AI unlocks product classification to drive social commerce at scale.

Adrian Villabruna had what just might be the most boring (sounding) job in the world.

Adrian worked at Amazon and ran the data & analytics team responsible for applying the exact tax code to everything sold on Amazon - which is, well, everything.

This was of course critical to the business who needed to collect all varied VAT’s & GST’s depending on where a product was being sold and to where it was being sold and what the actual product is.

Actually this is just the type of puzzle Adrian loves to solve.

And of course, they used machine learning and AI to help them achieve this at Amazon, to keep up with demand of people uploading new guff every micro-second.

Adrian has now brought that skill and talent to travel. Instead of using AI to match tax codes to products, Adrian now matches travel products to videos.

Adrian has built the proprietary tech which can watch a video & then know the exact right product from the vector database to apply to the scenario in the video and its location for his new company Videreo.

Like most AI, it looks like magic and happens at lightspeed. A creator can sync their social media account and have a fully-fledged travel storefront with the exact right product matched to each video in literally 2 minutes.

Is your product getting matched?

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 Contiki, G Adventures & Globus.

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 (interim) newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Microsoft debuts their conversational travel AI

Mike Coletta this week beamed in from ITB by sharing a video demo of Microsoft’s new conversational AI interface in a travel example.

The mix of voice and vision is well cute. Or maybe cutesy is probably a better description.

In the demo the AI tells the human friend “You are a bit bougie aren’t you”? when she opines that the loft house is a bit pricey.

(Bougie is a slang term that originated from the word "bourgeoisie". It is used to describe someone who is high-class, fancy, lavish, or materialistic, or who is inconsiderate, unreasonable, or snobby. The term is often used in a playful or teasing way) - nailed it!

The overall vibe was like shopping with a friend for those who don’t have any friends to go shopping with. Alex Bainbridge is often reminding the Slack group that we’ll all be married to AI robots soon. This is good practice for that.

Sticking with ITB

eTurboNews provided a decent round up of other AI goings-on at ITB for those who missed it (like me 😢 ).

“Dr. Olaf Backofen from Lufthansa remarked, “The entire travel ecosystem is truly experiencing a transformation. According to Backofen, the airline group is already leveraging AI effectively to create newsletters and other content.” OH. Why am I still hand typing this thing out!!

“Furthermore, they are conducting an A/B test on the website of their subsidiary, Swiss, which emphasizes “Conversational Booking” to better understand customer preferences. The company is partnering with swifty, a provider specializing in AI-driven booking solutions.” That’s better! Actually we’ve got Stanislav from Swiftly coming up shortly on the podcast!

Meanwhile “TUI has successfully integrated Artificial Intelligence into its business framework. The organization has created an AI assistant for its workforce, comprising 1,500 distinct agents that operate based on Large Language Models while ensuring data confidentiality. In the company’s 1,200 travel agencies, these AI assistants are utilized during phone interactions with service agents, facilitating quicker responses to inquiries.”

Airport AI gets Ziggy with it

A random but somewhat amusing story this week of a tourist arriving in Bali this week who was refused entry through the smart gates.

The reason - the AI was focused on the head of David Bowie on his T-shirt as opposed to his own quite distinctive melon.

The exceedingly low-fi solution - put on your hoodie (not take off your shirt - which is weird - they did say British Tourist, right).

“AI isn’t a revolution, its a coup”

Not necessarily travel specific but I enjoyed this piece in Venture Beat this week. It has some great lines but is also just a good general catch up of where we are at right now, and where we are heading too very shortly.

The article talks about the imminent death of the App. “Applications were digital folders, self-contained, rigid and walled off from one another. Want to check the weather? Open an app. Need to book a flight? Another app. Pay a bill? Yet another. The result? A fragmented user experience where we toggle between countless silos, each competing for real estate on a home screen.”

According to the author, the onslaught of AI threatens the entire app distribution economy.

“For years, digital storefronts and walled-garden marketplaces were unbeatable moats. Control distribution, tax every transaction and rake in billions. Beautiful. But what happens when applications become…. unnecessary?”

If you are app based, have an app or are about to build one - maybe take a read.

Manus, Manus everywhere

You, like me, may have got buried deep in a feed of Manus Mania.

As Mario Gavira wrote, “Manus went super viral this week.”

According to Forbes: ““Manus is not just another chatbot … It is the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent… It is not just an improvement on existing AI—it is a new category of intelligence, shifting the focus from passive assistance to self-directed action.”

Manus is the latest innovation out of China, developed by Butterfly Effect, Manus is currently in its early preview stage.

Mario posed us 5 questions burning away in his head:

1. Will AI agents like Manus be detected by potentially blocked by the existing anti-bots?

2. Will Manus be able to go further down the funnel and search and book on behalf of a customer on any travel website if asked so?

3. Is the assumption that AI agents would primarily interact in the digital ecosystem via API’s, already outdated?

4. Deepseek proved that a Chinese challenger without the distribution power of the Seven Magnificent can quickly go mainstream in the West. Was this an outlier or will the incumbents be left in the dust by this breed of AI-first startups?

5. If Manus has no legacy advertisement business to protect, how will the economic model work out?

You don’t need to know the answers right now, but you sure need to be thinking about the questions.

Meanwhile Peter Syme had some practical advice for tour operators:

“𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐤𝐬. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐉𝐨𝐛 𝐓𝐨 𝐃𝐨 𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲. 𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐈𝐭. Go to manus dot im and work through the example use cases. Most of you do not have the time to keep up with all the weekly changes in AI. Spend thirty minutes to one hour going through the example use cases. It will be the best use of your time this week if you start to think about how you will use it in your #travel business.”

In the Slack group associated with this newsletter, Alex Bainbridge reported there are now more than 2M on the waitlist to get in and try it out!!

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: Watermelon

AI isn’t just for big fancy hotels and large tourism businesses.

Even camping sites are now getting in on the game. De Kennemer Duincampings in the Netherlands is always available, optimizing their content, and recruiting new staff.

As Jasper Dalessi, marketing manager at De Kennemer Duincampings, explains: “We saw that many bookings were made in the evening when our receptions were closed. We wanted to be available 24/7 for our guests, and we’ve achieved that with Watermelon’s AI Agents.”

Each campsite received its own customized AI Agent, fully integrated into their website. “The great thing about Watermelon is that we can manage everything easily from one platform”, Jasper explains. “Additionally, Watermelon offers a direct integration with WhatsApp, which is a huge advantage.”

The other feature they love is that the information provided by the bot is always the latest and most up to date.

One of Jasper’s favorite features is Watermelon’s Web Crawler. “We have three very large campsites with many facilities and activities. With the Web Crawler, we can import all the information from our websites into the AI Agent, ensuring it’s always up to date”, he explains. This is essential as facilities and opening times change regularly, and it ensures guests always receive the correct information without manual updates.

Building AI into your workforce doesn’t need to be expensive. Watermelon starts from just €106, Per month, billed annually.

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.

China says AI not yet ready for trip planning

With all the amazing new announcements flooding out of China weekly, we spotted this little story where travel planning wasn’t one of the things, it was felt AI was currently good at (this despite Manus, of course, doing a travel planning demo of its AI agent).

Although LLMs can respond quickly, they struggle to fully comprehend the nuances of tourist experiences and personalized needs, similar to how AI-produced videos may contain logical errors, Wei Changren, founder of tourism consultancy Ctcnn.Com, explained.

This isn’t halting the uptake of AI by Chinese travel businesses.

“On Feb. 28, Suzhou-based Tongcheng became China's first online travel agency to announce integration with DeepSeek R1, enhancing its homegrown LLM Chengxin. Moreover, Fliggy introduced its smart itinerary assistant this week, integrating DeepSeek R1 and Alibaba Cloud's LLM Tongyi Qianwen to generate personalized travel plans. Even hotel management giant H World Group is reportedly upgrading its systems and considering collaboration with DeepSeek.”

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:

• Phuket’s Game-Changing Approach to Traffic with AI Innovation and a Mega Expressway Set to Transform Travel by 2030 - one just for Stuart McDonald here

• OpenAI just officially launched a suite of tools to help developers build - via Mike Coletta

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 Ed Morris from Equator AI and had a great chat about AI + big data and sustainability.

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Most clicked last week was the link to Brennen Bliss’ LinkedIn post about the AI overview tsunami (and what to do about it).

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