September 3, 2025 • 23 mins
AI's true impact on travel remains deeply speculative, with companies scrambling to stake claims while few concrete applications deliver true transformation. But everyday uses like dynamic pricing, translation tools, chatbots, and trip planning assistants like ChatGPT show AI is already here.
We talk about the staggering potential of agentic AI to automatically rebook flights, arrange rides, or sign up for the best rewards programs. AI will directly challenge Online Travel Agents, whose dominance rests on aggregating inventory and managing transactions at scale. Yet AI’s iterative, user-driven planning capabilities expose the weaknesses of OTAs in handling complex, personalized itineraries.
How will the online travel booking sites survive? What will happen to marketing and SEO over the next 2 years? What's a neural travel marketplace? Should we ignore Public Enemy's sage advice and believe the AI hype?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Brown (00:07):
Hi everybody.
It's no Show.
With Matt Brown and Jeff Borman, you will find no bigger
boogeyman in 2025 than AI.
And, of course, as with anyformidable transformative
technology, there are a lot ofpeople claiming expertise,
prognosticators, sagevisionaries and world-weary
clairvoyants, all angling tosell themselves as consultants
(00:30):
on the future, and traveldefinitely has its fair share of
these profits.
Ai is all superlatives thebiggest, the most revolutionary
in the history of mankind but isanything actually happening
with it?
And we're here to tell you.
You know, we don't know.
Nobody knows anything otherthan AI, like all tech products,
(00:54):
is about efficiency and datacollection.
These are all just guessesabout how AI is going to go down
for hotels, for travel agents,for airlines, for everybody.
Still, we wanted to come heretoday and talk it out in a kind
of 101 session, sort of a stateof the union, about what is
(01:14):
happening in hospitality with AIright now, and I think the
funny thing is we were talkingabout this.
Ai, as with a lot of other partsof our lives, is already here.
You know voice assistants andchatbots and facial recognition.
They've been around forever.
Hello clear Airlines are usingdynamic pricing algorithms.
Translation tools are now derigueur in airports and hotel
(01:38):
lobbies and hospitals everywhere.
Even over the last six months,I've run into I'm sure, jeff,
you have too.
I've often run into people whoare just casually using it and
seriously using it as a tripplanner, and they're just doing
that with ChatGPT and Copilotand whatnot.
(01:59):
So companies everywhere arescrambling to own that.
So where does this leave travel?
Right, because many of thewarnings about the future of
generative AI are focused onplatforms like ChatGPT and the
next iteration of Google, andthat's because I think people
are seeing those now on a daily,sometimes hourly, basis.
Companies should be worried,right, maybe they should be more
(02:26):
worried than they are.
I don't know.
We need to kind of look underthe hood of what a lot of travel
companies are doing, but Ithink they need to be worried
about advancements in mobilephones operating systems.
People aren't going to go to atravel site and use their AI bot
.
They're going to go to the AIbot that's on their phone
already and goes to all thetravel sites.
Again, it's about efficiency.
(02:46):
So if Chrome is on your phone,you're going to click on Chrome
and it's going to take you awayto a magical world.
You're not going to want to gothrough any other hoops.
That's how tech has run for10,000 years and that's how app
tech has run for the last 15,right.
Jeff Borman (03:03):
The $20 trillion that AI is supposed to unleash
and contribute to the globaleconomy over the next five years
.
Most of that's still going tocome through operational
efficiencies.
That's not what thisconversation is necessarily
about.
The subject of AI can touchanything imaginable, and I think
, matt, where we're going to tryto focus is on the commercial
(03:25):
aspects of travel, not the hoteloperational aspect.
This isn't about what can AI dofor check-in or guest room tech
, monitoring the HVAC foroptimized use or sustainable
lighting controls, touch-freeexperiences that are more
hygienic, and multi-sensory,immersive three-dimensional
navigation throughout a property.
These things are unlimited.
(03:47):
The cool part about the AIsubject is that it is still only
limited to your imagination,but I think what we're going to
try to get to here is what'sthere today, and particularly
for commercial leaders and ifyou are curious about that, I
would encourage you to check outan article on Autonomous.
Matt Brown (04:06):
And is the world's first true AI powered hotel in
Vegas, of course, you know youcan see the marketing language
come a thousand miles away.
It's revolutionizinghospitality through proprietary
AI technology.
I love tech, loves revolutions.
Jeff Borman (04:20):
So they're always also written by a bot.
Matt Brown (04:23):
Totally so.
Yeah, the robots have alreadystarted the revolution.
It's, I think it's behindMandalay Bay, so it's fairly
near the airport, kind ofDecatur-ish if any of you out
there kind of know Vegas.
I can't tell how much of it ishype versus how much of it is
going to be real.
But they say look, you cancustomize your stay by selecting
(04:45):
preferred amenities and you candetermine your desired level of
interaction.
I think one of the interestingthings about the press release
was that they say, with guestconsent, the AI will gather
insights on you before yourfirst stay by analyzing publicly
available data.
By analyzing publicly availabledata, and to further enhance
(05:05):
personalization, guest willcomplete a short, gamified I'm
sure onboarding questionnairebefore arrival and it will
ensure a tailored, seamlessexperience.
They love those Tech loves,tailored and seamless things as
well.
From the moment that you checkin, I'll be very curious to see
A what the rates are.
We got on the site a little bitbut I didn't go and look and
(05:28):
see what it would take to book aroom.
Jeff Borman (05:30):
In the world of agentic AI.
It would have booked it for youand you didn't even realize.
Matt Brown (05:34):
You know most people you know just to kind of get a
baseline understanding here, andwe needed this as much as
anyone.
There's AI and then there'sagentic AI.
The main difference betweenkind of general artificial
intelligence and agenticartificial intelligence lies in
their autonomy and their abilityto act independently.
(05:55):
In general, ai can performtasks and make decisions that
are based on the data andinstructions it receives.
So the chat GPT model is thishey, chat GPT, give me a summary
of blank, or rewrite this, orgo give me a secret about this
town or this.
Who knows Agentic AI?
On the other hand that's wherewe start getting into 2001 and
(06:19):
Iron man territory it possessesa greater degree, a much greater
degree of independence and canproactively make decisions, take
actions and learn fromexperience without constant
human input, and that is bothvery interesting and a little
Terminator scary.
Jeff Borman (06:40):
An example here, Matt, of gen AI or generative AI
would be kind of an elevatedchatbot that answers frequently
asked questions about a flightschedule, or a system that
recommends hotels based on yourpast searches.
Specifically, generative AIcould be creating content like a
(07:00):
personalized itinerary ormarketing materials if you're
selling.
An example of agentic AI wouldbe a step beyond that a system
that monitors flight status,knows what flight you're on,
automatically rebooks you on thenext available flight if yours
gets delayed, even arranges fora hotel stay if you need it,
then sees that you've landed,orders the Uber on your behalf
(07:23):
to arrive at the exact time itwould take you to get from where
your phone's located over tothe nearest rideshare door, get
the nearest rideshare pickupspot and it's all happened for
you without you doing anything.
Agentic is quite a while off,but pretty cool to think about.
Some think agentic AI that, byenabling a Google agent or the
(07:44):
like to make a purchase on yourbehalf, would be the end of the
checkout page forever, and thatwe're entering a new phase of
digital commerce whereintelligent software agents do
more than search or respond theyactually act on our behalf.
Matt Brown (07:59):
AI machines may better manage my payments.
They will select payment withthe credit card that most
rewards me for that type oftransaction.
Maybe it signs me up for onethat I don't have to get a deal
that I would have passed onbecause of the signup process.
That's, I think, a huge one,right?
(08:20):
It's like if you were to thenumber of times that even just
that little bit of friction asfar as like, oh, I don't want to
give them my data, I don't wantto get hooked into another
subscription, another card, butif, if, if your robot helper
said I'll take care of all thatright now, and if you tell me
you want to cancel in threemonths or whatever the trial
(08:42):
period is, I'll do that too.
Now everybody wins and you cango off and do whatever you want
to do and not have to sit andfill in all your stuff in the
blanks.
Jeff Borman (08:52):
The scary part to that is that once my authorized
agentic AI is interacting with aretailer's agentic AI selling
and you've no humans involved inthe buying or selling process,
just a pair of machines, thepotential for fraud is unlimited
, totally, totally, because it'sall going to happen under your
nose and it's not going tohappen with monitoring.
Matt Brown (09:12):
They'll say there's monitoring.
The companies will say, well,we have, you know, we'll have.
They'll probably even make afeint towards human supervision,
but I think we'll, as we'veseen with a lot of other
technology, that humansupervision can't monitor or
control everything that's goingon in the system Developers and
project managers and QA peoplewho are going to be responsible
(09:39):
for billions, trillions oftransactions, and that is just
going to be crazy.
So all this leads to a questionof where do the OTAs that we've
known and loved for 25, 30years fit into this new world
order?
And what OTAs like Bookingcom,like Expedia, actually excel at
is single-term, single-itembooking One hotel stay, one
(10:04):
flight, one experience theclassic sort of search, detail,
price, compare, book workflowthat has dominated travel for
decades.
It's weird to think that it'sdominated for decades because I
think if you're of a certain ageyou can kind of remember a time
before that, but it has beenthe way that we communicate for
(10:27):
a quarter of a century at least.
Jeff Borman (10:30):
Personally, I don't see the OTAs as being
threatened any more than anyother party here.
I can understand thatphilosophically, but the scale
is unmatched.
Booking commands almost 70% ofthe European hotel OTA market.
Matt Brown (10:45):
It's bookingcom right, bookingcom right.
Jeff Borman (10:49):
And Expedia's got another 11, so you've got over
80% right, I?
Matt Brown (10:55):
had no idea.
I had no idea that bookingcomis almost 70% of European hotel.
Jeff Borman (11:01):
In the US, the two together make up 93% of the OTA
leisure market.
Right, so the skill isn't theresult of some breakthrough tech
, it's operational mastery at abrutal, brutal scale.
And they solved the hardestproblem in travel from 25 years
ago 30 years ago which wasaggregating a fragmented
inventory while handling thepayments, the cancellations and
(11:24):
the customer service acrossthousands of suppliers.
Right, they figured that out.
That's why they're in aposition during the day, 80% of
travelers visit OTAs to researchand compare prices.
That probably is under a bit ofthreat, but you still have to
go book something somewhere.
Now, where they are potentiallyat threat is if you try to plan
(11:45):
a very complex week-longitinerary using an OTA that
already fails.
So it's not like I thinkthey're going to lose that
market either.
When we had Heather Heverlingfrom Audley, one of the things
that we talked about about thefuture of AI on that
personalized travel that they doand that luxury travel advisors
bring, an OTA already does notdo that well, that's why their
(12:08):
market continues to thrive, butAI might be able to start
iteratively doing better right,even just in chat GPT that's
probably not the best source forplanning an itinerary, even if
you're using that for thatpurpose.
You just kind of keep refiningand refining and refining your
search and the results and yourefine a little more and you get
(12:29):
a little better and better andbetter and better.
That iterative process is notsomething that an OTA does very
well.
Process is not something thatan OTA does very well, but it is
something that AI tech bringsright into the mind of the user.
However, even today, we'regetting back to that kind of
dreamy.
(12:49):
What could AI become?
Even today, large languagemodels break down under that
complexity.
Openai's most advanced modelhas a 10% success rate on
complex travel benchmarks.
That's not enough for a humanto go back to it.
Earlier LLMs managed less than1% accuracy compared to a human
(13:12):
at 100%.
You're getting exactly what youwanted.
It just takes your time.
Travelers don't start theirjourney in OTAs anymore quite to
the frequency they did before.
Almost 90% of travelers turn tosocial media for inspiration
and 75% on social platforms, andI think you'll find Expedia had
(13:33):
a very cool and it's probablymore PR than reality, but a very
cool thing.
They offered up about a monthago where you can book through
Expedia an itinerary that itcreates with its AI interface
into reels or in TikTok.
So somebody sends you, matt.
Here is a phenomenal vacationreel.
(13:54):
This is what we just puttogether.
Here's your flight and ourexperiences.
Here's the hotel and the beachside stuff.
I got this cabana for dinner,that restaurant.
Expedia is now putting thattogether into.
I saw a reel.
It is now a bookable itinerary.
Matt Brown (14:12):
Okay, that's pretty good.
Jeff Borman (14:13):
That's pretty cool and that exists now.
Now it doesn't have the scalethere aren't 10,000 of these yet
, there aren't 10 million ofthem yet but the concept is live
.
It's not just a concept, thatis live.
Matt Brown (14:25):
Because not only does it sell you on the trip,
but it's a great thing for youto share with friends, like,
should I do this or should I dothis?
And then, if you actuallychoose to do it and people ask,
oh hey, where are you going?
Oh well, this is what I'm goingto do.
And now it's this packagedlittle pre-flight reel that you
can share with family andfriends and say look at all the
(14:47):
cool things I'm going to bedoing.
Jeff Borman (14:49):
Traditional search and advertising strategies are
giving way to a new era of AI.
First discovery, Matt, youmentioned this at the beginning.
Where anybody who's been onGoogle in the last six months,
you will notice that the AIanswer comes before the SEO or
the search answer, the keyword,the old school keyword answer.
A study by Epsilon showed that94% of marketers reference using
(15:13):
AI today, 100% plan to in theimmediate future.
Yet only 41% of thoserespondents say AI is having an
impact on marketing performancetoday.
Matt Brown (15:26):
You know, with all this talk about efficiencies,
the operational efficienciesshould also be available to
marketers.
Short-term, we have to careabout the marketers.
They need love too.
They're going to use AI topower chatbots, voice
recognition, creative adgeneration, and these are all
very reasonable applications inthe present, but I think what
(15:48):
everybody really wants is a wayto leverage AI to improve
customer shopping experience.
Jeff Borman (15:56):
I think true adoption just isn't there yet at
scale.
But that same Epsilon studyshowed that more than half of
marketers feel like they arealready air quotes here mature
in AI adoption.
But I can't believe that for asecond.
Considering when I ask hotelmarketers whether it's a hotel
level or a chief of the biggestcompanies, and I ask this
(16:19):
question all the time how areyou using AI?
I get almost no real answers.
And hotel marketers that areengaged in AI related activities
.
The largest improvement, theysay, has been improvement to the
return on ad spend, roas.
When I read that, I hearaffirmation bias, because I have
not seen any scalableimprovement in ROAS over the
(16:42):
last two years.
In fact, it's actually been indecline because cost per click
has been rising dramatically.
Marketing costs are simplyelevated.
So the efficiencies thatmarketers are supposed to be
getting from AI at best rightnow it's being chewed up simply
because it costs more to do thesame thing it did yesterday.
Matt Brown (16:59):
That's got to be so frustrating for marketers.
Finally, after two decades,after being grilled constantly
about what are we getting forour ads and then they have to
kind of look around at eachother and make up answers
because nobody really knows theyfinally have been able to get a
system down where it's likethey can answer those questions
with with a decent amount offaith and keep their job for
(17:20):
another year.
And now all of that is goingout the window.
So I I will light a candletonight for the travel marketers
of the world.
Jeff Borman (17:30):
You know what, though?
I will not.
No, because that candle wassupposed to be, because AI was
going to take their job, andreally what we're talking about
here is it's nowhere close.
Matt Brown (17:43):
One of the ways that helped us understand a little
bit of this was a great paperfrom Focuswire that came out
recently called Four Scenarioson the Future of Agentic, ai and
Travel Good title, and itessentially goes through these
four different models.
And the first one, the kind ofbasic one, is essentially
augmented booking.
So it's kind of what we havenow, but it's a little more
conversational, it's moreintuitive and knows your past
(18:06):
past days and then makesrecommendations Great.
The second scenario, nowraising the stakes a little bit,
is an AI travel concierge.
So you put it in the system,you talk into the system and say
plan a trip to Portugal inSeptember, it's going to be a
week, give me a mix of socialand coastal experiences, I have
$6,000 to spend.
And then your AI assistantpicks the best bidder on its OTA
(18:30):
shortlist and the one thatoffers the most suitable travel
itinerary flights, all of it.
You say book it and then yourcalendar is automatically
updated with all the details.
A third scenario is one in whichthe brands get involved and you
open up, say, a Hilton app orMarriott app and you chat with
their AI bots about a trip toPhiladelphia or Chicago for a
(18:53):
conference and the AI suggestsvery specific options like this
hotel connects directly to theconvention center and this one
has an upgraded executive lounge, which you've rated highly in
your past days and you get thispersonalized package that
includes a preferred room type,an airport transfer, breakfast
experience, all the stuff andthe entire transaction occurs
(19:15):
within the Hilton ecosystem andyou're guided along very quickly
to a satisfactory resolution.
The fourth scenario, though, Ifound particularly interesting.
It's the big kahuna, and theycall it the neural travel
marketplace.
You tell your personal AIassistant, your Jarvis, I need
to be in meetings the secondweek of June in this town, build
(19:38):
me a suitable itinerary, andyour AI robot interfaces
directly with the AI agents fromairlines and hotels.
Robots talk to robots with theAI agents from airlines and
hotels, robots talking to robots, and each, autonomously, is
authorized to completetransactions.
No humans, just instantaneousnegotiations that follow your
(19:59):
preferred seat positions, yourhistorical sensitivity to hotel
room noise, what way you want toface, what time you want to get
up, all of it and the robottakes care of the whole thing
and you press a button maybe, orat least give some kind of
authorization at the beginningor end, and you show up at the
airport a month later and takeoff.
(20:22):
And in this landscape ruled byAI agents, otas could fade away
Consumer marketing would fadeaway.
Marketing budgets would go toAI agent referral fees, because
none of this is going to comefor free or cheap.
It's going to come to these AIagent referral fees that ensure
(20:43):
preferred access to your AIassistant, and those will be
owned by big tech giants.
They'll probably be developedby startups, but, don't worry,
all those startups are hopingthat in five years they get
bought by Google because theirbusiness model is so good or
because Google wants toneutralize the competition.
Jeff Borman (21:04):
Matt, would you like to ask me a mystery
question and I will let you knowwhat chat GPT thinks?
The answer should be yes.
Make it personal, though.
Let's see if it can get meright.
Matt Brown (21:15):
Okay, Next year you want to go on a dream trip to a
place you've never been before.
You have two weeks and let'sgive you a healthy budget for
this one.
You deserved it.
Let's give you $20,000.
I know that's not healthy tosome people.
It's healthy to me.
Where should you go?
Jeff Borman (21:38):
Okay, well, matt, I know my answer.
Well, chatgpt is responding forme on my behalf.
Thankfully it does not yet have.
Well, we'll find out.
Maybe I'll be a fan of thisagentic thing.
We'll see what it says.
My answer would be either NewZealand tough on 20K though I
(21:59):
like to ride in the front of thebus, you're going to spend 20K
just for Heather and I to getthere and back in the front.
But New Zealand, south Africanever been.
Croatia could probably do that,definitely could do that on 20K
.
Kenya, tanzania those are mybig four.
All right, let's see what itsays.
(22:19):
Japan ultra modern meets agent.
Let's see Helicopter ride overTokyo budget 14 to 18,000,.
Let's see Helicopter ride overTokyo Budget 14 to 18,000.
Private tea ceremony in Kyoto.
Ok, option number two here we go.
South Africa plus safari, capeTown and wine country.
Matt, this is exactly what Iwant.
Number three Bali and theKomodo Islands.
(22:42):
I've been to Bali a dozen times, so no, thank you, but it's not
a bad suggestion.
Patagonia, buenos Aires,argentina.
I absolutely love Argentina.
We just did a Patagonia tripabout five years ago.
I probably wouldn't do it again, but I would recommend it.
So, solid answer, chat GBT,amalfi Coast plus Sicily.
I literally got back fromSicily two weeks ago and I've
(23:03):
been dreaming about going to theAmalfi Coast.
Fucking hell, man.
That's impressive.
Matt Brown (23:08):
It's impressive.
Jeff Borman (23:09):
This knows nothing about me.
Matt Brown (23:11):
And in six months.
You know, what we should do iswe should come back here in six
months and ask it the samequestion, because it'll learn
more about you.
Jeff Borman (23:18):
It will.
Right now.
It only knows how to makestupid memes.
That's all I ask of it.
Hi everybody.
It's no Show.
With Matt Brown and Jeff Borman, you will find no bigger
boogeyman in 2025 than AI.
And, of course, as with anyformidable transformative
technology, there are a lot ofpeople claiming expertise,
prognosticators, sagevisionaries and world-weary
clairvoyants, all angling tosell themselves as consultants
(00:30):
on the future, and traveldefinitely has its fair share of
these profits.
Ai is all superlatives thebiggest, the most revolutionary
in the history of mankind but isanything actually happening
with it?
And we're here to tell you.
You know, we don't know.
Nobody knows anything otherthan AI, like all tech products,
(00:54):
is about efficiency and datacollection.
These are all just guessesabout how AI is going to go down
for hotels, for travel agents,for airlines, for everybody.
Still, we wanted to come heretoday and talk it out in a kind
of 101 session, sort of a stateof the union, about what is
(01:14):
happening in hospitality with AIright now, and I think the
funny thing is we were talkingabout this.
Ai, as with a lot of other partsof our lives, is already here.
You know voice assistants andchatbots and facial recognition.
They've been around forever.
Hello clear Airlines are usingdynamic pricing algorithms.
Translation tools are now derigueur in airports and hotel
(01:38):
lobbies and hospitals everywhere.
Even over the last six months,I've run into I'm sure, jeff,
you have too.
I've often run into people whoare just casually using it and
seriously using it as a tripplanner, and they're just doing
that with ChatGPT and Copilotand whatnot.
(01:59):
So companies everywhere arescrambling to own that.
So where does this leave travel?
Right, because many of thewarnings about the future of
generative AI are focused onplatforms like ChatGPT and the
next iteration of Google, andthat's because I think people
are seeing those now on a daily,sometimes hourly, basis.
Companies should be worried,right, maybe they should be more
(02:26):
worried than they are.
I don't know.
We need to kind of look underthe hood of what a lot of travel
companies are doing, but Ithink they need to be worried
about advancements in mobilephones operating systems.
People aren't going to go to atravel site and use their AI bot
.
They're going to go to the AIbot that's on their phone
already and goes to all thetravel sites.
Again, it's about efficiency.
(02:46):
So if Chrome is on your phone,you're going to click on Chrome
and it's going to take you awayto a magical world.
You're not going to want to gothrough any other hoops.
That's how tech has run for10,000 years and that's how app
tech has run for the last 15,right.
Jeff Borman (03:03):
The $20 trillion that AI is supposed to unleash
and contribute to the globaleconomy over the next five years
.
Most of that's still going tocome through operational
efficiencies.
That's not what thisconversation is necessarily
about.
The subject of AI can touchanything imaginable, and I think
, matt, where we're going to tryto focus is on the commercial
(03:25):
aspects of travel, not the hoteloperational aspect.
This isn't about what can AI dofor check-in or guest room tech
, monitoring the HVAC foroptimized use or sustainable
lighting controls, touch-freeexperiences that are more
hygienic, and multi-sensory,immersive three-dimensional
navigation throughout a property.
These things are unlimited.
(03:47):
The cool part about the AIsubject is that it is still only
limited to your imagination,but I think what we're going to
try to get to here is what'sthere today, and particularly
for commercial leaders and ifyou are curious about that, I
would encourage you to check outan article on Autonomous.
Matt Brown (04:06):
And is the world's first true AI powered hotel in
Vegas, of course, you know youcan see the marketing language
come a thousand miles away.
It's revolutionizinghospitality through proprietary
AI technology.
I love tech, loves revolutions.
Jeff Borman (04:20):
So they're always also written by a bot.
Matt Brown (04:23):
Totally so.
Yeah, the robots have alreadystarted the revolution.
It's, I think it's behindMandalay Bay, so it's fairly
near the airport, kind ofDecatur-ish if any of you out
there kind of know Vegas.
I can't tell how much of it ishype versus how much of it is
going to be real.
But they say look, you cancustomize your stay by selecting
(04:45):
preferred amenities and you candetermine your desired level of
interaction.
I think one of the interestingthings about the press release
was that they say, with guestconsent, the AI will gather
insights on you before yourfirst stay by analyzing publicly
available data.
By analyzing publicly availabledata, and to further enhance
(05:05):
personalization, guest willcomplete a short, gamified I'm
sure onboarding questionnairebefore arrival and it will
ensure a tailored, seamlessexperience.
They love those Tech loves,tailored and seamless things as
well.
From the moment that you checkin, I'll be very curious to see
A what the rates are.
We got on the site a little bitbut I didn't go and look and
(05:28):
see what it would take to book aroom.
Jeff Borman (05:30):
In the world of agentic AI.
It would have booked it for youand you didn't even realize.
Matt Brown (05:34):
You know most people you know just to kind of get a
baseline understanding here, andwe needed this as much as
anyone.
There's AI and then there'sagentic AI.
The main difference betweenkind of general artificial
intelligence and agenticartificial intelligence lies in
their autonomy and their abilityto act independently.
(05:55):
In general, ai can performtasks and make decisions that
are based on the data andinstructions it receives.
So the chat GPT model is thishey, chat GPT, give me a summary
of blank, or rewrite this, orgo give me a secret about this
town or this.
Who knows Agentic AI?
On the other hand that's wherewe start getting into 2001 and
(06:19):
Iron man territory it possessesa greater degree, a much greater
degree of independence and canproactively make decisions, take
actions and learn fromexperience without constant
human input, and that is bothvery interesting and a little
Terminator scary.
Jeff Borman (06:40):
An example here, Matt, of gen AI or generative AI
would be kind of an elevatedchatbot that answers frequently
asked questions about a flightschedule, or a system that
recommends hotels based on yourpast searches.
Specifically, generative AIcould be creating content like a
(07:00):
personalized itinerary ormarketing materials if you're
selling.
An example of agentic AI wouldbe a step beyond that a system
that monitors flight status,knows what flight you're on,
automatically rebooks you on thenext available flight if yours
gets delayed, even arranges fora hotel stay if you need it,
then sees that you've landed,orders the Uber on your behalf
(07:23):
to arrive at the exact time itwould take you to get from where
your phone's located over tothe nearest rideshare door, get
the nearest rideshare pickupspot and it's all happened for
you without you doing anything.
Agentic is quite a while off,but pretty cool to think about.
Some think agentic AI that, byenabling a Google agent or the
(07:44):
like to make a purchase on yourbehalf, would be the end of the
checkout page forever, and thatwe're entering a new phase of
digital commerce whereintelligent software agents do
more than search or respond theyactually act on our behalf.
Matt Brown (07:59):
AI machines may better manage my payments.
They will select payment withthe credit card that most
rewards me for that type oftransaction.
Maybe it signs me up for onethat I don't have to get a deal
that I would have passed onbecause of the signup process.
That's, I think, a huge one,right?
(08:20):
It's like if you were to thenumber of times that even just
that little bit of friction asfar as like, oh, I don't want to
give them my data, I don't wantto get hooked into another
subscription, another card, butif, if, if your robot helper
said I'll take care of all thatright now, and if you tell me
you want to cancel in threemonths or whatever the trial
(08:42):
period is, I'll do that too.
Now everybody wins and you cango off and do whatever you want
to do and not have to sit andfill in all your stuff in the
blanks.
Jeff Borman (08:52):
The scary part to that is that once my authorized
agentic AI is interacting with aretailer's agentic AI selling
and you've no humans involved inthe buying or selling process,
just a pair of machines, thepotential for fraud is unlimited
, totally, totally, because it'sall going to happen under your
nose and it's not going tohappen with monitoring.
Matt Brown (09:12):
They'll say there's monitoring.
The companies will say, well,we have, you know, we'll have.
They'll probably even make afeint towards human supervision,
but I think we'll, as we'veseen with a lot of other
technology, that humansupervision can't monitor or
control everything that's goingon in the system Developers and
project managers and QA peoplewho are going to be responsible
(09:39):
for billions, trillions oftransactions, and that is just
going to be crazy.
So all this leads to a questionof where do the OTAs that we've
known and loved for 25, 30years fit into this new world
order?
And what OTAs like Bookingcom,like Expedia, actually excel at
is single-term, single-itembooking One hotel stay, one
(10:04):
flight, one experience theclassic sort of search, detail,
price, compare, book workflowthat has dominated travel for
decades.
It's weird to think that it'sdominated for decades because I
think if you're of a certain ageyou can kind of remember a time
before that, but it has beenthe way that we communicate for
(10:27):
a quarter of a century at least.
Jeff Borman (10:30):
Personally, I don't see the OTAs as being
threatened any more than anyother party here.
I can understand thatphilosophically, but the scale
is unmatched.
Booking commands almost 70% ofthe European hotel OTA market.
Matt Brown (10:45):
It's bookingcom right, bookingcom right.
Jeff Borman (10:49):
And Expedia's got another 11, so you've got over
80% right, I?
Matt Brown (10:55):
had no idea.
I had no idea that bookingcomis almost 70% of European hotel.
Jeff Borman (11:01):
In the US, the two together make up 93% of the OTA
leisure market.
Right, so the skill isn't theresult of some breakthrough tech
, it's operational mastery at abrutal, brutal scale.
And they solved the hardestproblem in travel from 25 years
ago 30 years ago which wasaggregating a fragmented
inventory while handling thepayments, the cancellations and
(11:24):
the customer service acrossthousands of suppliers.
Right, they figured that out.
That's why they're in aposition during the day, 80% of
travelers visit OTAs to researchand compare prices.
That probably is under a bit ofthreat, but you still have to
go book something somewhere.
Now, where they are potentiallyat threat is if you try to plan
(11:45):
a very complex week-longitinerary using an OTA that
already fails.
So it's not like I thinkthey're going to lose that
market either.
When we had Heather Heverlingfrom Audley, one of the things
that we talked about about thefuture of AI on that
personalized travel that they doand that luxury travel advisors
bring, an OTA already does notdo that well, that's why their
(12:08):
market continues to thrive, butAI might be able to start
iteratively doing better right,even just in chat GPT that's
probably not the best source forplanning an itinerary, even if
you're using that for thatpurpose.
You just kind of keep refiningand refining and refining your
search and the results and yourefine a little more and you get
(12:29):
a little better and better andbetter and better.
That iterative process is notsomething that an OTA does very
well.
Process is not something thatan OTA does very well, but it is
something that AI tech bringsright into the mind of the user.
However, even today, we'regetting back to that kind of
dreamy.
(12:49):
What could AI become?
Even today, large languagemodels break down under that
complexity.
Openai's most advanced modelhas a 10% success rate on
complex travel benchmarks.
That's not enough for a humanto go back to it.
Earlier LLMs managed less than1% accuracy compared to a human
(13:12):
at 100%.
You're getting exactly what youwanted.
It just takes your time.
Travelers don't start theirjourney in OTAs anymore quite to
the frequency they did before.
Almost 90% of travelers turn tosocial media for inspiration
and 75% on social platforms, andI think you'll find Expedia had
(13:33):
a very cool and it's probablymore PR than reality, but a very
cool thing.
They offered up about a monthago where you can book through
Expedia an itinerary that itcreates with its AI interface
into reels or in TikTok.
So somebody sends you, matt.
Here is a phenomenal vacationreel.
(13:54):
This is what we just puttogether.
Here's your flight and ourexperiences.
Here's the hotel and the beachside stuff.
I got this cabana for dinner,that restaurant.
Expedia is now putting thattogether into.
I saw a reel.
It is now a bookable itinerary.
Matt Brown (14:12):
Okay, that's pretty good.
Jeff Borman (14:13):
That's pretty cool and that exists now.
Now it doesn't have the scalethere aren't 10,000 of these yet
, there aren't 10 million ofthem yet but the concept is live
.
It's not just a concept, thatis live.
Matt Brown (14:25):
Because not only does it sell you on the trip,
but it's a great thing for youto share with friends, like,
should I do this or should I dothis?
And then, if you actuallychoose to do it and people ask,
oh hey, where are you going?
Oh well, this is what I'm goingto do.
And now it's this packagedlittle pre-flight reel that you
can share with family andfriends and say look at all the
(14:47):
cool things I'm going to bedoing.
Jeff Borman (14:49):
Traditional search and advertising strategies are
giving way to a new era of AI.
First discovery, Matt, youmentioned this at the beginning.
Where anybody who's been onGoogle in the last six months,
you will notice that the AIanswer comes before the SEO or
the search answer, the keyword,the old school keyword answer.
A study by Epsilon showed that94% of marketers reference using
(15:13):
AI today, 100% plan to in theimmediate future.
Yet only 41% of thoserespondents say AI is having an
impact on marketing performancetoday.
Matt Brown (15:26):
You know, with all this talk about efficiencies,
the operational efficienciesshould also be available to
marketers.
Short-term, we have to careabout the marketers.
They need love too.
They're going to use AI topower chatbots, voice
recognition, creative adgeneration, and these are all
very reasonable applications inthe present, but I think what
(15:48):
everybody really wants is a wayto leverage AI to improve
customer shopping experience.
Jeff Borman (15:56):
I think true adoption just isn't there yet at
scale.
But that same Epsilon studyshowed that more than half of
marketers feel like they arealready air quotes here mature
in AI adoption.
But I can't believe that for asecond.
Considering when I ask hotelmarketers whether it's a hotel
level or a chief of the biggestcompanies, and I ask this
(16:19):
question all the time how areyou using AI?
I get almost no real answers.
And hotel marketers that areengaged in AI related activities
.
The largest improvement, theysay, has been improvement to the
return on ad spend, roas.
When I read that, I hearaffirmation bias, because I have
not seen any scalableimprovement in ROAS over the
(16:42):
last two years.
In fact, it's actually been indecline because cost per click
has been rising dramatically.
Marketing costs are simplyelevated.
So the efficiencies thatmarketers are supposed to be
getting from AI at best rightnow it's being chewed up simply
because it costs more to do thesame thing it did yesterday.
Matt Brown (16:59):
That's got to be so frustrating for marketers.
Finally, after two decades,after being grilled constantly
about what are we getting forour ads and then they have to
kind of look around at eachother and make up answers
because nobody really knows theyfinally have been able to get a
system down where it's likethey can answer those questions
with with a decent amount offaith and keep their job for
(17:20):
another year.
And now all of that is goingout the window.
So I I will light a candletonight for the travel marketers
of the world.
Jeff Borman (17:30):
You know what, though?
I will not.
No, because that candle wassupposed to be, because AI was
going to take their job, andreally what we're talking about
here is it's nowhere close.
Matt Brown (17:43):
One of the ways that helped us understand a little
bit of this was a great paperfrom Focuswire that came out
recently called Four Scenarioson the Future of Agentic, ai and
Travel Good title, and itessentially goes through these
four different models.
And the first one, the kind ofbasic one, is essentially
augmented booking.
So it's kind of what we havenow, but it's a little more
conversational, it's moreintuitive and knows your past
(18:06):
past days and then makesrecommendations Great.
The second scenario, nowraising the stakes a little bit,
is an AI travel concierge.
So you put it in the system,you talk into the system and say
plan a trip to Portugal inSeptember, it's going to be a
week, give me a mix of socialand coastal experiences, I have
$6,000 to spend.
And then your AI assistantpicks the best bidder on its OTA
(18:30):
shortlist and the one thatoffers the most suitable travel
itinerary flights, all of it.
You say book it and then yourcalendar is automatically
updated with all the details.
A third scenario is one in whichthe brands get involved and you
open up, say, a Hilton app orMarriott app and you chat with
their AI bots about a trip toPhiladelphia or Chicago for a
(18:53):
conference and the AI suggestsvery specific options like this
hotel connects directly to theconvention center and this one
has an upgraded executive lounge, which you've rated highly in
your past days and you get thispersonalized package that
includes a preferred room type,an airport transfer, breakfast
experience, all the stuff andthe entire transaction occurs
(19:15):
within the Hilton ecosystem andyou're guided along very quickly
to a satisfactory resolution.
The fourth scenario, though, Ifound particularly interesting.
It's the big kahuna, and theycall it the neural travel
marketplace.
You tell your personal AIassistant, your Jarvis, I need
to be in meetings the secondweek of June in this town, build
(19:38):
me a suitable itinerary, andyour AI robot interfaces
directly with the AI agents fromairlines and hotels.
Robots talk to robots with theAI agents from airlines and
hotels, robots talking to robots, and each, autonomously, is
authorized to completetransactions.
No humans, just instantaneousnegotiations that follow your
(19:59):
preferred seat positions, yourhistorical sensitivity to hotel
room noise, what way you want toface, what time you want to get
up, all of it and the robottakes care of the whole thing
and you press a button maybe, orat least give some kind of
authorization at the beginningor end, and you show up at the
airport a month later and takeoff.
(20:22):
And in this landscape ruled byAI agents, otas could fade away
Consumer marketing would fadeaway.
Marketing budgets would go toAI agent referral fees, because
none of this is going to comefor free or cheap.
It's going to come to these AIagent referral fees that ensure
(20:43):
preferred access to your AIassistant, and those will be
owned by big tech giants.
They'll probably be developedby startups, but, don't worry,
all those startups are hopingthat in five years they get
bought by Google because theirbusiness model is so good or
because Google wants toneutralize the competition.
Jeff Borman (21:04):
Matt, would you like to ask me a mystery
question and I will let you knowwhat chat GPT thinks?
The answer should be yes.
Make it personal, though.
Let's see if it can get meright.
Matt Brown (21:15):
Okay, Next year you want to go on a dream trip to a
place you've never been before.
You have two weeks and let'sgive you a healthy budget for
this one.
You deserved it.
Let's give you $20,000.
I know that's not healthy tosome people.
It's healthy to me.
Where should you go?
Jeff Borman (21:38):
Okay, well, matt, I know my answer.
Well, chatgpt is responding forme on my behalf.
Thankfully it does not yet have.
Well, we'll find out.
Maybe I'll be a fan of thisagentic thing.
We'll see what it says.
My answer would be either NewZealand tough on 20K though I
(21:59):
like to ride in the front of thebus, you're going to spend 20K
just for Heather and I to getthere and back in the front.
But New Zealand, south Africanever been.
Croatia could probably do that,definitely could do that on 20K
.
Kenya, tanzania those are mybig four.
All right, let's see what itsays.
(22:19):
Japan ultra modern meets agent.
Let's see Helicopter ride overTokyo budget 14 to 18,000,.
Let's see Helicopter ride overTokyo Budget 14 to 18,000.
Private tea ceremony in Kyoto.
Ok, option number two here we go.
South Africa plus safari, capeTown and wine country.
Matt, this is exactly what Iwant.
Number three Bali and theKomodo Islands.
(22:42):
I've been to Bali a dozen times, so no, thank you, but it's not
a bad suggestion.
Patagonia, buenos Aires,argentina.
I absolutely love Argentina.
We just did a Patagonia tripabout five years ago.
I probably wouldn't do it again, but I would recommend it.
So, solid answer, chat GBT,amalfi Coast plus Sicily.
I literally got back fromSicily two weeks ago and I've
(23:03):
been dreaming about going to theAmalfi Coast.
Fucking hell, man.
That's impressive.
Matt Brown (23:08):
It's impressive.
Jeff Borman (23:09):
This knows nothing about me.
Matt Brown (23:11):
And in six months.
You know, what we should do iswe should come back here in six
months and ask it the samequestion, because it'll learn
more about you.
Jeff Borman (23:18):
It will.
Right now.
It only knows how to makestupid memes.
That's all I ask of it.
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