Videreo makes final of Tourism Innovation Summit pitch competition

Videreo has been selected as one of the finalists at for the start-up pitch competition at the upcoming Travel Innovation Summit in Seville later this month.

The software which makes it simple for anyone in travel to first display their video content, with a scrolling vertical video feed in the manner users are now used to experiencing it, thanks to social media. The addition of a map to show where the video was captured, solves another problem for travel companies as adding dynamic maps to websites had alluded so many up until now. Together these elements create the Videreo “story map” which also contains a link to the travel product associated with the video thereby moving the user down the funnel.

It was however the ability to distribute travel product through video to get new sales and customers for travel companies, which really caught the judges attention.

From a field of over 400 applications, Videreo was selected as one of the final participants in the TOURISTECH START-UP FEST which runs alongside TIS.

If you are attending TIS you can watch the pitch on October 25.

Videreo has a free version for anyone to test with their first 10 videos and for small businesses, that should be enough so that it is free forever.

Check out more here and start loading your videos to display them beautifully on your website.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

The first travel TV ad made 100% with AI

We have our first contender in the brave new world of AI content production when it comes to TVC.

Welsh high street brand Travel House have produced the advertisement which will be shown on ITV and its affiliates across Wales.

Thankfully, they took an animated approach to visual style of the ad rather than trying to produce similes of real destinations.

Priceline CEO talks about Penny talking

Priceline have now added voice to their chatbot Penny.

In this video of Priceline CEO Brett Keller chatting to CNBC about the new enhancement he tells us they are leaning very heavily on OpenAI and its new capabilities around real time voice.

Keller says you will soon be able to speak to Penny “like you’re speaking to your best friend”.

And how much does all this cost Priceline? “It’s relatively inexpensive.” said Keller.

He also talks about how they are using AI internally especially with their coders which I found interesting.

Speaking of voice - is it the end for OTAs?

A very thorough thought piece from Thomas Reiner this week walked us through a number of scenarios that could occur with voice becoming more pervasive as the main input for travel queries.

A brief summary of the piece would be:

• OpenAI could revolutionize travel booking by making voice-based searches as efficient as current platforms, potentially eliminating manual search and booking processes.

• The integration of AI with Global Distribution Systems (GDS) could enable real-time inventory access and bookings, but it remains to be seen whether OpenAI can outcompete OTAs with their proprietary data and long-tail inventory.

• Voice AI booking could lead to OTAs becoming back-end facilitators for inventory and payments, or they may maintain their lead if brand loyalty and proprietary data continue to give them an edge.

But you should read the whole thing!

AI will be front and center at upcoming conferences

There will no escaping AI should you be out conferencing over the next few months.

This article talks about what you can expect at the Tourism Innovation Summit in Seville.

I’m personally looking forward to hearing how “experts from destinations like Ireland and Saudi Arabia will explain how they are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and digital platforms to enhance visitor experiences while ensuring that tourism remains sustainable.”

Last week’s piece on what Dublin City Council is up to certainly caught some attention and is centered on this theme.

It made me think about how we could add Google’s real time data around how busy certain places and areas are, to temporarily remove those places from Videreo story maps for users who are in destination. We could then replace them once things have thinned out again, as way of merging destination marketing and management together. If you are a destination marketer (or manager) and interested in trialing this with us - drop me a line.

It’s a revolution baby!

Google confirmed this week that the AI revolution is well underway. “Speaking in a presentation at the 2024 Travel Weekly Future of Travel Conference, Ailish O’Brien (Google Industry Manager) said AI is changing how people search and plan their holidays online.”

Most fascinating to me was this stat: “over the last six months, people have been making longer and more complex queries on the search engine because of AI. Queries using more than five words had increased 1.5 times over the last six months, and 15% of daily searches had never been seen before, according to Google research.”

Everyone is becoming more verbose you see! 😅 But actually - this is pretty remarkable. Behaviour shift is hard to do!

Everyone is going to have to start to get their heads around solutions for intent driven search.

“O’Brien revealed that AI had changed Google’s core product more in the last year than it had changed in the previous 20 years, and urged travel businesses to think about how they were “meeting this AI inflection point” in 2024.”

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:

SABRE chats to ABTA about AI

I saw a post yesterday from someone suggesting that industries with lots of internal acronyms could be a moat away from LLM’s. Man, we have a lot of acronyms in travel.

Anyhoo - SABRE this week chatted about their own set of AI innovations.

According to Richard Addey, Sabre’s Senior Regional Director for Northern Europe and the Nordics at SABRE, these can be boiled down into two main areas for the company.

The first is helping agents find a comparable property for a customer’s wish when the first choice comes back as full. The context of this conversation was around Greece but we see a lot of Europe fill up and sell out for a couple of months each year.

The second was around helping agents get more efficient with email responses through a new Travel Email IQ product. “…..it is designed to process travel requests sent via email quickly and accurately by using AI to parse scattered email content. By automating this process, agents can respond to new travel requests almost instantly, offering personalized travel options while reducing the manual effort that slows down traditional workflows.”

With a huge new bunch of travel agents now subscribing here thanks to the TADA conference last week - hopefully this is helpful.

Funding you can Vouch for.

In a very tight funding market, Asian AI company Vouch has picked up a fresh $2.5M.

“Vouch, whose solutions service more than 35,000 rooms across 32 cities, has expanded its product suite with innovative AI-powered features, designed to significantly boost operational efficiency and drive revenue growth for hotels.”

According to Joseph Ling, founder & CEO of Vouch their core differentiators is simplicity and speed. “We understand that dealing with complicated tech implementations can significantly drain a hotel’s time and resources. That’s why we designed our solutions to be the fastest to deploy and the easiest to use in the market.”

Their investors agree! Tiang Lim Foo, partner at Forge Ventures, said: “Businesses today seek both efficiency and adaptability, and Vouch’s AI-driven solutions deliver on both fronts. Their strategic focus on rapid deployment and minimising disruption addresses a key pain point in the hotel industry. “

Slack Group!

Where is Tony?

There are a few places upcoming where you can find me if you like.

Tickets are now booked to both TIS in Seville (late October) and WTM in London (early Nov). If anyone is interested in catching up at either of those places, please send me a message. (Especially Seville - not sure I know too many people going to that one so if you are - yell out!!).

I’ve reserved my place at the London Travel Massive event to be hosted by Stripe. You should too if you’re going to be in town, but be fast because as of writing this, half the spots have already gone!

The Everything AI in Travel marketplace is now launched - please just jump on the site to grab your listing if you have an AI tool or service that you want the industry to know about.

Most clicked last week was the link to the Videreo.com piece on LinkedIn! Great to see the interest!

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