Authenticity is the strategy if looking for organic distribution outside of AI or Google

The LA Times this week dropped a seminal article into where businesses have landed in this moment when it comes to TikTok. With the launch of TikTok Go - the timing could not be more relevant for the travel and tourism industry.

The article is based on new data from The Harris Poll, showing that while Gen Z still turns to TikTok for culture and discovery, confidence in the platform is (potentially) beginning to erode.

But instead of abandoning TikTok, brands are evolving their strategies.

The article explores how companies are shifting:

- From paid ads to creator partnerships
- From one-off campaigns to always-on content
- From TikTok-only thinking to multi-platform ecosystems
- From polished production to authentic storytelling

The article dives deeply into why “authenticity” has become one of the most important strategic advantages in digital marketing — especially for Gen Z audiences who increasingly trust creators, peer recommendations, and behind-the-scenes content over traditional advertising.

The article also zooms in on:

- Why user-generated content is outperforming polished campaigns
- How AI and content automation are changing social strategy
- The growing importance of community engagement over pure reach
- Why brands need to move culturally faster than ever
- TikTok’s expanding role in commerce and product discovery
- How marketers are adapting to fragmented attention spans
- The risks of relying too heavily on a single platform

If you work in marketing, social media, tourism, travel, or creator partnerships, as this article is packed with insights into where digital audience behavior is heading next and how brands can stay relevant in an AI-driven content ecosystem.

As it turns out, this week at Videreo, one of our most advanced clients who is a leader in the social commerce space, who actually measures where his guests come from as part of the booking process (YES, they add friction before allowing you to book to gain intelligence) asked us next quarter to concentrate on sourcing specifically on TikTok creators.

It is very clear what their data is telling them.

Videreo is the place to find the creators to execute an authentic, always-on content strategy.

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

This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Travelport ties up partnership with Cognizant & Anthropic

A surprisingly bullish post from LinkedIn pundit Martijn van der Voort this week alerted me to the new partnership from travel veteran Travelport with super new and hip Anthropic, with Cognizant in between making the magic happen.

It was this statement that especially caught my eye: “Over the last year, parts of the industry have been cosplaying agentic AI because marketing leadership seemed to have hijacked the boardroom. Big claims, agentic language everywhere, future‑facing decks, not always enough architecture underneath.”

The official PR release summarised what is going on here in two core points:

• Travelport, Cognizant and Anthropic are building an AI travel ecosystem to modernize how travel technology is built, tested and maintained

• Together they are closing the critical gap in AI-driven travel: connecting systems that can reason and plan with platforms that can actually transact

van der Voort who has admittedly been a Travelport critic summed it up thus:

“This Travelport–Cognizant–Anthropic move feels different.

It’s not about better search or a cute chatbot or slapping a conversational layer on yesterday’s workflows.

The real question in travel is harder: Can AI‑driven intent be translated into a controlled, auditable, executable transaction across live travel systems? That’s the battleground.”

Expedia releases MCP server and prepares for AI agents

More on the agentic battleground with Expedia dropping its MCP server this week.

According to Jeihan Agri, Expedia Just Opened the Door for Any AI Agent to Book Travel. Agri goes on: “At Explore '26, Expedia unveiled an MCP server that lets partner AI agents connect directly to its live inventory. Flights, hotels, cars, experiences. No custom integrations. Expedia's B2B platform already serves 75,000 partners and processes 21 billion API calls a day. An MCP layer on top of that is Expedia positioning itself as the infrastructure that powers whatever AI interface wins. The most important distribution move in travel this year.”

Expedia definitely has inventory and it is already known by the LLM’s. I saw a post from Melvin Boecher this week quoting a Meltwater study which claims “Booking at 55% AI visibility, Expedia at 54%. Two brands, most of the AI shelf space, already.”

What Expedia potentially doesn’t have is the negotiation power of the direct hotel to find a strike price in a negotiation with an agent.

What the direct hotels don’t have is a pathway that makes sense for the agent to get to them to have that negotiation. (A hot topic in the Slack group this week and also in the comments here)

AI spending is ramping up in travel

Phocuswire this week reported on findings from a number of surveys that show search and discovery are where travel companies are putting their $$ when it comes to AI.

Crucially “findings showed 64% of travel operators plan to increase investment in AI during the next 12 months, with 21% expecting to double their spending.”

When it comes to where exactly the core areas were “data analysis and reporting (46%). Search engine optimization (SEO)/generative engine optimization (GEO) and online visibility ranked second at 24%, ahead of brand and reputation management (15%).”

A different article on Phys.org quoted Accor’s AI and data science chief Nicolas Maynard as saying "The biggest challenge is to understand vague requests like 'I want a romantic hotel in the south'," Maynard said.

Because Accor's systems do not currently classify properties by such attributes, the group has its work cut out. "We need to adapt our systems to take semantics into account," Maynard said.

What particularly impressed me with this initial reporting was that social was not left out. “Search behaviors are changing and becoming more nuanced across the market,” said Thauan “Ty” Albuquerque, sales manager for TravelTech Show. “This is the generation which is increasingly combining AI with social media to research, book and pay for trips.”

There is so much noise around the black box of GEO. Yes things are moving that way from Google as the front page of the internet and SEO more generally but an equally large shift has already happened with the search box of choice for many being the one on Instagram or TikTok.

Very few are working on strategies to capture this search traffic (which also configures the algorithms to flood the For You pages with similar content until you stop interacting with it) despite it being the current dominant space.

A tip - your brand social media account will almost never show up in an organic search on social. You need other people posting about you.

According to the article “Instagram was identified as the most effective social media platform for marketing and business generation (61%), overtaking Facebook and LinkedIn. TikTok’s perceived impact declined ten percentage points compared to 2025.” I presume this means in paid social.

Scapia pocket $63M

Indian travel forward FinTech Scapia this week received fresh investment of $63M according to this report.

Scapia, an Indian travel-fintech company, announced it has raised $63 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, with continued participation from existing investors Peak XV Partners and Z47. The company said the funding will be used to accelerate growth across India, strengthen its AI-first product strategy, expand its brand presence, and hire top AI talent across engineering, product, data science, and design.

Scapia reminds of what Revolut are trying to become in the West. Well worth taking a look.

I chatted with a partner of Videreo in India who trains content creators and asked if they were across Scarpia. They happened to be travelling in the States when we had our call and were using Scarpia cards and had done some influencer work with them.

The Scarpia tech team also took out an AI award during the week!

One to watch.

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:

Call for those with AI products for the travel industry

If you have an AI B2B travel product you are looking to get more initial customers for then we want to help.

Inspired the famous Lenny Bundle, Everything AI in Travel is keen to put together something similar specifically for travel companies.

One subscription that gets you access to offers not found elsewhere and mew startups looking to gain initial traction get access to customers with deals they are probably offer privately anyway. Established businesses get access to tools that will no doubt help them but at a lot lower risk.

If you’d to add your product to the bundle we need:

• an exclusive offer not found elsewhere such as extended free trial, extra credits or something else of tangible $ value.

• There are no other costs to be involved. 

• If interested, please fill in this form

• If you know someone building something for a sector of the industry - please forward this onto them

Hallucinations are still there BTW

Just a PSA announcement that AI answers are not bullet proof (and may never be).

This week came reports of people blindly following AI advice on visas that didn’t work out too well.

“That warning comes after a solo traveller attempting to cross from Vietnam into Cambodia found herself stranded at a remote land border in 40°C heat after a popular AI chatbot incorrectly told her she could obtain a visa on arrival. She could not.”

Are we there yet?

NO.

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

This week we dropped a podcast with Bethany Reitsma from the Travel Technology Association on their new program to introduce startups to angels to fill the vacuum, particularly at the pre-seed stage in travel.

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.

Most clicked last week was the link to Google’s advice on what you do and don’t need to show up in AI answers.

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