The (so far) missed $3T opportunity

Last week’s most clicked story (sorry, spoiler for those who usually see this at the bottom of this newsletter) was Mario Gavira’s piece about the 4 possible endings of our collective AI journey.

This week Bob Matsuoka, Trip Advisor’s ex CTO and Head of Product Engineering wrote a counterpoint piece in Phocuswire suggesting those outcomes might miss a big point. Big as in $3T big.

Matsuoka wrote, “Here's what these scenarios fundamentally misunderstand: Travelers don't start their journey on OTAs. In fact, 89% of travelers turn to social media for travel inspiration, with 75% relying on social platforms to discover destinations.”

“Rather than chasing OTA disruption, the smart play is building AI that works where travelers actually are—in communities and social platforms—and can handle the complexity that breaks current systems.” We couldn’t agree more!

Matsuoka says the big opportunity here is “Build a platform that uses AI to create complex travel plans from community conversations, then operate as a two-sided marketplace for that high-value data.”

Videreo is building this exact platform - so this was music to our ears.

The timing of Matsuoka’s thoughts was also perfect because this week Videreo is announcing we are opening our pre-seed investment round to help us go and capture this exact opportunity.

In the 8 months since we started on this journey we have bootstrapped our way to validating some of our hypothesis (and crucially disproving other parts). We are now confident of the pathways to product-market fit.

We are looking for people who want to come along on this journey with us who can bring us not just startup capital, but also strategic expertise & opportunities in areas such as social, design & communities.

Videreo is raising a pre-seed round to take us through to a Product-Market Fit validated by strong transactional traction in early 2026. Reach out to Tony for a chat and to receive the deck or speak to Adrian Villabruna if attending PhocusWright Europe this week, where he will be presenting what we have learned so far.

It’s a small investment to be a big part of a massive future.

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

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

How Google AI mode actually works

With the whirlwind of the Google I/O now behind us, people are starting to dig in to what was announced to find ways to optimise for this new era of AI search.

Lily Grozeva sought out the patent to discover Google’s 9 step reasoning engine that underpins the technology.

As Lily says “If you're still optimizing for the old search rules, this is your wake-up call.”

Also this week Andreessen Horowitz put out a guide as to how “Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search”

“The foundation of the $80 billion+ SEO market just cracked.

A new paradigm is emerging, one driven not by page rank, but by language models. We’re entering Act II of search: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).”

As the report tells us and Google confirmed to us at the I/O, search query length has gone from average 4 words to 23 words!

Searchers are getting specific in what they are looking for!

See Perplexity’s move into hotel booking

And here we have the perfect example of this longer search and how it is manifesting itself over at Perplexity.

We’ve covered news of Perplexity’s move into travel by first going after hotel bookings here in previous editions.

This week we saw an update to how that has so far manifested itself with demo’s of actual searches and the results they return

You can check it out here. (First seen in the Slack group).

Why it matters? “What once took over 30 minutes and required juggling multiple tabs and sites now happens with a single question.”

The state of AI adoption in hospitality

This week I recorded a pod with Michael J. Goldrich, the founder and chief advisor of Vivander Advisors, specializing in generative AI education and digital transformation strategies, and an HSMAI Foundation board member.

Goldrich is doing the opening keynote at the upcoming HITEC conference in Indianapolis (June 16-19) and also authored a report into the state of adoption of AI in Hospitality of HSMAI membership.

“The adoption of AI is transforming traditional roles, and it’s crucial for organizations to proactively invest in training and communication to ensure that employees are equipped to thrive in this new landscape.” said Lori Kiel, CHDM, HSMAI Foundation Chair and Senior Vice President of Revenue at Pyramid Global Hospitality

Goldrich has developed a 4T framework to help CEO’s and managers manage the transition to AI and has written a couple of books on the subject that are specifically targeted to the hotel industry.

Be sure to subscribe or follow the podcast on your favourite platform to hear this illuminating chat as soon as it drops. (Hint: you don’t need to run a hotel to get something out of this!)

The report is free for anyone to download.

Amadeus invests in Acai Travel

Amadeus continues to creep its way into AI, this time through an investment in Acai Travel.

According to the release, “A New York-based technology provider, Acai Travel is transforming operations for online travel agencies (OTAs), travel management companies (TMCs), airlines, and hotels with a dynamic suite of Generative AI-driven applications.”

Riccardo Vittoria, Co-founder and CEO of Acai Travel said “Amadeus’ investment in Acai Travel will accelerate our mission to reduce operational costs and enhance the traveler experience across the travel ecosystem. We are already cutting average handling time (AHT) by 50% for our TMC and OTA clients, and we will begin working with airlines soon.”

Acai truly looks at AI as a co-pilot to work with humans. “we are empowering a new generation of ‘full-stack human agents’—professionals who can seamlessly manage every thing from back-office operations to concierge-level service, with AI agents as collaborative partners.” said Vittoria.

No more long queues at Theme Parks, thanks AI!

Never let it be said that AI has no practical real world usage!

A report this week said queues at Legoland will soon be a thing of the past thanks to our friend AI. “Legoland uses AI to gather information about guest attendance and ride operations.”

"We're using a technology called Vision AI," Adrian Thompson, operations transformation director for Legoland's parent company, Merlin Entertainments, told Business Insider. "We have cameras placed over our attractions that analyze the number of people physically riding those attractions at any given time. It doesn't identify you uniquely, but it identifies the number of people riding an attraction."

You can’t be anti AI now, right? RIGHT? Think of the children!!

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: Tripian

Continuing his series of enlightening posts about what travel planning both is and isn’t, Tripian’s Robert Simon introduces us to the concept of the “Experience Map”.

According to Simon, the traditional pre-planned itinerary is likely to end up “in the bin or left unopened on their phone.” This is evidenced by “60% of travel experiences aren’t booked until the traveler is already at their destination, frequently within just a few days of the activity.”

I can confirm this was pretty close to what the booking pattern at Urban Adventures was.

The Experience Map then “seamlessly curates and integrates a preference tapestry of bookable experiences directly within any travel platform. And because the experience map can leverage vast amounts of aggregated data and employ sophisticated recommendation algorithms, it offers travelers personalized discovery in real-time.”

Real-time is the key here.

Right experience, for the right person at the right time will win. And that time is often just before the experience actually occurs - so that is a place to be if you are the seller of that experience.

AI helps us bring all these pieces together in a way never before possible.

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.

Half of white-collar jobs to be wiped out within 5 years - Anthropic

Potentially another cure for long lines at amusement parks could be that their parents are now unemployed and can no longer afford to go (be careful what you wish for).

A stunning admission from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei this week where he said on CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

“AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we’re going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,” the 42-year-old said in an interview with Cooper.

“Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10 per cent a year, the budget is balanced – and 20 per cent of people don’t have jobs,” Amodei said in a separate interview with AXIOS.

“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen. It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”

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:

• AI-Powered CX Strategies for Hotels

• AI helps planes fly more “sustainably”

• TUI starts rolls out real-time voice translation in its Cairo based customer service offices

• Pedro Colaco breaks down a big week in NYC including Skift’s AI Forum

• Lloyds the newest bank to enter travel with Hopper partnership

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 Michael Goldrich about all things AI + Hotels and Gam Dias, author of Agents Unleashed about how AI agents will transform the travel industry. Both will drop in the next week or so.

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Most clicked last week was, well you already know the answer to that one.

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