In just over 12 months Sonia has ‘influenced’ over $500K in bookings for ARLO Hotels

Meet Sonia Anand, a New York based content creator and one of the founding members of the Videreo Creator Ambassador team (@solotravelingsonia; 17.6K followers)

Sonia doesn’t just know how to influence people, she knows how to sell.

In a little over a year Sonia has managed to convince those who follow her on Instagram to make 615 bookings with boutique hotel operator ARLO.

There is a perception among parts of the travel industry that influencers are just inspiration and only for the top of the funnel.

Sonia proves that theory absolutely wrong and has collected over $12K in commissions from this partnership.

The mutually beneficial formula is surprisingly simple and most importantly built from a place of mutual respect:

1. Support the creator in getting the content and yes, pay them for their time & effort. If you’re not sure how much to pay - check here.

2. Give the creator something that they can add value to their audience with, like a discount (optional, but I’d say also optimal looking at the ARLO results!)

3. Track the sales and give an ongoing incentive for the creator to keep pushing for you (affiliate commission)

We’ve built Videreo to make this process blindingly simple for almost anyone in travel. We’ve found the creators ready to make their living alongside you and the system to make it flow smoothly via creator storefronts.

$15K in expenses for $500K in sales? Sounds like pretty good ROI to me.

Sonia is actively seeking opportunities in Marketing, Social Media, and Content Creation—both in the travel industry and beyond. With a passion for storytelling and brand growth, she is open to exciting roles, collaborations, and partnerships. Contact her directly or we can hook you up through Videreo.

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

Check out more here to join brands already being sold his way like Contiki, G Adventures & Globus.

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

Partner or Build? For Booking the answer is YES.

The Motley Fool this week posted some highlights from the Booking Holdings earnings call recently.

On the AI front they said: “Booking is taking a proactive approach to AI disruption by developing proprietary capabilities while simultaneously forming partnerships with major AI companies.”

Glenn Fogel is quoted: “We believe that compelling AI powered offerings like a travel vertical specific agent will play a central role in delivering even more seamless and personalized connected trip experience to travelers. ... We are also excited to be working with leading generative AI organizations on their agentic developments.”

Dual strategy or a bet each way? However you want to frame it the Motley Fool summarises the reason why very succinctly: “Booking aims to protect its market position regardless of how consumer booking preferences evolve.”

Money flows for AI Travel start-ups

It what most would consider a pretty tight market, especially for pre-seed or seed type investments, this week saw two cheques written for AI startups.

In France, Genial collected “€1.8 million ($1.9 million) in funding to accelerate the development of AI-powered agents tailored for the tourism and hospitality industries.” according to Travel & Tour World.

“Genial specializes in custom AI solutions for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), with nearly 50% of its clients coming from the tourism sector.”

The other winner this week was early slack group member Joris Vanherp with his AI travel agent Maya securing “€1 million in funding and gained the trust of leading entrepreneurs in the tech and tourism sectors, including key figures from Lighthouse.”

“More than twenty travel companies already use Maya, including leading Belgian players such as Noorderhuis, Travelbase, and Joker, as well as international innovators like Kingfisher Tours, Frenchly, The Green Program, etc.. These businesses have seen up to a 20% increase in sales and can assist travelers faster and more effectively thanks to Maya’s intelligent technology.” according to the press release Joris sent through to me!

Great seeing one of our own moving forward!

Radisson breaks out Hivr

Radisson this week introduced us to “Mandy” their new phone assistant.

According to maker Hivr, Mandy is “industry-first AI phone agent for meetings, and Radisson Hotel Group is on board as the first adopter!”

“Key Features: ⏰ 24/7 Availability: Handles calls around the clock using AI. ✅ Qualification: Captures and qualifies leads in real-time. 💬 Language Support: Communicates naturally in over 50 languages.”

As is the way these days, Mandy introduced herself to the world. You can see the video here.

Mike Coletta from Phocuswright goes viral on AI communication video

In the most viral travel moment of the week, Phocuswright’s Mike Coletta posted a video from a startup pitch competition which showed an AI agent phoning a hotel only for another AI agent to answer the call.

After they both realised they were AI’s things went fully jibber link. What’s that you may well ask!? Think R2D2 chatting away and you’ll get pretty close.

What less people were talking about was the scenario of a groom to be enlisting his AI agent to plan the wedding venue for him. I mean whoever came up with scenario has clearly never gotten married before.

... meanwhile the future Mrs Boris Starkov is on Instagram watching video after video of the lawned area, the rotunda, the beach.....

I wonder which place they'll go for................

I wonder if she might might be the future ex Mrs Boris Starkov when she realises the effort he's willing to put into the happiest day of their lives.....

Mike came on the podcast just afterwards and we chatted about it there too.

Vicki Miller, CEO of Visit Scotland thinks AI could help with overtourism

In a post by Mirko Alli on LinkedIn I spotted that “Scotland’s new VisitScotland CEO, Vicki Miller, is embracing AI and data-driven insights to manage tourism growth while tackling overcrowding in hotspots like Edinburgh and Skye.

“Social media plays a key role—TikTok and YouTube now influence both inspiration and bookings, shaping travel behavior more than traditional search.” Well we are certainly in firm agreement there!

Excitingly maybe for our Trip Planner people: “She envisions an AI-powered itinerary planner for Scotland’s tourism website, offering personalized recommendations based on visitor preferences—similar to Amazon’s “if you like this, you might like that” model.”

Check your RFP alerts people!!!

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: COAX

Similar to the Genial story above but constrained solely to AI is a great Ukranian business COAX.

COAX implement comprehensive and cost-effective technology solutions by delivering travel & hospitality software development that helps businesses scale, boost revenues, and optimize workflows.

Their expertise includes revamping existing software, developing solutions from scratch, and integrating them with the current infrastructure.

Check them out in the marketplace.

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 won't kill travel content creation. But it will kill those that ignore it

Beautiful Destinations CEO Jeremy Jauncey this week gave some great examples of how they use AI in their business.

Example #1: Understanding prospects before we get into a pitch meeting. Instead of guessing what clients want, Perplexity helps us know: What have been their most successful campaigns? Which platforms have worked best for them in the past? * Analyse the performance of their last 6 months of content on social Perplexity helps us research in minutes what used to take hours.

Example #2: Catching trends before they explode. With 50 million followers across social, gut feelings don't cut it anymore. We need data-driven decisions to constantly optimize our own content. X’s Grok, has transformed our analytical capabilities: Which types of travel content are seeing the fastest engagement growth? What new creative styles are emerging? * What destinations are trending or conversely, under represented? Grok helps us optimize our own content strategy and apply those winning insights directly to our clients' campaigns.

There are other examples in the post! Go read it.

Slack Group!

Shorts

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

• A post about how someone used “their Vibe” to create the perfect itinerary

• OAG COO urges people to get started!!!

• Human touch outweighs AI in Jamaica

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.

Sponsorship Opportunity:

Want to be known as the leading business in AI + Travel?

There is a unique opportunity right now for YOUR BUSINESS to come and take pole position in the AI + Travel world. We are currently fielding expressions of interest from suitable companies to take an owned media strategy like no other for 2025.

Available is blanket naming rights and coverage across both the Everything AI in Travel newsletter & podcast, with all the research, writing, scheduling, recording and publishing to an established and growing audience of decision makers in travel done in turnkey fashion. I’ll dig out each week what moves your company is making and make sure everyone knows about it.

Brands like Encora and Lufthansa use this owned/borrowed media tactic to huge effect and now you can too for about half the cost of a marketing coordinator. Shoot me a message if interested.

Most clicked last week was the link to Alex Bainbridge’s LinkedIn which is a bit random - but don’t say I never do anything for you Alex!!!.

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