AI shines through in 19 finalists selected for PhocusWright’s Global Startup Pitch Competition

Exciting news for us at Videreo this week when we received word that we’d made it through to the final, to pitch on stage at PhocusWright Europe this June.

Whereas in previous years regional finals have taken place at different events across the world, in 2025 all the reginal finalists and the wildcards are all pitching together at the Europe event. Over 200 entries were whittled down to just 19 finalists.

Naturally there is plenty of AI on show. Traversing.ai is a cutting-edge operating system designed to revolutionize the hospitality industry. The platform consolidates an average of 10 systems into one seamless solution, offering hotel owners and groups the same powerful tools used by leading chains and travel giants like Google and Expedia.

Meanwhile ImpersonAlly is helping you claw back losses from using AI to impersonate your brand online.

Videreo has landed in the “Wildcard” section. “As with previous years, an additional Wildcards category was created by Phocuswright and WiT to surface ideas that are particularly global, future-oriented, hard to solve and address next-generation challenges.”

Sounds pretty accurate! Building the new age, video-first and brand friendly Expedia that has creators as the travel advisors is definitely all of those things! And as we can see in the articles below, social might be the dominant battleground for brands moving forward.

You’ve heard a lot of the theory of social commerce and the “Why” for Videreo in this column each week, but now you can see the product pitch and even better, chat with Adrian Villabruna about how Videreo can help your travel business open up a new sales growth channel by partnering with creators.

Please reach out to Adrian in advance if attending so we can make sure we lock some time away for you. Don’t be shy!

Best of luck to all the other finalists and thanks to the judges who built the shortlist.

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.

This content is provided by the (interim) newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Google unveils our AI future

At the Google I/O event this week we got our first taste of the future.

Google unveiled AI mode (now available to everyone in the US). Long time users of other LLM chats like ChatGPT or Perplexity might not have been overly wowed as Google AI mode blends a mix of what they have been dishing up with long form questions and answers but interspersing those with other relevant information to the query like maps and shopping and ads. You can see Christian Watts taking it for a travel related spin here.

In another post Watt;s gave his initial reaction as “Web traffic is on a one-way path to something above zero.”

“I think most companies are still think it's a zero-sum game. Where instead of competing with competitors (or direct vs indirect) on Google, you're now competing on AI search + Google + Socials.”

Great to see social is still part of the future!

Watts finished with “The good news is that when it comes to transactions (assuming you are selling something) - these still need to happen.”

Google’s AI agent will also take care of the transaction.

The excitement around the transaction perhaps being the saviour of the relevancy of your website didn’t last long.

As you can see in the video here from the Google I/O demo day, the Goog is muscling in on the transaction too.

Author of the post Simon Taylor explained: “Google just killed the checkout page 😦 At Google I/O, they just announced "agentic checkout" - letting users complete purchases directly within search results. This could be a genuine existential threat to every step in the payments value chain.”

If Google is answering every question on its own pages and then handling the “deeper research (you know, those 48 pages we go to as part of the travel journey) to just bring back the high level summary and then facilitating checkout - all in one screen and ecosystem - then Google take a piece of everything. And that is a mega-trillion dollar opportunity.

Oh that thing about social? In this post, author Lia Haberman tells us that social is out the window too (good news though is it is only for fashion providers). (Phew). the post demos the new fashion feature whereby uploading a full-length photo of yourself, you can virtually try on available clothes to see what they look like on your body.

Remember when Google quietly shelved its AI trip planner….

A while back we reported here the news that Skift had scooped that Google were shelving the plans for their standalone Travel trip planning product.

This week’s Google I/O brought more clarity to that decision and Skift were there again to join the dots for us.

As reporter Justin Dawes put it: “AI Mode in Search means users should be able to ask more complicated trip planning questions. (Sorry, AI trip planner startups.)”

Turns out you don’t need separate places to find out if it is dangerous for your dog to eat toothpaste, what this strange lump on your elbow is or what a good itinerary for a week in Panama might look like.

One interface, filled with the answers, the maps, the tables, the tickets (or the elbow cream delivered in the hour).

The single blank box has served Google well for a couple of decades. A slightly bigger box was all the tweaking that was required.

Thank goodness video is safe from Google….. right???

No.

No, it’s not.

Part of the Google I/O was the release of Veo3 from the DeepMind people (the even bigger Google nerds).

In this example, everything is created from a single prompt (per clip).

It is pretty freaking amazing.

Is OpenAI doomed?

The second half of 2025 will be pivotal in how our collective future shakes out.

Will all the announcements above stop the slide of search/research away from Google? In an anti trust hearing this week against Google, a representative from Apple told the inquiry that for the first time ever, search traffic on their default server in Safari (which is…….. Google) didn’t experience growth.

If this wasn’t a canary in the coal mine - I don’t know what is.

Many ordinary people are switching the source of where they get information from. For the first time in decades.

So with all these new features now packaged together in Google AI mode, including shopping and paying, will ChatGPT just be an AltaVista type fad?

Not if the OpenAI crew have anything to say about it. This week they hired Fidji Simo. 

Fidji previously built Instacart Ads, was in charge of monetising mobile at Facebook and before that eBay.

Ads and shopping and checkout are all coming to ChatGPT too.

The only question is if they come fast enough or what other rabbit can be puled from the AI hat to keep moving people’s first instinct across.

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

Watermelon.ai have recently evolved their business from AI Chatbot to AI Agent.

The reason for the change was simple. Their software does a lot more than chat.

The best way to understand how Watermelon could help your business is to join a webinar with the team, watch the demo (I think they do someone on the call’s business, live) and then ask all the questions you have.

There is one coming up in June.

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.

AI Marketing resources

A couple of great marketing resources dropped this week.

Firstly, the AI marketing institute dropped their annual state of marketing report.

Some highlights were “When asked how important AI is to the success of their marketing over the next 12 months, 74% said that it is either “critically important” or “very important” to their marketing in the next year.”

“82% said that reducing the time they spend on repetitive, data-driven tasks was the primary outcome they’re trying to achieve with AI.”

“Marketers once again cite a lack of education and training as the top barrier they face to AI adoption, as has been the case every year we’ve published this report. This year, 62% said this was a top barrier to AI adoption in their marketing, followed by a lack of awareness or understanding within their organization (52%).”

Good friend of Everything AI in Travel, Tahnee Perry also dropped this little test to find out if you’re really an AI first company.

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:

• Newspaper prints a list of books that don’t exist for its Must Reads section

• Will voice take over as the dominant UI

• Gilad Berenstein is presenting at the Skift AI Summit

• A board game where you take control of a Low Cost Carrier and hopefully don’t run out of money

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 chatted to Mike Todasco about all things AI content

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Most clicked last week was the link to the story about Expedia not compensating creators. 👎️ 

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