Everything AI in Travel

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nstuzc0MlS4
Noam Shapira on AI sales agents for travel brands: moving beyond search results to conversations that help customers choose and book.
Need help finding the right AI solution for your travel business? Tell me what you're trying to solve and I'll personally introduce you to someone who can help:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVYizRw_UgfX9CpvkeUmkpOeRGFj_iiF0W2KmX_EECIqSUsA/viewform
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with Noam Shapira, co-founder and CEO of Via.ai, about what it takes to put an AI sales agent into a travel business.
Online travel made inventory searchable around the clock. But a list of results doesn't ask why you're travelling, understand a compromise or suggest an alternative when your first choice is out of budget. Noam explains how Via.ai connects conversations to a brand's inventory, business rules and customer information.
We dig into:
💬 Why WhatsApp can lower the barrier to trying an AI agent, alongside web widgets and APIs
🧭 Helping travellers choose between a few relevant options rather than presenting endless results
🔗 Connecting the agent to live inventory, commercial rules and the customer relationship
📈 Noam's reported customer results, including cases of conversion up to five times higher than a traditional website
🔍 What conversations reveal about unmet demand and missing inventory
🤝 Preparing for both direct customers and customers represented by personal AI agents
🏦 How travel retailers work with credit-card and loyalty programmes
🛠️ The gap between building a chatbot demo and running an enterprise sales platform
⏳ Why travel buying still involves multiple conversations and decisions over time
One of the most interesting ideas from this conversation is that the agent isn't only another way to make a booking. It can also help a travel brand understand why a customer didn't book, and what it could do differently next time.
The question isn't just whether an agent can answer. It's whether it can sell for your business while giving the traveller a reason to return.
Explore Via.ai: https://wearevia.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=eait_podcast
Connect with Noam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noamshapira
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#AIinTravel #TravelTechnology #AgenticAI

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/i8NvEWGQCDI
Michael Ryan on why SEO isn't dead - and the question every travel CEO should ask their marketing team today.
Want a personal intro? Request one from me - to Michael, any of my guests, or anyone in the AI + Travel space who can solve a problem for you. Tell me what you're trying to solve:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVYizRw_UgfX9CpvkeUmkpOeRGFj_iiF0W2KmX_EECIqSUsA/viewform
Michael Ryan hears "SEO is dead" every second day. His reply: most of what gets a travel brand visible in AI search is the same craft it has been for 20 years.
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with Michael Ryan, founder of Ink Digital, a UK search agency working mostly with travel brands. Michael spent 15 years in search - including leading SEO in-house at Ocean Holidays across Ocean Florida, Ocean Beds and Winged Boots - before starting Ink in 2020. They have grown to 20 people practising what they preach: Ink ranks #1 for "travel SEO agency" in the UK.
The booking journey has changed more in the last 24 months than in the previous 20 years. Travellers still start on Google, but they shortlist on TikTok and watch hour-long YouTube comparisons before they book - and AI overviews increasingly answer the question before anyone clicks. Clicks are falling for everyone. So what actually drives bookings now?
We dig into:
🔍 Why "SEO is dead" keeps being wrong - 80% of what gets a brand visible in AI search is the same craft SEOs have practised for 20 years, plus a genuinely new 20%📉 Clicks are down everywhere - why impressions may be the stat travel marketers should defend in the boardroom🗺️ What a real booking journey looks like now: Michael's own Santorini trip ran Google to TikTok to a one-hour YouTube hotel comparison🧱 "Consensus stacking" - the case studies, reviews and ROI proof that make ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity cite you as the answer🎯 61 of Ink's last 100 inbound leads asked about AI search before traditional SEO - and most had not done the basics first🧭 Brand mention gap analysis: where are your competitors being cited while you are invisible?✂️ Why you should pick the 4-5 destinations that make you the most money and win them in a sprint before scaling🏨 How a luxury brand can win with 10 clicks when one booking is worth £25-30k🤖 The AI visibility tools promising exact rankings for every prompt are "fibbing" - and the GA4-for-AI-search product OpenAI never built📝 AI can write your content now - the only test that matters is whether it is useful✅ The one thing a CEO should ask their marketing team tomorrow morning
One of the most interesting ideas from this conversation is how commercial the answer turns out to be. Michael's first question to any travel brand is not about keywords or schema. It is: which destinations make you the highest margin, bring customers back, and carry your strongest partner relationships?
Everything after that - SEO, AI search, social, digital PR, paid - is channels working in harmony towards that number. The brands struggling right now are not losing to AI. They are losing because nobody connected the marketing plan to the money.
If AI search feels like a black box, the fix probably is not a new tool. It is knowing exactly what makes you money - and making sure the machines can see the proof.
Find Michael at https://ink-digital.co.uk?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=eait_podcast or connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelryanseo - he also writes The Travel Search Brief, a weekly LinkedIn newsletter on travel marketing, SEO and AI search.
If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe wherever you listen and share it with someone in travel working out what AI search means for them. New episodes every week, and the Everything AI in Travel newsletter lands every Friday: https://everythingaiintravel.beehiiv.com
#AIinTravel

Watch the full video episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NaQ0ESczQM
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with York Lu, Head of AI Partnership at Dida and co-founder of RollingGo. York was one of the first three people in Trip.com's US office, spent three years as a VC investment manager in Shanghai, and is now building what he calls B2A - business to AI agents - on top of one of the biggest hotel supply businesses most people in the West have never heard of.
Connect with York on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/york-lu-5b419b116
Got a travel problem AI might solve? Find the AI you need: tell me what's frustrating you and I'll personally introduce you to someone who can help. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVYizRw_UgfX9CpvkeUmkpOeRGFj_iiF0W2KmX_EECIqSUsA/viewform
Dida is a B2B travel platform that York says is already the third-largest in the world - bigger than the listed player TBO on GMV, by his numbers - with over 2,000 staff, 19 offices across 40-plus countries and around 100,000 directly contracted hotels. RollingGo is the new Dida-invested entity taking that supply and packaging it for machines: net rates through an API, product interfaces designed for agents rather than humans.
We dig into:
- Why Dida's own AI journey started with building agents for hotels - and why they walked away from it (efficiency gains, but no new bookings)
- The moment the board sent York and one colleague to Hangzhou, home of DeepSeek and Kimi, with no plan and no office: "find your way"
- What B2A actually means: selling hotels and flights to personal AI agents, not to people
- Why RollingGo stayed deliberately quiet while signing up most of China's top AI companies - and why 1 November changes that
- York's story of a Google closed-loop booking announcement that knocked 10-20% off Booking.com, Expedia and Trip.com shares in a day - and the reversal a month later
- The Hyatt contract that landed because York's professor happened to be the VP of Revenue - and what that says about travel as a relationships business
- How net rates through the API leave room for the agent platforms to take their margin - the "toll booth" model
- Why he thinks OTAs and travel agencies gradually get replaced, and what that means for anyone selling travel
One of the most interesting ideas from this conversation is that the AI platforms and the supply owners need each other more than either admits. The AI companies are trying to close the loop inside their own apps and hardware, while the big B2C players fight to keep the customer. Meanwhile Dida quietly contracted 100,000 hotels directly, the hard way, on the ground.
If York is right, the winners on the supply side are the ones whose inventory an agent can actually read, price and book - and that is a plumbing question, not a marketing one.
The battle for who owns the booking is starting now, and it is being fought in the APIs.
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#AIinTravel #B2A #HotelDistribution

Watch the full video episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiPdlV9r1U8
Scout spent $30,000 building two million AI-written travel insights. Then they deleted all of it. Why?
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with Chris Stockwell, Founder & CEO of Scout, a trip planner and travel journal built around real travellers' content. Chris is a former consultant and "road warrior", a long-time solo traveller (45 countries and all 50 US states) and an ex-professional poker player. He has since gone B2C, in a category known as a graveyard.
Scout's first plan made sense on paper. The content already exists on Reddit, TripAdvisor and local sites, so have AI agents gather it and rewrite it for one place. It worked. The information was right. But you could tell it was AI, it had no photos, and people didn't want to read it. So Scout pulled it all and now shows a "be the first to share" prompt where there's no content yet.
Got a travel problem AI might solve? Find the AI you need: tell me what's frustrating you and I'll personally introduce you to someone who can help.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVYizRw_UgfX9CpvkeUmkpOeRGFj_iiF0W2KmX_EECIqSUsA/viewform
We dig into:
🧳 Why a travel discovery app needs real people's stories, and what happens when the feed is AI-written
🤖 The $30,000 experiment: agents running in parallel, two million insights, and why it still failed
⚖️ "Easy to create" vs "interesting to consume", and how AI titles meant users wrote less of their own words
🛠️ Why Scout is heavy on AI behind the scenes but "not vibe coding" a product with five or six modules
💸 The business model: affiliate partners (eSIM and travel insurance), feed ads, and booking links, with incentives kept clear
📈 The UGC engine: 12 creators, around 500 videos a month, and weekly active users up 30% week over week for four weeks
🥊 Where Scout sits against Polarsteps, Wanderlog and Instagram Explore
🧠 Is "anti-AI" a positioning opportunity or a trap? Why Chris would rather be pro-human than anti-AI
🃏 What poker taught him about startups: decisions with limited information, risk and reward, bankroll management
🔍 Where to learn from startup failures when everyone posts only the wins
One of the most interesting ideas from this conversation is that AI made the supply side of content almost free, and that was the problem.
Scout could generate a guide to anywhere in the world in minutes. What it couldn't generate was the reason someone trusts it. A thin human post from someone who was actually there beat a complete AI summary every time, and retention went up when the AI content came out.
For anyone building in travel, the question isn't what AI can make for you. It's what your customer still wants a person to have made.
Chris is looking for investors, a marketing and UGC specialist for a founding head of growth role, and travellers who want to try the app. Visit scout.travel or find Chris Stockwell on LinkedIn.
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#EverythingAIInTravel #AIInTravel #TravelTech

Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IHg6neBdXHw
Search can show you ten great trips. Who helps you choose the right one, and negotiate for it?
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, I speak with Michael Culhane from Mindshare about a proposed agentic marketplace for travel. Michael's career runs from safari lodges in Botswana to travel aggregation and payment systems. He brings an operator's view to a question that has followed him through that work: how can travel businesses connect with the right customer without losing so much value along the way?
Got a travel problem AI might solve? Find the AI you need: tell me what's frustrating you and I'll personally introduce you to someone who can help.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVYizRw_UgfX9CpvkeUmkpOeRGFj_iiF0W2KmX_EECIqSUsA/viewform
Recorded on 8 October 2026. Michael discusses launch plans for November 2026 and January 2027 as future targets. This episode does not confirm whether those launches happened, or whether the proposed marketplace is available today.
We dig into:
🦁 Michael's move from economics into building safari camps and lodges in Botswana
🌍 The role of local communities and skills in a high-value, low-footprint tourism model
📉 Why customer-acquisition cost became his long-running travel-distribution problem
🔎 The difference between finding options and making a useful judgement about them
🧠 Why the same traveller may want something different on a family trip, a business trip or a golf holiday
🤖 His vision for a marketplace where suppliers and travellers each have agents
🎓 Combining specialist travel knowledge with information the traveller gives their own agent
🤝 How supplier-side agents could negotiate offers for particular customer needs
🏨 A hypothetical hotel example of targeted offers rather than public rate cutting
💳 Using existing rewards infrastructure as a route to travel customers
🧾 Where Michael thinks blockchain could help with payments, commissions and reconciliation
❓ My pushback on whether an AI should recommend its own idea of the trip or help fulfil the traveller's existing choices
Better search is not the same thing as better judgement. We explore how agents might combine traveller preferences, specialist knowledge and supplier offers, and whether that would help people buy the trip they actually want.
Recording-date metadata uses 8 October 2026, the Descript project-created date. Marketplace scale and reach figures are Michael's claims, not independently audited here. Product plans, launch dates and onboarding offers may have changed since.
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