How Max Tours is winning in Las Vegas

A thread about OTA’s in the Tourpreneur Facebook group this week caught my eye. An operator declared that they were pulling all their products from GetYourGuide due to their perceived lack of value (they were getting some bookings but thought the commission was too high - we all know that story).

The operator said they were having a terrible season (War, fuel prices, inflation - we all know that story too). Huge commissions on top were making their business unsustainable.

Why I found this interesting was because one of our clients at Videreo, Max Tours, I know is having a better season than last year (and last year was already good).

Max Tours have gone all in on fishing where the fish are.

As Skift reported last year as part of their in-depth research into social media and travel: “At the heart of this transformation is the rise of video-first, creator-driven content. Younger travelers, especially Gen Z and millennials, now treat TikTok and Instagram as their default search engines for travel inspiration. Authentic short-form videos — as opposed to polished advertising — build trust and drive bookings.”

Where their rivals may have remained skeptical and decided to sit on the sidelines, Max went the other way and shifted the greater proportion of their marketing budget to social, specifically an investment in creators to come on their experiences to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Antelope Canyon.

The goal: show up in search results for keywords on these destinations.

In more recent reporting we’ve seen stats quoted: “Among travelers under 40, 73% say they booked trips specifically because of influencer content.”

How do Max know it is really working for them? As part of their all-in approach, Max Tours put a mandatory question into the booking flow BEFORE you can give them money. That question asks how people heard about them.

For Max, the proof is irrefutable.

Videreo is the place to find the creators to create the stories that will show up for the keywords that matter to your business in social search (the actual front door for travel in 2026)

Contact me to learn how we can make this happen for you.

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Google offers shortcut to the information sources you trust

I guess you read this newsletter because you trust it, right? (RIGHT!!?? 😅 ).

This week Google gave people the opportunity to tell them the news sources they trusted which will tell your version of AI to check those sources when looking for ‘information on subjects you care about.

If you want to ensure the information you receive takes a pass by what we might have already sniffed out for you, you can do so by adding us as a trusted source.

Sorry, this doesn’t work for commercial sites or small businesses - I knew that was what you were thinking! But it does work for this newsletter.

Hotels are engaged in “AI theatre”

A provocative article this week suggested “hotels deploy visible AI features without redesigning underlying operations, creating "AI Theatre" that impresses owners but fails to improve business metrics.”

Honestly, I see a lot of this too.

Maybe this is also to be expected. Businesses, want to try things with AI so they pick a few use cases and deploy something. This is an much about internal education and confidence building as it is about pure business outcomes. As we move into H2 2026 and now 3 or so years into the AI story - its time to go deeper than surface layer experiments.

The crux of Dr. Tong Yin’s, Founder of InsightBridge Global LLC, article, I think is more about certain businesses wanting to be seen to not be missing the AI wave.

“Across global markets, hotels are deploying AI at unprecedented speed — chatbots, pricing engines, voice assistants, analytics dashboards. On the surface, the industry appears transformed. 

Underneath, very little has changed.”

Yin also questions whether the education piece around AI experimentation is working in practice.

“A pricing system whose recommendations the revenue manager silently overrides more than half the time — without the system learning from those overrides. Revenue does not measurably improve. The owner is told “AI is now driving revenue.” A sentiment dashboard that aggregates reviews from every platform into a single display that nobody reads daily and that produces no changed behaviour.”

It is probably a good time for all businesses, not just hotels, to take a moment in their next leadership group meeting and check what is actually happening around your own AI deployment thus far. Better to do it now before the Board starts asking the same question (as they should be).

JP Morgan suggests agentic commerce is a fair way off

Reporting of a conference appearance by JPMorgan’s CEO of consumer and community banking, Marianne Lake suggested she “doesn’t expect agentic commerce to take off soon.”

The interview was part of the imminent launch of JPMorgan’s consumer-facing AI travel agent, the latest of the financial sector’s raid into travel as a touchpoint for their banking customers. (listen to this podcast with John Taylor Garner from Odynn, a startup that specifically targets the financial sector to make these types of integrations happen, for more on this topic).

According to Lake: artificial intelligence platforms and summaries have been quickly adopted for the search and discovery process in online purchasing because they’ve removed friction. However, “what we’re not seeing is that that’s moving into the transaction part of this,” referring to AI agents making purchases on consumers’ behalf.

Possibly more importantly, She expects that to continue, potentially long term. “Because when people are moving money, things change,” she said. “Trust and security matter even more.”

Others are certainly making very different bets to that.

As reported here in an earlier addition, Mindtrip, Sabre and Paypal have teamed up to make this type of agentic commerce a reality. This story was picked up this week by OAG who summarised it thus:

“Working with Sabre and PayPal, the AI travel platform launched Mindtrip Flights, which it bills as travel's first all-in-one agentic flight booking experience, carrying a traveller from inspiration to paid ticket without leaving the conversation.”

I actually used the Mindtrip flight AI this week. I wanted to find the best value international destination from Brisbane to take a school holidays break just after the Arival conference that I’ll be speaking at. Brisbane is a unique hub as it has direct flights to places that other cities in Australia don’t have such as Palau, PNG, Solomon Island, Espiritu Santos in Vanuatu and other (awesome) and exotic locales.

It actually did a fantastic job and brought to my attention that flights to PNG, usually very high for the relative distance, were on sale - even though it was school holiday period.

But I didn’t continue the booking on MindTrip. And I know MindTrip and the people behind it. And I think this is what Lake is talking about.

Maybe it will take a more experimental group to get things going and build the confidence for the rest of us. That is certainly what Travala is hoping as part of its crypto-native travel booking platform.

This week Travala announced the world’s first agentic AI travel protocol.

“The protocol enables autonomous AI agents to search, book, and pay for more than 2.2 million hotels, including properties from major chains such as Marriott Hotels, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, and IHG Hotels & Resorts, with human involvement required only for payment authorization.”

Odessia raises $6M led by Sequoia

Last week we told you about new AI Trip Planner Odessia which is the brainchild of Sonder Founder Francis Davidson.

This week Davidson dropped that the startup has raised $6M to take on the likes of MindTrip, led by Sequoia.

My favourite of the many comments in the announcement, many asking about the booking flow was however this one:

“wow
intersting that trip planners are still fundable”

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:

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

All podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure! Now is a great time to binge those you may have missed.

We start recording for the 2nd half of the year in June. If you have an AI story happening at your company you think the travel world should know about - let me know and lets get you on.

Partner with Us

Most clicked last week was the link to the news of AI citiation reporting within Google.

That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. If you’re thankful for this newsletter - you can always buy me a coffee.

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