Afleveringen
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I was astounded one day when on LinkedIn to see that I was a second degree connection to Barak Obama. I couldn't see how that was possible - but it all had to do with Anna Jaffe.
Anna runs one of the most innovative businesses in AI and Travel and has a long history of trying to solve really hard problems for very important organisations, including the US Government.
I shouldn't really have a favourite in this podcast series - but this one is up there.
I'm sure you too will find some great nuggets of insight and inspiration in this conversation with Anna Jaffe.
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Mark Phillips is a digital nomad and yet in 2024 he found himself on the French President's private jet and being talked about in high level delegations between France and Serbia.
And he isn't French, he's Australian.
Join us for this fascinating tale that takes us through the French Tech Visa process right onto the President's private jet.
Oh there is a fair bit of AI stuff too.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In this episode we go deep into the world of Destination Marketing Organizations with Adam Stoker.
Adam has many touchpoints with DMO's. He runs the Relic Agency where most of the clients are in the DMO camp but in 2024 Adam decided to build a digital town square for knowledge sharing across the DMO world, TourismIQ.
Really love the story about how a DMO decided to focus on experiences for families with kids on the autism spectrum. Now that is inspired product marketing! Don't miss it.
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Jessie Fischer grew up in the hotels business and now using that lifetime of knowledge to bend AI into a shape that can serve guests better, unlock new revenue opportunities for accommodation providers and make their lives easier.
What Jessie is building has really caught the attention of the travel tech world. In an unprecedented scene, we saw another founder of an AI company who has raised a lot of money for his own business come and publicly back GuestOS by putting his own money into her pre-seed round (and suggest others get in whilst the going is good). Other luminaries have also personally reached out to me about Jessie and GuestOS.
It's a story I thought we all needed to hear.
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On this episode Jason Halberstadt joined us all the way Quito, Ecuador.
Jason gave the low down on how his business had evolved from a long-standing marketing agency for small tourism business and taken the new AI capabilities to create something special specifically for this market.
A great example of specialising both regionally and at a specific ICP that was already well known, including their pain points.
This is how real businesses get built.
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AI is a global phenomenon but also a regionalised opportunity.
On this episode I caught up with Varun Gupta who was having some great early success in the Indian market. helping entrenched travel companies like Thomas Cook take early advantage of the power of generative AI.
Gupta's Pathfndr business uses AI to create dynamic packages within travel agent systems so they can essentially sell pretty much any bespoke travel package - all dynamically priced, using their own contracts or Pathfndr's and with appropriate desired markups already added.
Many of Pathfndr's early customers were working from aging and failing tech built in the 90's and AI has allowed them to jump ahead from last to first with minimal disruption and easy integration.
This is a winner of a strategy and expect to hear a lot about Pathfndr over the next few years.
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Janette Roush is the leading voice for AI and Destination Marketing.
That is now 100% official as since we recorded this edition of the podcast, Janette landed the role of SVP, Innovation and Chief AI Officer at Brand USA.
Janette tells it how it is, in simple language so that everyone can easily understand & follow along to get started on their own AI journey.
Making the complex, seem simple is a gift and Janette Roush has it.
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Gilad Berenstein holds a unique place in travel planning world.
Gilad is not just another talking head commentator but seasoned veteran as the founder of UTrip - an early iteration of this genre which has exploded with AI.
Now Gilad holds a position of whether to put venture money towards these and other AI ideas as well as being on the board of Virtuoso and a thoughtful commentator on all happenings in travel.
This was always going to be an interesting chat. I hope you enjoy!
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In this brand new episode we talk to one of the pioneers of bringing the OTA model to the multi-day tour market in Travis Pittman from TourRadar.
I wanted to talk Travis because TourRadar is not an AI native business but it absolutely is an AI forward business.
I had heard stories of how Travis had spearheaded a culture within the business around exploration and experimentation with AI and wanted to see both how he went about it and what the results were.
We also don't hear often enough from companies who are buying AI technology and having seen that TourRadar had recently onboarded external AI tech into their business, wanted to know what that process was like and why the eventual vendor was chosen.
I hope this type of knowledge can help businesses like those listed in the Everything AI in Travel marketplace.
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Generative AI could play a massive role in bringing sustainable travel options mainstream.
Unfortunately like most things sustainable travel, there are a lot of people talking about it and not many people actually doing something about it.
Cat Jones isn't one of those. She is a powerhouse of action and utilising AI to solve complex logistical problems that make it easier for all us to make more sustainable travel choices that seem like a breeze.
Jones is a pioneer and it was a privilege to have this chat with her about Byway.
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In this REWIND we talk about the hot button topic of personalisation with AI.
Stephanie Daniel from Legends isn't just theorising about the possibilities, rather she and her team are building the pieces needed for this to become a reality.
Generative AI can absolutely tweak each piece of consumer content making it specific and relevant to the user. However it needs to know who that user is and build that into the prompt that creates the content.
All possible but not easy and things like GDPR and the potential disappearance of cookies make it harder. Legends however think they've got the answer. Listen in to this episode to hear what it is.
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Brennen Bliss and his Propellic Marketing are a force in travel SEO and digital marketing world.
In this REWIND episode Brennen breaks down what those in travel need to know about he impact of AI on how marketing can and will work in the future.
Brennen doesn't pull any punches and his customer's results seems to tell the story for him.
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All my guests are inspirational in my eyes but I think, publicly at least, it was this conversation with the CEO of the hottest AI startup in travel, Andy Moss from Mindtrip that really got people interested and noticing this little podcast venture.
And Andy didn't disappoint bringing his huge brain and vast experience to the table to lay it all out for us.
Andy is one of 12 co-founders in the Mindtrip business. That is crazy enough in itself but what becomes clear in the conversation is that this is a group of people who have all done successful work with each other before, banding together to go again after a really big prize.
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In this REWIND episode from early in 2024, I really wanted to niche down to the Hotel industry specifically and find out what might be happening in that particular sector of the travel industry.
I got Susan Barry from the Top Floor Podcast, one of my favourites, because Susan had previously chatted to many innovators in accommodation who were leveraging AI on behalf of the sector.
Susan gives us the lay of the land and breaks down some of the important pain points especially in accommodation to give us a great overview of where things were at with hotels in that moment.
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The explosion of AI trip planners was one of the core characteristics of the early generative AI boom.
In this REWIND we talk to one of those early founders, Connor Wilson from Pilot. Actually, by the time in early 2024 we had this chat, AI Trip Planners were starting to go the way of chatbots in the way they could induce a collective eyeroll from the travel tech audience.
Whether through feature differentiation or different tactics to eliminate hallucinations, each new entrant was looking for a way to stand out and demand relevance. Pilot was no different here.
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In this REWIND we go back to the chat with John Lyotier from Travelai.com
Travelai.com have been forerunner in creating a cash flowing business from leveraging generative AI. There aren't too many others out there in travel who can say that, even less who are actually touching the consumer.
Beyond that, John is one of the really big thinkers in the Travel + AI world. He is the guy playing chess three moves ahead of everyone else and that makes what he has to say really worth listening to!
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In this REWIND we look back on the chat with Eduardo Schuch, co-founder at the hot AI startup, Tailbox.
Tailbox came spinning out of MIT with smart people and money secured to see what they could bring to the new AI driven market in travel.
With no-one from travel on the initial team, this was a real outsiders view of what is possible, not worrying about what is not.
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In this REWIND episode we caught up with our first female founder in the AI + space, Kim Bennett.
Kim is building Atlas Guru, an AI tool for the travel advisor industry to help streamline the process of building out a complex bespoke itinerary and getting a comprehensive and beautifully presented offer in front of a client.
Whilst much of the attention (as usual) is focused on consumer apps in the AI planning space, Kim quickly saw there was a B2B opportunity here to get advisers tools to help them do their work more efficiently. That might make the market opportunity smaller, but it certainly makes the chance of building a successful business much larger!
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The very first episode for the year of 2024 looked at the subject everyone was thinking about, contemplating or actively working towards - chat bots!
I spoke to Dan (The Man) Flores from Satisfi Labs who were well ahead of the curve on this one having built out their own native AI pre the release of open generative AI capabilities.
The chat bot is much maligned, partly because of the poor output of early versions forced on us by banks and airlines and others which took us on circular routes to nowhere. And partly because of the perceived lack of true innovation.
I never really bought into the whole "Not another chatbot" mentality because the truth is that the generative AI superpower is the order of magnitude improvement of the ability of machines to communicate with humans. A core business problem everywhere, it seemed was customer service. So we have a hand-in-glove match for what the tech is good at colliding with a real pain point.
That's not a weakness, that's a strength.
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In this early episode I chatted to Christian Watts from Magpie. I can't think of another person from travel who paid as close attention to the rise of AI than Christian in the early days.
Christian's almost daily video explainers on LinkedIn were an incredible source of knowledge for the industry as we all figured out what generative AI was and more importantly, what it could do for our industry.
In this chat we look back on the whole of 2023 (!) and go through the main points in which the rise of generative AI shook up the travel industry, and in many ways, also didn't.
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