Confirmed: travel is lagging behind on ai

The WTTC are not really renowned for being first with the news so when they are telling us all that we are behind, then we are probably even more behind than we think!

To be fair their recent report was written by their partner Microsoft who probably do have a decent grip on where travel sits on the adoption ladder and in whose interest it is that we spend more on ai.

Julie Shainock, Microsoft Managing Director Travel, Transport & Logistics, said “For travel companies, GenAI is there to increase productivity, automate the predictable, and allow our human centric approach to the high value moments in travel to shine more.” I actually really loved the simplicity of that statement to boil down a world of endless possibilities. Automate the predictable to become more productive….. I’m not sure why more people and companies aren’t running towards that.

None of it helped Microsoft’s share price which tanked (albeit off all time highs). A sure sign that at least some of us had gotten ahead of ourselves in how fast the money machine would spit out those notes. Obviously not any of us here in travel.

Travel ai gets its own summit!

In an attempt to get us all up to speed faster, Dan Christian, travel marketing extraordinaire and host of the Travel Trends podcast has spotted this ai trend and put together a first ever ai summit for travel.

The article offers free tickets for the first 500 but they have now expired. Fear not though because we’ve managed to scrounge 50 more for readers of this publication.

The summit is 100% virtual and with the code below 100% free so again you are running out of excuses to not get yourself up to speed. You can find a current speaker list here where I am described as an ai expert!

Get in here:

 https://www.accelevents.com/e/travel-trends-ai-summit?aff=EAIT

Access Code for Ticket: EAIT

Ticket Name: Everything AI in Travel (EAIT) Ticket

Ticket Description: Complimentary ticket for being part of the Everything AI in Travel Newsletter group. 

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:

Booking quietly rolls out an ai travel planner

An uncharacteristically quiet roll-out for Booking.com’s new travel planner.

I didn’t really see this information in too many places and the rollout is also to a select group of US only Genius users who have their language setting set to English (which seems weird given ai translation capabilities and language skills).

“From searching for inspiration on romantic beach destination options in the Caribbean to zeroing in on a specific list of vacation homes for a family of four, with air conditioning and a pool, the AI Trip Planner makes recommendations in a quick, conversational way,” is how the tool is described.

Glenn Fogel (who’s name I got correct this time around) said “Our new AI Trip Planner is simply the next step in our ongoing journey to explore how we can bring even more value, and hopefully enjoyment, to the entire trip planning process.”

Baby steps here but more training of the world to expect a conversational interface when they get online. The days of filling in boxes are coming to a rapid end.

Rolling Stone covers ai

If it wasn’t abundantly clear to everyone already, the ultimate goal of writing this newsletter each week is to be discovered by Rolling Stone as the missing piece in their arsenal and ultimately become the next Hunter S Thompson.

It was great therefore to see this week that they are moving their way over into our territory here in ai land. The article even mentions travel. Twice!

In an eerily similar way to which we broke down our thoughts about the recent travel section of the Rabbit R1 demo at the CES show, they wrote “After that, he proceeded to have the Rabbit plan an entire trip to London for him. The device very clearly just pulled a bunch of sights to see from some top-10 list on the internet, one that was very likely AI-generated itself.” Even the non-experts could see this demo was bogus.

The upshot of the article was that the way AI is playing out is the same way that cults are formed! And our guru…….. well you’ll need to read the article yourself for that nugget. Gonzo much and well worth the read.

Meanwhile in another corner of the internet, the Tours & Activities (cult) gurus also dissected Rabbit’s R1 and were actually a bit more complimentary.

ai is coming for your……………. bed

Following closely on the heels of the ai grill that will cook your steak perfectly (by about the third try - but then forever, which isn’t bad), next up is beds.

I’ve actually seen quite a bit recently about “sleep tourism” and for a long time now there have been pillow menus but now ai is getting under the sheets to make those little micro adjustments that ensure you get the absolute most solid nights sleep ever.

“Artificial intelligence algorithms examine the data that the sleep tracking sensors gather during the night to identify sleep patterns. The response mechanisms in the mattress are then informed by this investigation. These mechanisms are made up of airbags and other support materials. As the sensors detect changes in sleep patterns, these components within the mattress adjust dynamically, providing personalized support and comfort.”

According to the article “Sleep tourism market growth is expected to exceed USD 400 billion in the next five years. Modern sleep tourism destinations include hotels, resorts, spas, and sleep retreat centers that offer accompanying amenities and activities such as yoga and meditation classes, massage, and specialized sleep therapies.” That’s Billion. With a B. Are they just counting everyone who might sleep in a hotel and doesn’t sleep very well at home?

FWIW I sleep like a log pretty much every night. What my partner wants is an ai that inflates and rolls me over at the first hint of a snore. I believe that is a $600 billion dollar market.

Joyned raises $8M

More money comes for ai startups with Joyned raising $8M for their Series A.

Joyned puts a group chat right on top of the page of one of their clients websites so that those who are planning a trip together can discuss the options they see on the page and make a decision. Pretty clever!

The ai part is that the robot then snitches back to the company information around the sentiment in the conversation around things like price or other objections. Presumably this informs what gets delivered back in subsequent searches although the article didn’t spell that out. It may be just a tool for product managers to analyse customer feedback like a Hotjar with words?

I can see this idea having huge scope outside of travel. If you’ve ever seen teenage girls shopping on the internet, you’ll know what I mean.

Investors included “Reach Markets, Sentor Investments and Velocity Ventures, along with Lucerne Investment Partners.”

Should you let ai write your travel copy? The answer is Yes (or No).

Travel Weekly did a special report on whether you should let ai write the copy for your website, blogs and so on. Obviously this is extremely tempting given the ease of making it happen but what are the risks!

The article tries to take a balanced view by giving a case both for and against. Unfortunately some of that balance gets lost when each person making a case has a severe vested interest.

On the YES side is Jeremy Smith, co-founder and chief executive of AI Startup incubator Neural River. As Jeremy himself explained “A product we’re building at Neural River, Oxygen AI, is an AI tool that will empower writers to craft articles that read like a seasoned traveller’s diary and also hit the SEO sweet spot”.

On the NO side was Olivia Goss, a travel industry copywriter.

With both sides singing for their supper, it probably isn’t the most balanced view but there are at least some header points you can take to evaluate your own decision.

My take: I’d probably A/B test a couple of pages that have equal volume and see if the results change on the ai copy one over time. Where you have no supporting copy for a product you sell (low volume), then it is probably better to have something rather than nothing. If the reason you have nothing is time, money or resourcing then ai is a solution.

ai breaks through to make bloggers more money!

This article caught my eye because I’m very interested in reporting on any ai use cases where a cohort is making more money right now. The fact that it was bloggers who were the beneficiaries was very intriguing.

It turned out to be a bit of an ad for Stay22 but did have some snippets of ai in it that did indeed seem to improve conversions.

Stay22 is actually a great business and a good bunch of people. We had some good conversations with them way back when they first started and I was at Urban Adventures. What they do is provide you a map from which the user can see both Booking.com & Airbnb properties in the same view. The map is generally centred around a specific point where an event takes place (their big customer is Ticketek).

What I liked about our discussion with them was that they got the balance right in sharing revenues generated with their content partners. They understood the power of acquiring the customer and they also made it simple to add to your site. A good lesson for others going into this market.

The ai piece in all this appears to be that it will now sniff and fix dead links and update them (which is something).

How will ai transform meeting & events?

I enjoyed this pragmatic article by Ron Shah on his thoughts around how ai might change the meeting and events space.

For the second time in a week I saw someone talking about how ai can be used to connect a conference attendee with exactly the right people who are on the other side of your offer.

For example if attendee A is going to the conference to sell reservations technology they could be automagically connected to all those who said they are attending the same conference with this goal in mind.

We all go to confereneces to buy and sell things. Nothing is worse than going a long way to start cold pitching the wrong people. They don’t want it & it does nothing for you either.

It is easy to see how this can be fixed right now using ai and I look forward to first next conference I attend that employs it. All we need then is for everyone to be honest about why they are there. The ai can then ask probing questions of the attendee to tease out the other tangential opportunities associated with their role and suggest people to meet.

Speaking of which, I’m attending Arival & ITB in Berlin in just over a month. I’m selling:

• consultancy services to help you with your own ai strategy & other growth challenges (check my Linked In bio for reviews of those I’ve helped out already),

• HandbookFM.com for those looking to up their training and onboarding game such as DMC’s who want to show prospective customers how they will train their teams on the customer brand values and safety criteria &

• Customised Trip which is an ai that mimics the human travel agent to build out a bespoke itinerary for a client before the human sales team gets involved. It comes also with a fulfillment option so the whole process from conversation to travel experience is taken care of. Great if you have an engaged audience and looking for something to really add some big value and big revenue.

Most clicked last week was the link to the ai travel strategy GPT I built for you all! Great to see so many people dipping the toe!

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 focussing. 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