People are at their happiest when planning a trip - Ariane Gorin

Ariane Gorin said this week that “People are happiest when they’re planning the trip’. This is not new news. I’ve heard this for more than a decade and there has been a bunch of different bits of psychological research into this.

Gorin is saying it now, in part as way to deflect the soothsayers of doom who think that Expedia could be disrupted by AI.

There is other evidence she could point to. FORA this week became a unicorn with its latest round of investment. If you aren’t across them, FORA provides the backend for anyone to become a human travel advisor. They are booming. FORA offers a trusted companion who you can work with to shape the trip you want. They lean into what most people really want - which is both some agency over their decision making + someone to validate their choices + someone to take care of the admin (book the stuff in, be there when there is a question or problem).

Most real people are constantly grazing on bits of information about their upcoming trip. Most are doing that is social media. TikTok and Instagram are acutely aware of where this person is going, based on things they’ve used the search bar to find and keep dripping more inspiration until the person stops clicking in and interacting with that info. That is how the algo works.

These daily snippets are the reminders of the good time ahead - which in turn drives the happiness.

I’m not entirely sure how that helps Expedia TBH. I don’t think people are grazing there. It is more the place where the admin begins. The price shopping. The actual booking things in. FORA users never end up there (but FORA advisors might?).

These functional admin spaces like Expedia and Booking need to try and connect with people when the grazing is starting to turn into solid decision making. More and more people are turning to the spaces where they can consolidate what they’ve saved from this daily grazing. In here is the consideration list.

This IS personalisation. Crafted one-to-one for this trip by this human. Not guessed or inferred by an AI.

It is FROM this point that AI becomes useful. With the consideration set largely known, AI can help validate choices by aggregating reviews and getting piece of mind. They can select the suppliers they trust, maybe Expedia, maybe FORA, to come and quote and negotiate with their AI agent who is now doing the admin bit and price shopping.

Expedia as a brand still has currency. People are more likely to select a brand they’ve heard of to do fulfillment. But if Expedia (or others like them) wants to play in the happiness space, it needs to move further upstream to where the grazing is happening. And to ensure survival from disruption, they need to get their agent endpoint open so they can be invited to negotiate.

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One last tribute to the World Cup - thanks to AI

If you read this column often, you’ll probably know that I’m not a big fan of AI for imagery or video when it comes to travel marketing. My overarching thought is that if you have trick your customer into believing something - they probably won’t be your customer for very long.

Tennessee Tourism recently enshrined that into a public pledge that they will never use AI imagery alongside a “Yeah, it’s real” badge for their real images that look too good to be true - but that’s just because the place looks incredible. We’ve seen Iceland do this previously also.

I’m still wrestling with when it is OK and again I think if you are overt and everyone is on the joke then it can be quite useful and fun. This video caught my eye this week. It wasn’t from the Argentinian Tourism Board - but if it were, that would probably be OK too.

Here is another use of AI video making that I think works particularly well. It isn’t tourism related, but smart marketers might be able to use some of what is going on here with these wedding videos popping up in Asian culture to do something clever - where again, no one is being fooled. Everyone is on the gag from the outset.

Cvent has a “Candy Land” of AI in the wings

The opening paragraph in this story about how Cvent are unleashing AI into the difficult and highly manual business of organising events slapped me in the face.

“Skepticism about AI capabilities remained palpable at the Cvent Connect conference last week. Overheard from meeting professionals were lamentations about AI mistakes, prompt inaccuracies or misunderstandings and the idea that “sometimes it’s faster just to do it myself.” One buyer walking past this reporter in the Music City Center corridor, spoke confidently to her peers when she said, “I don’t think our jobs are going anywhere.”

I have thought for 2 years now that alongside managed business travel - where AI is booming, Navan has gone public and lots of other things are happening - it was event travel that would find the most benefit and perhaps disruption from AI. The core of event organisng seems to be matching what I need to what is available and then price.

I actually thought, Cvent are going to be in big trouble from an upstart.

I thought here is a sector ripe for video to take over from an archaic system of RFP’s. For example if you’re planning your wedding, would you want a full video walk through or a list of amenities? I remember a chat with Susan Barry who told me what a time suck from the hotel side, repsonding to RFP’s was - but of course a necessary one.

RFP AI boomed early in the AI cycle but not for these RFPs.

Boompop are doing some things here, I chatted to Founder Healey Cypher on the pod a while back, but there is very little else that I’ve seen.

I’d think the market is huge. I know hotels rely on group bookings for a fairly decent % of their overall revenue, especially mid-week. It has to be at least comparable to leisure for lots of hotels?

Is this a huge opportunity just hiding in plain sight?

Anyhoo - Cvent obviously sniff the risk and are doing some things.

Kempinski use AI for content generation by staff

Whilst looking for something completely unrelated, I ended up this page which is a case study from an AI vendor talking about how they helped their client Kempinski Hotels.

The Brief:

“Kempinski Hotels was actively seeking an ISO standard AI solution to put customised AI content generation into the hands of its 13,000 employees, globally. Key to their decision-making process was the ability to customise the writing style to align with brand guidelines while also fixing the structure of the content for consistency regardless of which property or department was creating it.”

The Solution:

“MYL’s AI training team and Kempinski’s communications experts went to work designing custom workflows that covered the most common content types, from newsletters to press releases, website content and social media.

Users simply provide a few points on the information they want to convey, and the content is immediately created following brand guidelines and the preset format for each content type. To support non-native English speakers who prefer and extra layer of review before publishing, a dedicated human Editor provides the added optional layer directly through the platform.”

I note that Ritz-Carlton and Lily Hotels are other clients.

Scammers are rife thanks to AI

I saw this article this week about how scammers are leveraging AI to leverage cash from our wallets.

“Criminals are stealing names, phone numbers and reservation information by illegally accessing hotel and restaurant systems.

Velasquez said copycat websites impersonate legitimate brands to appear authentic.

"They are letter perfect," she said.

On my recent trip to Brisbane and then PNG I TWICE had bad actors WhatsApp me saying I needed to do some things to secure my booking (or it may be cancelled). They knew when and where I was staying and obviously had my phone number.

One of the hotels I wrote to tell them admitted they had been hacked. I never heard back from the other.

Be careful out there folks.

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Money is starting to flow for startups and scaleups

OMIO raised $10M this week.

“The funding will strengthen Omio’s AI technology hub in Singapore, expand regional transport partnerships, and simplify cross-border travel across multiple transport modes.”

Meanwhile 30 Sundays raised $6.7M.

“The company, which uses conversational AI to plan and book overseas holidays, will use the funds to expand into new markets and grow its engineering team.”

Congrats to both.

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