Tracking the ROI of influencer campaigns can now be like tracking ROAS in performance marketing.

The quarterly planning meeting in marketing departments right across travel all might look pretty similar. The teams assemble and pitch their ideas on how best to spend the available budget.

The performance marketing team offer is usually pretty succinct. “Give me the full $100K and I’ll bring you back $230K in sales.” The system is tried and tested. They know their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) number.

The creative marketing team will then pitch something that sounds incredible and fun. Something really on brand. For ROI they might offer “reach”, “engagement” and maybe “media value”. They might offer a % rise in organic website traffic.

Ultimately 80-90% goes to the performance team and the crumbs fall to the creative marketing side to their best with what they’ve been given.

But what if the creative team could measure their idea in the same way as performance marketing team? This is what has been built at Videreo. It is called ROIS - return on influencer spend.

It works by having the creators use a Videreo store out of their link-in-bio as part of their deliverables on a paid collaboration. The marketing team can then report not only over the sugar-hit of the posting campaign (about 2 weeks) but indefinitely to see what the return in affiliate sales has been at 3 months; 6 months; 12 months or whatever period they like.

Did the $2000 investment return $6K in sales? With a ROIS number, the playing field is leveled and budgets can be pitched for on this basis.

Check out more here to join brands already being sold in Videreo stores like Contiki, G Adventures & Globus.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

How to show up in LLM searches?

Brennen Bliss from Propellic dropped this awesome piece of advice on LinkedIn for those who want to show up more in LLM searches by users.

According to Bliss, “While Google's gotten good at reading JavaScript-heavy websites, most AI crawlers (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.) can't process JavaScript at all.”

And so what is the fix here?

“Here's the wild part - there's a solution nobody's talking about:

• Serve AI crawlers a stripped-down HTML version of your site

• Use old AMP technology (yeah, really)

• Pack it with relevant content

• No rules = no penalties”

If you want to measure if it worked (or to get a baseline before trying something like this), I did this little video myself to get you on the right track for discovering this new traffic source in GA4.

If you already use tools like those offered by TOMIS, one of the businesses you’ll find in the Everything AI in Travel marketplace, they just have a filter built in - just push that button!

Mondee files for Chapter 11

Early AI pioneer Mondee is looking to restructure and restart by filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy according to this article.

“The company is planning to sell its assets to a newly formed entity, owned by affiliates of TCW Asset Management Company LLC and Wingspire Capital LLC. According to the press release, if the bid is successful, Mondee’s co-founder Prasad Gundumogula will hold a majority stake in the company and will serve as the new company’s CEO.”

I don’t really understand bankruptcy in the US but its hardly a great sign.

Trip Advisor & Perplexity get together

The news of Trip Advisor and Perplexity signing a deal together came with much less fanfare than I thought it might.

Perplexity Co-Founder Johnny Ho said of the deal, “We’re always looking for ways we can power new search experiences. Travel is a top search category on Perplexity, and we’re excited to team up with Tripadvisor Group to make their trusted recommendations available through our “answer engine".

Sam Altman has also said that travel is focus area for OpenAI so maybe this is a bit of a counter move.

For the travel industry itself, we remain right in the middle of the jostling of those building out foundational models.

I think it didn’t produce a lot of fanfare and conversation because most people are sitting back and thinking all the others probably scrapped everything Trip Advisor has already.

But does a deeper connection to the data allow you to do more? “This partnership integrates Tripadvisor Group’s extensive travel resources — including Tripadvisor’s one billion reviews and contributions, AI-generated summaries, and Viator’s 300,000+ travel experiences — with Perplexity’s advanced search capabilities. Together, they aim to provide personalized, actionable recommendations to simplify and enrich the trip-planning process.”

According to Skift’s reporting on the deal “The AI summaries are an example of info that’s not generally available to search engines, meaning platforms like Perplexity can’t easily grab those details to inform results.”

Curiously this flies directly in the face of the late 2024 Travel SEO Deep Dive findings that Trip Advisor had doubled its organic traffic specifically due to those AI summaries being indexed by search engines……………….

Author of that deep dive report, Kevin Indig is the next guest on the Everything AI in Travel podcast dropping next Tuesday BTW!

Better answers for Perplexity users, including links to bookable products via Viator (for a commission?) and new traffic source for Trip Advisor, which everyone agrees, needs to do something as its previous version rapidly starts to flame out seems like a good mutual deal at surface level.

The Skift report also intimates that it isn’t exclusive….. “Tripadvisor may also consider similar partnerships with other AI search engines in the future, depending on how the trial with Perplexity goes,” Rahul Todkar, head of data and AI for Tripadvisor. said.

AI in tourism worth 13.38B by 2030

A number I’m sure we will see quoted quite a lot in upcoming decks was released this week by Markets&Markets.

They also listed the top companies who make up this as:

• Snowflake (US)

• IBM (US)

• NVIDIA (US)

• Microsoft (US)

• AWS (US)

• Salesforce (US)

• Huawei (China)

• Appier (Taiwan)

• Sabre Corporation (US)

• SAS Institute (US)

At least Sabre is a travel company……………….

Deck writer beware.

Delta launch AI concierge at CES

No worries on how to spend the marketing budget over at Delta as they hired out “The Sphere” to make their big AI tech launch at the annual CES conference.

Remember last year when we had the Rabbit R1 launch! Ah sweet memories. The hype cycle at its best there.

This year what we’ve got is an AI-powered Delta Concierge into the Delta Fly app. “From reminding you about passport renewal and visa requirements, to providing you with weather-appropriate packing suggestions for your trip, to assisting with way finding and security advice at the airport, the Concierge service is designed to be your personal travel butler.

Passengers will able to interact with the Delta Concierge either through text or speech, using natural language. In future releases, Concierge will allow people to automatically connect to Delta Sync Wi-Fi and Delta Sync Seatback, which will provide them with personal greetings onboard the plane and know their itinerary and preferences.”

Not sure we needed AI to automatically be connected to the wifi - but its a nice feature.

On balance though I personally would’ve preferred my first visit to the Sphere to be watching U2.

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

Jeff Kischuk at Tripian remains one of the leading lights of AI advancement in Travel.

Tripian are no Johnny come lately to this AI stuff. They built their own proprietary models before generative AI exploded onto the scene meaning they weren’t prone to things like hallucinations (and therefore nor were their clients)

At Tripian they’re accelerating our customers time to market with advanced personalization tools & features.

They are an all-in-one B2B recommender solution for hyper-personalized travel itineraries and experiences. By integrating of point of interest data, and proprietary algorithms, their customers can address critical use cases across the traveler experience.

Tripian’s tech can work within any tech stack by integrating Tripian through the API, App SDKs, Web kit UI/UX, widgets and tool kits. The goal is to accelerate our customers time to market with advanced personalization tools & features.

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.

NYC creates AI bot for event planners

NYC have tapped GuideGeek to create a conversational AI specifically for event planners.

I actually really like this idea.

Planning an event in NYC seems like a pretty overwhelming thing to try organise without some serious local knowledge - especially if you don’t have the budget of someone like Delta.

I think the events space is one of those areas most ripe for disruption with the current format of text-based RFP’s being hideously outdated and the entire industry pretty much dominated by CVENT.

If I was organising an event (anywhere, not just NYC) where I couldn’t physically visit until the time of the event (which we did annually at Urban Adventures for hundreds of people), I’d really be drawn to a video based platform where some care was taken to show me around the spaces (it’s just one take of the video for all customers - not a hard thing) and then AI to sort through my requirements list for good matches.

Tie these two together and you’ve got something very disruptive IMO.

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

We’ve already launched the near year with Season 2 of the podcast starting with an AI predictions episode and then an episode created and hosted entirely by AI.

You can also now access all the Season 1 episodes (all 26 of them) on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Recommend you subscribe at your preferred service and you get the bonus of getting them first!

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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.

Follow in the steps of Encora with their dojo.live podcast or Lufthansa with their TMHT newsletter - except with this package you get BOTH so you can dominate. Shoot me a message if interested and here is what you can expect:

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Let’s keep these media resources alive and flourishing!

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