In Phocus

When travelers are on the move, ground transportation can be considered in isolation or in combination with another travel element — a traveler could be taking a car to the airport, to a hotel or to the train, the list goes on. It makes sense therefore that some companies are setting their sights on linking the bookings and data from various travel suppliers — a concept known as the "connected trip," which has been in development for some time across the industry. Mike McGearty, CEO of Meili, and Niall Carson, chief commercial officer for Mozio, joins senior reporter Morgan Hines in the PhocusWire studio for a wide ranging conversation on whether ground transportation gets the attention it deserves, the challenges it faces and advances in AI and more.All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alberto Gutiérrez, the founder and CEO of tours and activities marketplace Civitatis, had no business plan when he set out to build the company. Asked for his advice for travel startups, Gutiérrez attributed the success of the Spain-based platform, which was founded in 2008, to his ability to do a little of everything from coding and finding partners to accounting. "I always see this as the key to my success but it is not easy to replicate," he said during an interview in the PhocusWire studio. Since founding Civitatis, he has built up the brand, attracted significant investment and expanded to Latin America. Most recently, the company struck a partnership with Rappi, which saw the Latin American super app launch a tours and activities vertical as part of Rappi Travel.  Now the company wants to build on its presence in Latin America where Gutiérrez sees huge opportunity through Rappi's 50 million users and a population that tends to travel locally, he said.All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Travel is all over social media — and it’s continuing to play a big role in travelers’ decisions while planning and booking their trips, according to research from Phocuswright. But misconceptions around how travel brands should be using social media remain, according to experts. “Travel brands are seeing social media as a category of the internet still when it's increasingly becoming the way millennials and Gen Z access the internet altogether,” said Konrad Waliszewski, co-founder and CEO of @Hotel.“Even Google admits now that most millennials and Gen Z search on Instagram and Tiktok before going to Google search for just about everything … I think it really has become the new search engine. People want to see videos. People want to see social proof,” he said. David Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of HolidayPirates, discussed why it’s hard for brands to understand the value. “I think the comparison to traditional search … paid search and the immediate return on investment [ROI], that's a mistake that many brands do [make] comparing the performance of social media with,” Armstrong said. ROI in social media marketing is a longer term play, he said. All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Advances in hotel revenue management technology mean hotels are able to react more quickly and tap into local trends. The idea is that if there’s a big event in town such as a convention or concert, hotels should easily be able to find out about it in advance and adjust their revenue strategies accordingly. Artificial intelligence is increasingly playing a role in bringing more pieces of the puzzle together and ultimately helping hotels get to market faster. “We talk about commercial engine all the time, every day. How do we drive top line results and how do we move fast? And speed to market is very, very important. So, we're very curious about the world of AI. I feel like, from an industry perspective, we're just touching the surface. There's so much more opportunity,” said Garine Ferejian-Mayo, chief commercial officer of Sonesta International, which has 1,100 hotels across 13 brands. She was joined in the PhocusWire studio recently during The Phocuswright Conference by Sebastien Leitner, vice president of partnerships at Cloudbeds, who spoke about the company's thinking behind its intelligence product, which was unveiled in October. “What we're trying to do together with our hotel customers is to bring practices that have traditionally been in silos - revenue management, digital marketing, guest experience — together in one, AI-powered product that allows our customers to make decisions in real time, using and leveraging the beauty of artificial intelligence,” he said.All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tours, activities and attractions — in short experiences — have been a hot topic in the travel industry over the past few years. And with its staying power as a driver of travel decision-making, new growth opportunities exist, according to experts. "I think it has increased, more and more," said Luuc Elzinga, founder and president of Tiqets during an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference 2024. He said consumers' focus on experiences over material goods is fueling these new opportunities. Christian Watts, founder and CEO of Magpie, who joined Elzinga in the studio, said there's certainly room for companies both small and large on the distribution side of the tours and activities sector. That opportunity comes as experiences are rising on the list of travelers' priorities during the booking process, according to industry leaders. With events like The Taylor Swift Eras Tour and the Olympics prompting fans to travel across the world and boosting business, the value of experiences in travel decision-making has come into focus.  “It's the reason to travel,” Elzinga said. “It's the reason why people remember where they've gone.”All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A little more than a year into her tenure as president and CEO of ToursByLocals, Lisa Chen is excited to be leading the company as the tours and activities sector continues to flourish.  ToursByLocals is poised for growth with recently updated technology aimed at improving the 15-year-old private tour company’s strategy, she said. “We launched a new website this past year,” she said. “We completely ... modernized our tech platform, we changed our UI [user interface], we rebranded so we have a now really strong active runway from which we can launch our growth phase.” Now the company is working to lengthen that runway through technology — specifically artificial intelligence. “We couldn't have launched our new platform, our new website at a better time, because we're able to leapfrog over other companies who are established in these enterprise systems in a way that makes us much more nimble,” Chen said. She said ToursByLocals is looking to use AI to make administrative processes more efficient. The focus is on becoming more productive, trying to remove admininistrative tasks and work more directly with guides, partners and travelers.All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Travel planning and booking at the touch of a button. It’s an idea that’s been talked about in the context of artificial intelligence travel planning, the connected trip and data sharing. “I think now the focus of the innovation is around bringing this idea that the traveler is buying trips, and we need to have a connected trip, and we need to make things simpler,” said Decius Valmorbida, president of travel at Amadeus, during a Center Stage interview at The Phocuswright Conference. But there’s a problem: Many industries, Valmorbida said, have gone through the process of simplifying and have seen external disruption. “I think that is the focus of everyone here on how we as a travel industry build that solution and it requires collaboration, because it is a big ecosystem,” he said. “So I think AI … it is important because it is the means to an end, but I think the end is customer-centricity.”All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Knowing where to start in terms of applying artificial intelligence to a travel business is difficult. Some companies bring in a chief AI officer, others establish an AI business unit and more still just start playing with stuff and learning how it all works. Less than a year ago, American Express Global Business Travel set up a program internally to focus on AI across the business.  During an interview during The Phocuswright Conference 2024, Marilyn Markham, the company's vice president of AI strategy, shared insights on early applications of the technology and the drive to ensure all initiatives are "relevant to the business." Markham shared how AmexGBT had spoken to business leaders within the organization "who felt their area was right for change." "So, we selected staff efficiencies. Another one we had was engineering velocity and whether AI can help in that space. Of course, we had agents and servicing and the last one was finance." Markham was joined in the PhocusWire studio by Michael Gulmann, CEO of Otto, a startup creating AI-powered agents for corporate travel. The company, which is backed by Madrona Ventures, sees huge opportunity to act as a virtual executive assistant for booking corporate travel, learning a traveler's preferences over time. The pair discussed the rapid pace of development with AI, how much of what's out there is hype and where the real potential lies.All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Many who have left the travel industry often end up back in the industry because they love its ever-changing nature, the people and the dynamics.Filip Filipov, a former vice president of Skyscanner, left travel more than four years ago, and is now back as chief operations officer of airline data specialist OAG. He joined us in the PhocusWire studio to discuss what he has observed about the industry from the outside looking in.Filipov spoke about how some of the same challenges persist as well as the pace of innovation generally. He went on to discuss the "paradigm shift in the usage of data" that he is seeing and how projects that were being talked about five years ago are now happening.Filipov also said he's watching to see how improved access to, and usage of, data will be applied to the travel B2C and B2B worlds going forward, especially as AI developments take hold. He also touched on AI agents in travel and said he doesn't believe they will proliferate that quickly."The missing component here is nailing the customer journey and having enough data to actually power it. The more information you have the better the experience you will give."All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Investors Matt Zito and Min Liu have sat front row as travel merger and acquisition activity has warmed up over the last couple of years, with plenty of attention-grabbing moves in the third quarter of this year, following those that happened in the first and second quarters of 2024. “For the M&A side, we're definitely on top,” said Zito, managing partner of TSI, which serves as a broker for travel mergers and acquisitions and also provides consulting services to startups. “There's a lot of activity coming from both buyers and sellers.” Liu, a managing director at investment banking firm Cambon Partners, said that in 2024 the company recorded about 470 deals. That performance is very robust with a year-over-year view, she said, noting the market is vibrant in general. In comparison to last year, the entire environment is amplified, Zito said, which he attributes to a number of factors.  First, buyers have realized that a recession isn’t happening, so money has been freed up on their balance sheets, and with the pandemic behind us, earnings are improving so there is cash available to deploy.  And on the sell side, Liu said consolidation is a big trend, particularly since companies run by older generations are feeling ready to sell. All episodes: https://www.phocuswire.com/in-phocusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.