We also have special offer for those looking to attend the Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences in early October, happening in Washington DC. You'll hear about it early in this episode.Use Promo Code: FOATOCRDC to get a special discount just for our listeners. I'll be attending so join me this 29–30 September in Washington, DC for the Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences — a hands-on, intensive learning forum built for destination experiences leaders serious about applying AI in meaningful, measurable ways.

Michael Goldrich knows the hotel marketing business inside out. From digital marketing roles with Starwood, Dolce and Wyndham among others, Michael has learned the trade on the floor.Now Michael is one of the core leading voices in the hotels industry in why and how AI can be applied to gain an advantage.We spoke to Michael as he prepared for his upcoming keynote at HITEC in Indianapolis in the week ahead to get his thought on the opportunities and threats and his upcoming book release which is specifically targeted to AI and hotels.

Mike Todasco is the former Senior Director of Innovation at Paypal and is now a Visiting Fellow at the James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence at SDSU.Mike is at the forefront of education around AI and spends a lot time trying out the new tools and explaining their capabilities and flaws to help the rest of us know whether we should invest our time, and for what specific purpose.In this conversation, Mike & I explore content creation via AI which is one of Mike's passions and also part of my day-to-day reality at Videreo.

Jeremy Jauncey is busy guy. He is founder of not one, but two incredible businesses in travel.One is the B2B, Beautiful Destinations which started out just as an Instagram account and has transformed into what Fast Company has called one of the most innovative businesses in the world.The other at Layla is B2C and is leveraging the power of AI to completely redefine the customer journey as we've known it in Web 2.0 to its new AI powered reality. Longer conversations with a trusted source mean richer data and better outputs for users. So good in fact, consumers are willing to pay to access them!

David Amsellem has already succeeded once before with an exit to Accor for his first concierge startup, John Paul.When generative AI came online, David couldn't sit back and not bring this superpower into a new version of concierge, this time in the travel distribution landscape.David has partnered with the HBX Group in a joint venture and launch the new Luxurist platform so that travel advisors have AI tools at their fingertips, in the same way consumers also do but with a few clicks, also be able to book their commissions both pre trip and whilst on it.

Phocuswright have dropped a huge trends report on the effect of AI across travel and made it available free to everyone.I chat to author Mike Coletta about the findings in the report on areas like business operations, marketing, in-destination experience and of course, distribution!The report also raises the question around digital identity and how that interfaces with generative AI and how that changes everything in travel.Probably worth a listen then.

Greg Oates is a legend in the DMO world.Many people know Greg from his work with Skift but since moving out of journalism, Greg has worked agency side specialising in working with CEO's and the C-suite at DMO's on their strategy.Recently Greg moved to Matador Network's Guide Geek as Director of AI Advocacy and is doubling down on educating decision makers on both why and how AI adoption is required, right now.

Hands up if you've ever rolled your eyes when someone mentioned influencer marketing? This one is for you.Today's guest is my co-founder at Videreo, Adrian Villabruna but this isn't some kind of love fest about our own product.Adrian was one of the very first to build anything with generative AI in Travel at AI Adventures and brings a complex web of knowledge from his time doing product classification for eCommerce giant, Amazon.Hear how Videreo leverages AI to both help creators earn a livelihood from the the work they love doing and help brands to launch into social commerce and track with SALES the return on their influencer investments.

Kevin Indig is a legend in the SEO industry. His resume speaks for itself with stints at Spotify, G2, Atlassian as well as being a growth advisor for businesses such as Snap, Reddit, NextDoor and Dropbox to name just a few. In this episode we talk about Kevin's recent deep dive into the travel industry, how TripAdvisor have doubled their organic traffic with AI summaries and what might be coming next for AI and SEO. Kevin also shares the importance of video and influencers in your brand strategy (call me!!). This is one you don't want to miss!

 Today we've got something really different and special for you because today's podcast is almost 100 percent brought to you by AI. Everything except for the little piece I'm recording now has been made by AI. Everything from the introduction song, the little piece that introduced me just before this, the cover art, and the entire podcast itself has all been created 100 percent by AI. So we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about how AI can be used and what might be possible in the future but today I wanted to give you an example of what's possible right now. So to create this podcast I uploaded the transcripts of all the podcasts from series one into notebook LM and then just let it do its magic. And it came up with a rewind of all the subjects that we've touched on for the first year of the podcast and created what I think is actually a pretty good summary. Let me know what you think on LinkedIn or on the Spotify comments. Love to hear what you think. Especially love to hear how it might make you think about content creation for your own brand.

Welcome to the New Year and the start of Series 2 of the Everything AI in Travel podcast. We expect it to be a big one in the AI + Travel world. For an Everything AI in Travel first, we have a return guest for the first time in the podcast history. Christian Watts, founder of Magpie.ai and AI pundit has returned for the new year to give his predictions for what we might see in the year ahead. He also challenged me to bring 5 of my own. Buckle up to peer into our fast moving future!

Gabby Gonzalez-Bux is one of the OG female founders of the AI + Travel space.Tango is personalised booking platform for the mass affluent traveller. Gabby had leant on her experience from building digital experiences in cruise industry (where people sail on ships, not boats!!) to give her the grounding around what great curation looks like.We dive deep on what personalisation actually is and how AI can play its role here - as it has in the build of Tango.We also have special offer for those looking to attend the ⁠Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences⁠ in early October, happening in Washington DC. You'll hear about it early in this episode.Use Promo Code: FOATOCRDC to get a special discount just for our listeners.I'll be attending so join me this 29–30 September in Washington, DC for the Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences — a hands-on, intensive learning forum built for destination experiences leaders serious about applying AI in meaningful, measurable ways.

This chat with Barb Hyman from Sapia.ai was a real eye opener for me. For this episode we moved away from strictly looking at travel and moved into the operational area of HR and hiring, relevant to all businesses and industries. The impressive thing about Barb Hyman is she is not looking to simply accelerate existing processes but instead rethink the process, starting with the end goal and working backwards to see how the new technology can shape a better direction to that goal. It is seriously impressive stuff. Enjoy this listen.