AI enables a new type of OTA to emerge

I don’t think OTA’s are really that well-loved across travel. It’s all money, money. money and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

Sooner or later suppliers and OTA’s fall into an uncomfortable frenemy relationship.

I think this is down to a few different things. One is the unit economics of the current OTA model. In the end they are all just a ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) hedge. They give billions to Meta & Google for ads and those ads return just enough of a return for those who gave the OTA’s the money to get started or their public shareholders, to be happy enough.

It’s all propped up by commission rates that are generally not that well received by the people who actually operate travel like the hotels & the tour operators.

If we break this puzzle down here, the critical piece is the cost of acquisition (CAC) and its method.

Imagine if there was a cheaper way to market that could offer the end supplier of travel the customers they need but at a fairer level of compensation and still deliver great shareholder value to this new OTA in the middle.

This is what Videreo is bringing to the market.

By accessing customers through social media and compensating creators and influencers who have the ear of these travellers, you get an authentic and trusted voice recommending your travel product.

Instead of being one ad in 10 as the user scrolls along, you are now 9 from 10 and the ad is the other one.

Videreo’s proprietary AI technology has unlocked this puzzle. It’s ability to match travel products to the content of videos instantly and at scale has made what was previously an impossible or at best, totally uneconomical possibility into an instant reality.

Videreo offers brand agnostic storefronts for creators meaning they get to choose who it is they want to work with and it is the supplier brand that gets to shine through directly with the consumer.

With Videreo, you set the commission rate and the influencer either chooses to accept or not.

Videreo is the place for brands and creators to meet & create a new sales pipeline together.

Check out more here to join brands already in the vector database like global hotel meta-search business Vio.com or see Videreo in action from creator Mely in Paris.

Open your business to social commerce today. Performance based and no upfront costs.

Literally nothing to lose.

Contact Adrian for more details on how to get your travel product loaded.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Google’s rope-a-dope

Last week we headlined with the Skift scoop that Google was shelving its trip planner plans.

This week Google rolled out a bunch of new features across its different businesses that put it firmly and squarely at the center of the trip planning race.

New features include their Maps product being able to snoop your photos for screenshots of travel info you might have been looking at on different parts of the web to then automatically create you a list.

“Using Gemini AI capabilities, the system recognizes venues from saved images and allows users to add them to dedicated lists.”

For mine, one of the biggest announcements was around Gemini’s new agentic capabilities. “Google’s Gemini AI assistant now offers enhanced travel planning support, allowing users to create “Gems” – customized AI assistants for specific travel needs.

Now available at no cost, these specialized assistants can help with destination selection, local recommendations, and trip logistics.”

There was confirmation of expanded AI overviews, a hotel price monitoring tool and new language support in Google lens.

Google may not be pulling everything into a dedicated “trip planning tool” but it is still front and center of how people actually do things when planning or experiencing travel and adding in tools for how they can enhance that experience.

Perplexity gets into the hotel sales business

Viator founder, Rod Cuthbert once told me that in the beginning of Web 2.0, pretty much all travel tech was focused on “get an audience, sell them a hotel”. Rod started Viator with the idea that people might also want to buy other travel things.

Here we are at the beginning of the AI era and………. nothing has changed. Perplexity has decided their foray into to travel should be selling hotels to the audience they’ve amassed. And why not. It’s worked out OK for Expedia & Booking, right?

We announced here a while back about Perplexity partnering with Trip Advisor and we also gave the little scoop that Perplexity was building hotel pages. And now the final pieces are falling into place.

Those final pieces include bringing in a 3rd partner, Selfbook.

“In an interview with PhocusWire ahead of the launch, Khalid Meniri, co-founder and CEO of Selfbook, said Selfbook’s role in the partnership is to provide infrastructure.”

“After selecting a “mode,” users can make a natural language query with Perplexity that surfaces relevant answers based on Selfbook data and reviews from Tripadvisor. Users can then opt to book to complete the process.”

The feature is available currently on the web and will be available on mobile soon according to the report.

You can see a video of the booking motion in travel “mode” in a little video here.

AskWhisper gets the money

Hotel communications platform AskWhisper this week announced they’ve raised $750K in their mission to solve communication for hotels.

“When we first jumped into this last year, we had no clue how messy hotel communications could actually get. We've since learned that the hospitality world is often a communication battlefield. A crazy number of different tools, endless repetitive messages, manual emails, and untrained staff. For me, that’s the reason why the feedback to AskWhisper has been so positive.” said co-founder Martijn Van Dooren

“There truly is a big need for a centralized guest journey platform that integrates local content on autopilot (and is AI-powered, of course). So time to speed things up!”

God speed.

The timing should be good, especially if this report into a recent conference of hoteliers is any indicator.

“Gretta Brooks, CEO and founder at SalesBoost, said likened AI adoption to the transition from Blackberry phones to iPhones. She said you don't want to be the person left behind, holding onto their Blackberry, especially when it comes to what's best for your business.”

Whether it is sales or communication or automated dynamic pricing as championed in this case study - "You just got to figure out, well, where is your lowest-hanging-fruit opportunity, and what does it map to business priorities? said Hireology Chief Revenue Officer Anil Harjani. "What you shouldn't do is say, 'We're going to send it over to the IT department.' ... What I'm trying to say is that you don't want it to be siloed,"

Here here to that!! Please read that line again. Maybe write it on a sticky note and stick it on your monitor.

Is your CEO AI fit?

Shout out to Rohit Khanna who put me onto this terrific piece by the Boston Consulting Group about whether the CEO of an organisation is “AI fit.”

If you are a CEO, a board member or even an employee wondering how the place where you are hanging your hat might be in the next few years - I recommend giving this a read.

The 4 core points are:

#1: Commit to working with AI and/or GenAI every day

#2: Designate a personal AI fitness trainer. They don’t necessarily need a degree in computer science or engineering—what matters is that they are a heavy AI user, someone who loves playing with all the new models and is passionately seeking out all the latest trends. They’re the kind of person who waits with bated breath when a new model is released on a Friday and has already spent twenty hours testing it come Monday.

#3: Know the fundamentals—and keep learning

#4: Talk about “the why” and listen to employees, put simply, it is the CEO’s job to explain in clear terms “the greater why” of AI and its benefits to the organization.

There are some masterclasses of this in action already in travel like Matthew Pack & his internal fitness trainer Tom McGarry at Holiday Extras.

I loved this summary in Rohit’s post: “Just as a concierge knows their city inside out, leaders should be hands-on with AI tools to truly grasp their strategic potential. AI trainers = competitive edge. Whether it’s a tech-savvy team member or an external advisor, having a guide ensures we’re not just dabbling; we’re developing.”

As a side note, I act as this external advisor for a number of companies and CEO’s and happy to do so for you and yours too.

SAP infuses Concur with AI

If you work for a larger company, you might use Concur for your expense management.

It’s been a while since I was in this position, but recall it as being one of my least favourite jobs in the whole world.

Apparently that should be getting easier now the AI has arrived to save the day,

“SAP is embedding its generative AI copilot Joule into SAP Concur solutions, bringing the portfolio one step closer toward a fully automated travel and expense management process.”

Only problem is I don’t really know Joule and so……

Anyhoo “Joule will help answer employees’ questions and work to ensure that expense reports are ready for submission with minimal effort. For example, Joule can assemble a timeline view of expenses, review for mistakes or missing expenses, and make recommendations for how best to complete the expense report. General availability is expected in the second quarter of 2025.”

For anyone still living that hell, I hope this is right. This is exactly some of that low hanging fruit where no-one will be getting their nose out of joint for applying AI into the mix.

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Marketplace Spotlight: TOMIS

Through expert services and marketing software, TOMIS generates more direct bookings for your business, makes sense of your marketing and sales data, and streamlines your operations.

TOMIS is a full digital marketing agency offering turnkey services such as Google Ads management to SEO, website development to blogging, and many more.

Our software serves as your digital marketing assistant automating previously manual processes, saving you valuable time to focus on running your business, and driving real increases in revenue. As a result, TOMIS is truly a one-stop-shop to grow your business!

If you have a B2B business underpinned by AI and looking for people to notice you, you can sign up to the marketplace for peanuts (top right corner, 5 mins, bring your logo).

I’ve priced for bootstrapped startups but also accepting larger companies too.

Latest stats on AI adoption & trust in travel industry

Always keen for some stats from a reputable source and these come from a YouGov survey which are generally pretty good:

• 75% of small and mid-market enterprises (SMEs) are using AI tools for travel management, only 1 in 6 fully trust the technology. 🙃 

• 17% of respondents said they completely trust AI, while 33% expressed little to no trust

• nearly half of SMEs (49%) have already integrated AI into processes like booking, expense tracking, and safety monitoring, a significant number remain skeptical

• more than half of SMEs (58%) believe AI will either somewhat or completely replace corporate travel management by 2030

Slack Group!

Shorts

Every week a lot of stuff is left on the cutting room floor. I thought maybe I’ll just lest those here for anyone interested in digging more:

• Someone let Fluffy off the chain - not all AI works out

• Martin Soler says get your data ducks in a row

• ChatGPT now does a really pretty great job of letting you imagine how your website could be - no designers required

• OpenAI & Booking release some fluff with no data around results about their partnership together - with even one data point of proof, this would’ve been the headline story…

• Alaska Airlines hits the stage at SXSW to talk up their AI innovations

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

New podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure!

This week we caught up with Jeremy Jauncey and talked all things short-form video, AI and where that is taking travel marketing.

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Most clicked last week was the link to Havard Utheim’s piece on the Travel Planning paradox. And small humble brag here, even though subscriptions have really started to take off since we kicked of the Everything AI Travel pact, last week’s open rate was above 60% and the click through rate was over 10%. For a B2B newsletter - those stats are off the hook. Thanks everyone!

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think