Event Spotlight: Phocuswright Europe 2025

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Focusrite is so much more than just a conference.
It's so much more than anexhibition ground.
It's so much more thannetworking, and this really
really allows the sheer scale ofthis allows for the conference
to be and perform at its very,very best.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello everyone and welcome to a special event
spotlight of Travel Trends.
This is your host, danChristian, and today's
interviews were all recordedlive in Barcelona at the
Focusrite Europe Conference,june 2025.
It was the very first time Ihad the privilege to attend
Focusrite Europe.
As many of our listeners know,I love the Focusrite USA
Conference and this was thefirst time.

(00:40):
Pete Jean Florence and the teaminvited Travel Trends to be
part of the European event andwe actually offered a incentive
to all of our listeners, andmany of you decided to join us
and turned up for theopportunity to be interviewed,
and I'm pleased to be able toshare not only the amazing
executives that we met, but alsoa number of our Travel Trends

(01:01):
listeners that came to Barcelonato be a part of Focusrite
Europe to benefit from all thenetworking and all the amazing
sessions and then sit down andrecord with me.
And I'm also very pleased toannounce to all of our listeners
that we are going to be able torecreate that magic in San
Diego November 18th and 20th.
You can save $250 for any of ourTravel Trends listeners on

(01:23):
whatever the prevailing price isfor a Focusrite ticket.
Get them early and then applythat discount.
The ticket itself is worth it,but if you can get the $250
discount and be assured to befeatured on our podcast, that is
the magical combination and Iwill make sure.
If you purchase a ticket, sendme an email, let me know you're
going to be at the event and Iwill make sure that we schedule

(01:45):
time to interview and I'm goingto have the rest of the team
there with me.
I was on my own in Barcelonaand it was very clear from the
lineup of people that were keento be interviewed and chat about
the show.
It was a really wonderfulresponse.
So thank you to all of you thatmade the effort to come up and
let me know how much you've beenenjoying the show.
Cue to all of you that made theeffort to come up and let me
know how much you've beenenjoying the show.

(02:06):
And for all of you that wantedto sit down and be interviewed,
like Andy Heddington from Adidothat came over from the UK to be
there for the very first time,you have Alex Reagan, you have
Andrea Lamparini, who's thechief operating officer from
WeRoad, who was there for thefirst time, and you'll hear from
him on this recording as well.
But when it comes to San Diego.
I just want everyone to knowthat you're going to be able to

(02:26):
meet Melanie and Catherine fromour team, so we're actually
going to have a good amount ofthe Travel Trends crew
representing at Focusrite SanDiego, so we really hope that
you plan to join us.
For that, the discount code isTRAVELTRENDSPECIAL25.
That's TRAVELTRENDSPECIAL25,which will give you $250 off a

(02:47):
ticket to Focusrite.
We also have that informationon the homepage of our website
at TravelTrendsPodcastcom.
And, of course, like everyepisode, we always post clips
and highlights on all our socialchannels, which is YouTube,
linkedin and Instagram, so besure to check those out for
highlights from theseconversations.
Now to give you a bit of an ideaof who you're going to hear

(03:07):
from over the course of thisepisode and keep in mind we have
timestamped all of thesebecause of the number of
interviews we have to share withyou we want to make sure that
you can go in whatever order youprefer, first to last.
Or you can jump from chapter tochapter, but you're going to
hear from the chief growthofficer at rail Europe, robert,
from one of my favoriteconversations.
Or you can jump from chapter tochapter, but you're gonna hear
from the Chief Growth Officer atRail Europe, robert Frum one of

(03:27):
my favorite conversations.
We're actually gonna be kickingit off with Enrique Espinol,
who's the Chief OperatingOfficer at Civitatis, one of the
fastest growing OTAs Spanishspeaking OTAs and a major
partner of Travel Trends as well.
You're gonna hear from MarkRoss Smith, who's the CEO and
founder of Status Match, who'sbased in Malaysia.
You're going to hear fromTravis Pittman, a dear friend of

(03:49):
ours for this show and our AISummit, who's the CEO of Tour
Radar.
You're going to hear from JamesLemon, who is the head of
travel at Stripe.
Mark Mechie, who gave afantastic keynote and many of
our listeners have heard him orknow him from the Arrival
Conference.
I had a chance to sit down withMark Tista Raha from Sojourn is

(04:09):
an amazing conversation and wehad many female executives join
us as well, which I think all ofour listeners know is
incredibly important to me,having been raised by a single
mom, and there are so manyamazing female executives in the
industry.
Charlotte Lamp Davies joins usagain.
She's an advisor with Focusrite.
She runs A Bright Approach.
We have Jillian Jones fromCandatus Her colleague actually
joined us from Focusrite lastyear in Phoenix and now we have

(04:33):
a chance to speak to Jillian inBarcelona and we hope to see
them again in San Diego laterthis year.
We have Alex Trimis, who runs acompany called Welcome Pickups.
He's the CEO and founder.
We actually have a few startups, like Shalami Beer, who runs
Impersonally he's the founderand it's all about AI and
security.
That's a fascinatingconversation.
We bring back Rita Varga, whois the CEO of RaiseUp, for a

(04:57):
very upbeat conversation.
I always love speaking to Ritaand I think you'll feel that
energy come through when youhear her voice and what she's
been up to.
We also have Alex Farmer fromNazaza and a number of other
executives that you willdefinitely benefit from hearing
their insights about where theindustry is and where it's
headed and some of the valuablelessons that they learned from

(05:18):
being at Focusrite Europe in2025.
So thank you again to Pete, toJean Florence and the team at
Focusrite for inviting us to bethere for Barcelona.
I loved that opportunity.
I can't wait to see you guysall again in San Diego.
Thanks again for joining us,and here we go with the
Focusrite special eventspotlight from Barcelona.

(05:41):
I now have the privilege tospeak to the COO and co-founder
of Civitatis.
He is Enrique Espinel and he isa really impressive individual
and I just wanted to highlighttoo, there was a fantastic
episode we had on Civitatis aspart of season five with

(06:02):
Civitatis and they've actuallykindly come on as a title
sponsor for season six of TravelTrends.
So you're going to hear a lotmore from Civitatis next season
and that's one of the manyreasons that it's great to
finally sit down with Enrique,get a chance to meet him in
person, as we have over the lastcouple of days.
So, on that note, enrique,welcome to Travel Trends.
Thank you so much, anne.
My pleasure and I know you guyshave mentioned to me that a lot

(06:23):
of your team listens to thepodcast, and especially that
episode that we had together,which is fantastic.
So it always means that muchmore to me when I get a chance
to interview someone that isfamiliar with the show and
appreciates the content.
But tell us all of ourlisteners about Civitatis,
because I was saying to Enriquejust before we started recording
, I have become such a huge fanof the brand, not because of our

(06:43):
partnership that's fantastic aswell but the more I learn about
Civitatis, the history of thisbusiness, the fact that there is
nearly 800 or 850 millionSpanish speakers globally and
you guys are really dominatingthis space, growing in South
America.
But yeah, tell all of ourlisteners who aren't familiar
with Civitatis a little bit ofbackground on the business.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, Fiatelis was founded in 2008, so 16 years
already.
And well, we have always it'syour baby.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Your baby is 16 years old.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, at the beginning it was founded by
Alberto Gutierrez, who is theCEO, and at the beginning it was
a travel guide business and,well, it was great, creating
content that was good to see howto enjoy and monetizing through
affiliation partnerships withother verticals in the travel
industry.
But well, he found that therewas a great opportunity selling

(07:33):
Spanish-speaking tours.
So he started to do so inseveral different websites that
he owned at that time.
And well, this was somethingthat was not covered in the
industry.
Nobody was focusing on this and,as we all know, spanish is the
second most spoken language inthe world.
Yes, more than 100 millionpeople speak in spanish as a

(07:54):
native language, 60 million onlyin the us.
So you have to forget, it's notonly spain or latin.
Huge market, huge opportunityfor us.
We feel that we are still inthe early days After all these
years we have been working hardon the industry and, well, we
believe that we are in the rightdirection.
We are focusing really hard tokeep adding value to our

(08:17):
travelers, who really love us,who really love our brand, as
you said, and well, happy.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, I guess that's one of the things that really
stood out to me is that a focusclearly has been from the very
beginning and it's core to yourbrand is the customer service
and these incredible reviewsthat people have been writing so
like, and that's you know.
I learned that over many yearsworking for the travel
corporation and stanley tolman,who I had the privilege to work
with for a number of years, andhe used to tell this really
inspiring story about when hefirst created his first hotel

(08:46):
and he only had two customers inthe restaurant and he was
feeling kind of sorry forhimself and his dad came in and
saw him standing upstairs notnext to his customers and said
to him you know why are youlooking at the hotel across the
street and how busy they are?
And he said what you need to dois go next, go downstairs,
stand next to those customers.
Tomorrow you'll have four.
You stand next to them, thenext night you'll have eight.

(09:07):
And that's how you'll grow yourbusiness.
Don't focus on the competition.
Focus on taking care of yourcustomers.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
That's exactly the case at Tittatis Always focusing
on the customers.
Well, this is not easy.
It's easy to say, but when youare growing a marketplace, you
don't have to forget that thekey is focusing on the customer
In our case, spanish-speakingcustomers and curating our
portfolio of tools andactivities is very hard.
Sometimes you have to say no tovery good operators, you have

(09:35):
to stop working with others, soyou have to be all the time
improving what you are offeringto them, and well, at the end of
the day, this is why they areloyal to us.
This is why there is a greatword of mouth in our markets
about our value that we add tothem.
And well, as you said, customerservice as well is really good,

(09:58):
and well, in fact, it's notrocket science, but we have to
focus a lot on this.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, yeah, and tell us I think this is going to be
fascinating more coming from you.
I'm familiar with some of thesestats in terms of how the
business has grown, but tell allof our listeners where the
business stands in 2025, 10years after then, yourself
getting involved and building upthe marketplace.
Tell us some of the stats abouthow many travelers you've now
had on the platform.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, just in 2025, we're going to have about 15
million travelers doing one ofour activities all over the
world.
Incredible we have 100,000activities in 150 countries with
this focus on Spanish languageand well, mainly our customers
came from Spain and Latam.
As I said, Almost half Europeand half Latam.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's great, and in some of the markets you're
moving into I know you areadding more product and
expanding into other markets,obviously still focused on
Spanish speakers.
One of the things aboutCivitadas that is also unique
that the focus is not onaggregating extensive supply.
It's actually trying to findthe right recommendations.
So, unlike Get your Guide, forexample, who are focusing on

(11:12):
bringing on so much inventoryand you're looking at Rome and
trying to figure out a tour andthere's hundreds of options and
how do you pick?
Tell us a little bit about whatmakes Civitatis unique.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Yeah, exactly what you mean about curation is, of
course, curation is a word thatprobably has lost a little bit
its meaning, because, now everymarketplace is curated.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Curated marketplace, but yours truly is a curated
marketplace.
We are truly curated.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
We truly believe that less is more.
That really helps the customersto simplify their customer
journey.
So we don't want the customersto guess what to do, what to
select, how to enjoy thecoliseum or any other key
attraction or destination in theworld.
So we want to do this job forthem and then it would be easier
for them to book.
So, focusing on language thisangle is key, as we have already

(11:58):
said.
Spanish at the beginning.
You you have said that we arenow focusing on other markets.
You are right.
Also, portuguese is veryimportant for us because of
Brazil, which is a continentitself, and also other languages
in Europe as Italian, frenchand well, we are replicating the
same business model, but at theend of the day, it's not only
the language.
Of course, this is one of ourkey parts of curation, but also

(12:23):
not having the same toursrepeated several times in the
platform.
So we try to have the reallybest available option, because,
of course, sometimes we haveavailability constraints, so we
also have options when the keytop sellers are sold out, which

(12:44):
is something which is happeningin some destinations.
So we are like this kind ofconcierge or co-pilot of,
however you want to call it toour customers and they truly
trust us.
They feel safe when they bookwith us and they like it.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, that's amazing.
It's such an impressive storyand I think many of our
listeners will be checking outCivitatiscom and learning more
about your business, especiallyas you expand into other markets
.
The other thing I wanted tobring up, of course, is what
brings you here to Focusrite.
For you, of course, it is atrain ride away from Madrid to
Barcelona.
There's a lot of Americans here.
I've seen you in a number ofmeetings over the last couple of

(13:26):
days.
Obviously you've been superbusy.
I saw you hanging out withTravis from TourRadar.
There's so many differentopportunities for you here, but
tell everyone, enrique, whatbrought you to the event this
year and some of the highlightsand benefits of being here.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
I tried to select really well which events to go
and this is one I always comeFocus Ride events to go and this
is one I always come focusright both in Europe and the US
for me is the right place to beand well, I really like the
community atmosphere that you'llfind here.
It's a very relaxed atmospherewith the right executives we
meet with also peers in ourindustry.

(14:00):
It's a great place and a greatmoment now before high season to
spend time and to see howthings are going.
And, of course, conferences arealso great.
For me, it's like havingmeetings and attending
conferences.
Of course, there are manytopics covered in the conference

(14:21):
, also tourism activities.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
I had a couple of great sessions, but I think it's
the right place to be For sure,and as you mentioned, you've
been attending some of thesessions which not I mean some
people are here for thenetworking, and I've always
loved the sessions themselves.
I've always been a big driverfor me is the education, the
learning, seeing what otherplayers are doing in the
industry.

(14:43):
What has stood out to you fromthe sessions you've been able to
attend.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Well, ai is a hot topic or on fire.
Everyone is talking about this.
Everyone is talking aboutexperimentation At the same time
.
I think nobody knows whatreally will happen in a few
years, but what we all know isthat everything will be
different, or at least from now,and we want to be ready to

(15:12):
listen to what others are doingon the space.
Other things that I also foundinteresting is a few talks and a
few people discussing aboutsocial commerce, which is also
becoming more and more relevantin Europe, for example, in Asia.
I've heard some speakerstalking about this and it's
really interesting.
Of course, now in our case, weare also pushing a lot this part

(15:35):
of the business, trying tolearn how to make it more
transactional, not onlydiscovery.
We want to be really relevantand to make all of this
transactional as well.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
But well, very interesting yeah, I know you
guys are making a major push inthis direction as well, and so
tell us a little bit more aboutthe plans with civitadas for
2025 and some of their, theoverall business strategy for
this year and your growth plans,but specifically with some of
the things you're doing aroundAI.
Yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
overall, the strategy is quite the same To keep
growing, to keep building ourbrand and our awareness in our
key markets, to keep buildingthe category In fact, in LATAM
we are almost creating thecategory, so I think we are in
the right direction to keepadding value to our partners,
not only B2C, we also have b2bpartners, so mainly retail

(16:27):
travel agencies, which is veryrelevant to us.
So keep focusing on that.
On the ai side, of course, wehave both options.
The efficiency side, I think,is quite obvious, but we are
doing many things, both in tech,in customer customer service,
in all the areas, and on thediscovery side, trying to detect

(16:48):
intent and to try topersonalize more based on AI.
Of course, we are experimentingas well.
We are trying to understandthis.
Ai is also helping a lot to usto boost this curation process I
mentioned.
So we want AI to do this heavylifting of the curation process
I mentioned.
So we want AI to do this heavylifting of the curation, but
without losing our human touch,to not lose this cultural

(17:12):
authenticity that we are alwayslooking for.
This language thing we alreadymentioned.
And this analysis that we areall the time doing about past
performance, pricing, etc.
I think all of this we do inour curation processes can be
done much better or much fasterwith AI and this is what we are
doing, and I assume you're goingto be back for Focusrite in San

(17:35):
Diego.
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Fantastic, I know.
We got a chance to meet lastyear in Phoenix and get to know
some of the team and then thisyear, of course, focusrite is
moving to a new destination.
I always loved when they wentback and forth between Miami and
LA and I always loved the Miamilocation.
Both events were always greatand then they started going to
Phoenix and this year, ratherthan going back to the East
Coast, they've actually decidedto stay West Coast and found an

(17:59):
amazing venue in San Diego.
So I'm looking forward to that,that of know this conference of
600 people compared to 1500people.
Curious to know, since you'vebeen to both and you're
obviously like how would youcontrast the two?
This event, obviously you know600 people it feels more
intimate to me.
How would you differentiatebetween the two conferences?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Well yeah, I think what you said.
It's more intimate and but atthe same time, it's different,
because here we have moreEuropean executives and we are a
Spanish company, so it's verygood for us to be on both sides.
As I said, america is a veryrelevant market to us as well,
so it's not like a hugedifference in terms of content.

(18:42):
Both are really good in termsof networking.
Some people are the same, butsome other are more localized in
based off of the geo, so bothare great yeah, well, another
benefit of course for you in sandiego is clearly the latin
america market, which is that'swhy I said america, I mean I
meant latin america for sure,like because you have so many

(19:03):
clients in Mexico, and thenColombia is obviously a rapidly
growing destination and there'sso much opportunity.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
And I think it's one of the things that, as you then
get into English language, thefact you've been able to curate
experiences in those marketsthat now English language
speakers would like to travel to, and they can see the reviews
and they can see Civitada.
So I think you've carved out areally interesting long-term
business strategy to firstdominate Spanish-speaking and
then move into other marketsbecause you've been able to

(19:32):
curate this content.
So obviously that's an excitingproposition for you, exactly.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
In fact, we have, as I said, Spanish, Portuguese,
Italian and French as this firstapproach, but English is also
one of our key languages and, ofcourse, we are growing a lot
because of this.
I think they also appreciatethis, especially in Latin, where
we have a great number ofselected operators and Europe,

(20:01):
of course.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, it's so exciting.
Well, I want to make sure allof our listeners can find out
more information.
Of course, I've mentioned thewebsite.
But if they want, it's soexciting, well, I want to make
sure all of our listeners canfind out more information.
Of course, I've mentioned thewebsite, but if they want to
connect, with you, enrique, orthe rest of the team.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
What would be the best way to do so?
Yeah, through the website, or Iwill be pleased to receive any
messages through LinkedInthrough email.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, you guys are pretty active on LinkedIn, so I
definitely encourage guys tofollow Civitatis on LinkedIn and
obviously, by all means,connect with Enrique and, yeah,
I'm looking forward to continueconversations with your team and
being a big part of our nextseason.
So thank you again for thepartnership and I look forward
to continue to work together.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Likewise, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
I now have the privilege to sit down with Tista
Raja, who is the director of PRglobally for a company that I
greatly admire called Sojourn,and I've actually had one of our
colleagues part of our AIsummit last year, and when I saw
Sojourn was here and Tistaspecifically, who I've not met
yet until moments ago, I wasthrilled to have this chance to
sit down with you, because I'mso intrigued about Sojourn and

(21:01):
what brings you to theconference.
But first of all, welcome toTravel Trends.

Speaker 9 (21:04):
Thank you so much for having me, Daniel.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
For sure, Absolutely.
Now you're based in London.
Tell us a little bit aboutSojourn so to make sure that all
of our audience knows whatSojourn is, what you guys do and
specifically, your role there.

Speaker 9 (21:16):
Absolutely so.
Sojourn is essentially theleading marketing platform built
for hospitality, designed toessentially boost growth and
profitability for the travelindustry.
We have a marketing platformwhich is a set of easy to use
software and services thatdelivers traveler insight, which
I know we're probably going totalk about at some point.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
For sure.
That's the main absolutelywe're going to get.
We'll get there very quickly,for sure.

Speaker 9 (21:40):
Intelligent audiences and multi-channel activation,
as we call it, and optimization,but all through the connected
guest experience.
Essentially, we have more than10,000 travel marketers rely on
our platform to make decisions.
We were founded in 2007 in SanFrancisco and have offices all
over the world.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Well, I'm very familiar with it, given my role
at various travel brands, andwe've utilized Sojourn, which is
again one of the reasons Iwanted to certainly have you on
the podcast, because you guyshave a very compelling
understanding of what's travelerbehavior, traveler intent,
which is obviously why you havea travel advertising platform so
you can actually identify thetrends.
All about data to help converttravelers, which is exactly what

(22:24):
all of our listeners are verykeen to do.
So tell us, before we get intosome of the trends right away
what brings you to FocusriteBarcelona?
Have you been to FocusriteEurope before or is this your
first time?

Speaker 9 (22:34):
Yeah, I have been to Focusrite Europe before I was
here last year as well and foundit highly beneficial with the
nature of my job and also, youknow, wearing the Sojourn hat.
It's really interesting tolearn about thought leadership
from various different industryplayers.
It's an aggregate of most ofthe travel tech companies here
as well as sort of big hotelsand destinations.

(22:57):
So super relevant, super usefulto be part of that forum and
conversation and just learn fromeach other more than anything
else.
Part of that forum andconversation and just learn from
each other more than anythingelse.
We also do attend Focusrite inthe States as well and have done
for many years.
So firmly believe in theirconferences and their content.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, I mean, I love Focusrite as well.
This is my first Europeanconference.
I'm intrigued to hear thatyou've been here before, because
I know one of the bigdevelopments for this year was
this new facility that, fromwhat I can tell, as everyone
loves the hotel and loves thenew venue.
So tell us about this yearspecifically what have been some
of the highlights so far of2025?

Speaker 9 (23:35):
Yeah, a couple of things for me.
I think you know the word ofthe hour is AI.
You've probably covered it todeath at the moment, but I just
think there have been a lot ofinteresting sessions about that
and the practical usage of that.
This morning, I attended asession with the head of
innovation and digital from ourcore group, the hotel group, and

(23:56):
she covered so much about theirusage of AI in the digital
space and what they're doing ata hotel level, so I found that
really interesting, and thedigital space and what they're
doing at a hotel level, so Ifound that really interesting,
you know.
The second point for me is we'vebeen talking as an industry,
about experiences, leading theway for travellers to make
decisions, and that just seemsto be highlighted again this
year.
I heard something I think theycalled it hyper, not just

(24:20):
experiences, but likehyper-personalised, micro-exper
experiences, where not only doyou um, you can really engage
with the traveler's feelings too, which I found really
interesting as well.
So those are a couple of topicsthat I found um really great
and how does this compare tolast year from your vantage
point?

Speaker 2 (24:37):
having had the experience of, unlike myself,
this is all new and fresh for me, which is exciting in and of
itself.
But yeah, how does this yearcompare to previous years?

Speaker 9 (24:45):
Yeah, you know, I think the one thing about
Focusrite and Focuswire is thatthey're very much at the
forefront of knowing what'shappening in the industry.
So I do think you know I'mcoming into the sessions or
going into sessions with topicsthat I want to know about and
want to know about, so I thinkthey're always very up to date.
So it's really interesting fromthat perspective.

(25:06):
So the biggest change I thinkfrom last year is it's just
relevant and updated for now andthe trends going forward.
Secondly, on a lighter level,it's a much cooler hotel, great
venue, so can't complain.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
That's awesome.
Now you're based in London.
Sojourn is a global company.
Obviously, you have the base inSan Francisco, which is where
the company was created.
Tell us a little bit about thejourney you're on now, and
specifically Sojourn being hereat the event.
What are some of the focusesfor Sojourn in 2025?
I know I want to get into thetrends that's definitely going

(25:42):
to be my next question, but tellus a little bit more about the
organization, what yourpriorities are at the moment,
the types of clients you workwith, all of those things that I
think would be valuable for ourlisteners to know.

Speaker 9 (25:51):
Yeah, you know, we have been leveraging and using
AI and ML so machine learningand artificial intelligence for
a very, very long time as abusiness, and so I think for us,
it's just leaning into thatmore to keep learning how to
activate data-driven strategiesat scale.
I think that is probably willcontinue to be a big focus.

(26:12):
In terms of customers and whowe work with, we probably work
with most of the hotels,destinations and attractions,
airlines around the world.
So, yeah, we have great clients.
You know we just made anannouncement even in Asia
Pacific with a partnership withthe Ascot Hotel Group there.
So, constantly evolving,constantly have news.

(26:33):
Watch out.
We have some more news comingnext week.
So, yeah, lots happening in thespace and we have a big focus
also on our hospitality sectorspecifically.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Well, it's really interesting because we work
closely with Forbes Travel Guide.
We do a lot of focus onhospitality and obviously that's
one of the biggest sectorswithin travel, so that totally
makes sense.
The other thing I was going tosay too, just as we start to
look at the trends and whatyou're paying attention to, is
that, in this sort of uncertaingeopolitical environment that
we're now in globally, becausewe've had such an incredible
surge of booking activity sinceCOVID, I mean this whole idea of

(27:06):
revenge travel, which is a termI never liked, but nevertheless
people have been, there's beena resurgence in travel and like
record numbers 2023, 24, 25.
And finally, we're hittingchoppy waters again where, all
of a sudden, things like tariffsand just the perception of
different countries, where, allof a sudden.
So the reason that's reallyimportant is because we're all

(27:27):
trying to figure out how we readthe signals, to determine where
we invest our dollars to getthe best return, and so what
we're seeing, even with traveltrends, is that there's a huge
interest in us covering thelatest and I want to say the
latest, I mean topical, timelytrends, like monthly updates,
not something that's like thetrend for the year, and so I
have to assume that you'reseeing something quite similar.

(27:47):
Is that more companies arelooking to utilize Sojourn
because you guys have suchvaluable data for hotels,
attractions and destinations?
Is that what you're seeing?

Speaker 9 (27:57):
Absolutely, and you know that's probably we always
get, we're on top of our trends.
It's real time data and, toyour point, you know things,
whether it's politically,climatically, economically, will
constantly change and we willconstantly see things happening
in this sphere.
That's not going to stop, youknow, and I think, just being

(28:21):
aware of that real time data sothat hotels, destinations can
make informed decisions.
Travelers can make informeddecisions of where they go, what
they do, how they shop whenthey travel and when I mean shop
, I mean their travel-typeshopping, not retail shopping.
It's highly valuable to havethat level of insight and

(28:44):
knowledge.
So, yes, 100% behind whatyou're saying.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
So let's now jump into the key trends that you're
focusing on.
I'm sure our audience is reallykeen to understand them.
So, yeah, take me through themain trends that you're focusing
on at Sojourn and some of thethings that would be really
interesting for our audience.

Speaker 9 (28:59):
Yeah, I had about three or four interesting ones I
wanted to share with you.
And speaking of monthly, as yousaid, monthly, you know it is
Pride Month and I thought I'dbring up one specific travel
trend from there.
So, with LGBTQ plus travel, youknow we're seeing long haul,
solo and what we callemotionally timed travel quite

(29:20):
relevant.
So our data showed that overall, 45 percent of Pride-related
travel spans long haul distances, with 58% of travelers booking
solo and primarily for leisurepurposes.
Where I mentioned thatemotional element is that
searches for major EuropeanPride cities like Athens,

(29:40):
brussels and Rome spikespecifically around Valentine's
Day.
So, driving travel momentumaround that time, so that's
something which I thought wasquite interesting.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
So can I just ask a question on that?
So as soon as you saidemotionally driven travel, I was
instantly going to ask you toexplain that a bit further
because I was intrigued by it.
I'm not familiar with thatconcept.
Then you connected it toValentine's Day, but so many
babies are born in like the endof the year, like you trace it
back nine months to Valentine'sDay, so it's like I'm a
Valentine's Day baby.

Speaker 9 (30:12):
So it's an emotional time of the year.

Speaker 12 (30:14):
True that.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
How do you describe, beyond a Valentine's like, when
you emotionally driven travel?
Because I think of like?
There's a whole range of humanemotions.
Love is certainly one of themand I think we all want to be in
that state, but clearly we, youknow you want stress, like
there's like.
So yeah, tell me a little bitmore of this emotional state
travel, where it comes from andhow marketers can apply this
theory.

Speaker 9 (30:45):
For me, specifically, the emotionally driven travel
is associated with experiences,and experiences is everything
you know, even being inBarcelona, and the experience
you have the hotel, theexperience you have the
conference really defines yourpurchasing decisions and, more
importantly, your loyalty andrepurchase decisions.
So I think, for me, anything todo with experiences.
You know we saw um that theentire surge of travel around
sort of um of concerts andevents.
And in fact it kind of bringsme to my next point, which was,

(31:08):
like Taylor Swift ruled theexperiential travel space last
year and we're seeingsimultaneously in the UK
specifically, or in Europe,concerts like Glastonbury,
coldplay's World Tour, as wellas the Italian Jubilee.
Here is really showing a surgeof booking to destinations which
are holding these kind oficonic cultural events driven by

(31:32):
experiences.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, I know the team at Skift has been all over this
with this and they've evencoined a term around this about,
like live event travel andfestivals.
And certainly the Taylor Swifteffect is very real and I'm
going to say one more on thistopic.
Some friends and I were talkingabout when Taylor Swift gets
pregnant.
That is actually there's goingto be a whole wave of babies All

(31:54):
of a sudden.
It's just like that.
Someone else has predicted thatas another major trend.
Once you got into football, allof a sudden, so many people were
into football and it's amazingtoday just how um, culturally
relevant these celebrities areand how they impact consumer
behavior and like.
So tell us a little bit moreabout that specific trend,
because how do travel companies,which you know we have a lot of

(32:16):
travel agents to listen to thisand obviously it's a b2b
podcast, so what I wanted totranslate is like, how best to
apply that?
So are you encouraging yourclients to better connect with
when there is festivals andevents?
I see companies giving awayfree tickets.
If there's a Taylor Swiftconcert, everyone's trying to
cash in somehow trying to figureout, how do I capitalize on the
Taylor Swift effect?

(32:37):
But tell us, as an overall kindof macro trend towards these
live events and festivals, howwould you recommend clients that
you sojourn when you recognizethat take advantage of that
opportunity?

Speaker 9 (32:50):
Yeah, and it would be back to that end to end journey
of that traveler or customer.
So you need to be in thatcustomer and traveler's head
long before they've even madethat decision.
So you know when they're makingthat purchasing decision of
being in a certain city becauseof a certain concert, you need
to be well aware of that.
You need to get ahead of that.

(33:11):
You need to tailor your emailmessaging, you need to tailor
your sort of personalizedmessaging to them so that you
have them hooked right frompre-travel to post-travel.
And small things make a bigdifference.
So, for example, if a mum anddaughter have gone for a travel
for a Taylor Swift concert to acertain location and have
travelled, flown specificallyfor that, but, however, that

(33:32):
hotel group is aware that thatmum, you know, in another city
perhaps, had shown interest topaddle boarding and so when
they're in that city where theTaylor Swift concert's happening
is then delivered apersonalised email from that
hotel to say hey, we know you'rehere and we also have travel
board happening in the morningif you're interested.
So really sort of making thatjourney super relevant, super

(33:56):
personal, just to make thecustomer feel highly engaged
with that brand.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
No, that's great.
These trends are fantastic.
All right, let's get on to thethird one.

Speaker 9 (34:04):
Yeah, another one for me which I thought was really
interesting, and not necessarilynew is Europe's cool-cations.
So we're really seeing thatcooler European destinations
such as Estonia, iceland andNorway are seeing a surge in
travel through summer.
So people are avoiding sort ofSouthern Europe I wouldn't say
avoiding, but they're going tocooler destinations, which is

(34:25):
interesting.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
Yeah, well, it's cool for me because I'm from Canada,
so that's how they identify.
It's one of the always been thecriticisms of traveling to
Canada, especially if you comein the wrong time of the year.
But we have glorious summersbut very harsh winters, and this
trend certainly it came up atVirtuoso.
We've been at the Virtuosoconference a couple of times.
They've highlighted Caucasiansand we certainly talked about

(34:46):
this in the podcast because somany travelers in that
post-pandemic rush to get backto Europe.
They were traveling to Italyand what happened was it was
overcrowded and overheated.
People all of a sudden were likeit was all of a sudden this
push to go to Scandinavia, go toJapan, norway and so on
Absolutely yeah.
So I think that coolcationtrend is going to be a long-term

(35:07):
one, because climate change isreal and not only is it we're
seeing heat waves, but also moreintense weather storms that are
impacting people's holidays andvacations.
So people are much more awareof this and trying to take that
in mind.
So coolcations that's a term Iactually like and I think

(35:28):
that'll be with us for a while.
Is there any other major trendsthat you guys are focusing on?

Speaker 9 (35:32):
Yeah, and you know you mentioned Canada and I feel
like I'd be amiss not to mentiona trend from there.
You know we saw in February soa little bit outdated that
Canadian travelers wererethinking their plans to travel
to the US specifically and wesaw a slight drop in US-bound
flight bookings from Canada, butwe did see a massive increase

(35:53):
going to Mexico at least 25%increase.
So they were redirecting theirtravel to Mexico.
Perhaps you did the same, Idon't know, but yeah, an
interesting trend that came outthrough the summer basically.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, and what's interesting about that is that
certainly I'm very aware of theCanadians not traveling to the
US I mean family friends as anation, given some of these
geopolitical issues and concernsabout the rhetoric of a 51st
state, and Canadians havedecided they're going to stay
home this year or are going toexplore their backyard or
they're going to go to otherdestinations.
So it's certainly a staggeringdrop in Canadians.
But the other thing that'sreally fascinating too, that

(36:30):
came up when I was at theAdventure Travel Trade
Association conference just acouple of weeks ago in Denver.
Everyone was panicking thefirst night because the latest
flight results were beingreported and the Europeans to
America was down like 30% and soand this is going into like
peak travel for the US.
So it certainly is adisconcerting time for a lot of

(36:50):
US tour operators and one of theinteresting things having you
here and the conversations we'vebeen having is there's a lot of
American companies here and oneof the reasons they're here is
to find European allies andEuropean partners and other ways
they can grow their business,because they've realized that
it's going to be challengeddomestically for some time in
the US.
So that certainly is going tobe another major trend.

(37:12):
It's not a short term andthat's tough for a lot of
American businesses.
Now tell everyone a little bitabout Sojourn and how people can
partner and work with you.

Speaker 9 (37:22):
We work with customers in the travel space
across sort of sizes, whetherit's at the large scale level or
the smaller scale level, acrossdestinations, across hotels,
across airlines and so on.
So anyone can really reach outto us if they're looking for
that sort of marketing platform.
You know that easy to usesoftware and services to connect

(37:46):
to the guest and with thatconnected guest experience.
So get in touch with us andwe'd be more than happy to have
a conversation and see wherethat goes.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
When we think about small to medium-sized businesses
.
What would be an entry-levelopportunity to work with you?
Because I ask that?
Because I think a lot ofcompanies could really benefit
from using a platform likeSojourn.
Otherwise people might thinkit's out of reach.

Speaker 9 (38:12):
Yeah, yeah, no, not necessarily the case.
I mean, we work with a range ofSMB or small to medium business
size hotels specifically aroundthe world, whether it's in
Southeast Asia or even in theStates, like really spanning the
globe.
And especially when it comes tothe one challenge which a lot
of organizations face is paymentmodels and how that works
across currencies and so on,we've actually just implemented
a new service which allows forthat to seamlessly happen, so

(38:32):
that there's less of a gap,because obviously with exchange
rates, that's really varies whenyou're dealing with a small
hotel in Thailand versus dealingwith a small hotel in North
America.
So, yeah, you know, yeah, we dohave that solution and that
very tailored approach in placeIn terms of specific pricing.
I think we'd have to have aconversation directly to
understand that.
But at the same time, we are inthe process of working on a

(38:57):
page that we can sort ofgeneralize and put up on our
website.
But it's hard to do that whenyou work across so many
different sectors and so manydifferent types and sizes of
customers.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
For sure, and I like that you mentioned hotels,
thailand, because all I canthink right now is White Lotus,
the White Lotus effect and whatit did for Hawaii.

Speaker 9 (39:16):
And what it's doing for Koh Samui at the moment.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Totally exactly, it's just like everyone wants to go
to.
Thailand, and this is wherereading those signals and
understanding the consumerbehavior and how do you
otherwise intercept thattraveler intent?
So, yeah, no, I'm thrilled thatwe had a chance to meet here.
Tista has been a fan andadvocate for the podcast.
She's been sharing some thingson LinkedIn, so I want to say
thank you for that and Icertainly look forward to having

(39:39):
more ways to collaboratetogether and either having Kurt
another one of your team membersback for our AI summit in
October.
But I just want to finish offby making sure that all of our
listeners can find out moreinformation about Sojourn,
whether it's connecting with youor the team.
So what would be the ways foreveryone to be able to do that?

Speaker 9 (40:02):
Yeah, either come find me on LinkedIn or you can
go onto our website and we havea contact us page and that can
direct you straight to our salesteam, if that's what you're
looking for, um.
But either way, yes, definitelyconnect with us and um our to
reach us.
It's quite easy.
Our customer form fills us arepretty straightforward and I
work on the marketing team so Iknow that.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
So, yes, oh, that's fantastic.
Well, it's a real pleasure tomeet you, tista.
I wish you great luck at theconference over the next couple
of days and I look forward tokeeping in touch.

Speaker 9 (40:22):
Likewise, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
This is a terrific opportunity to bring you a
special individual that listenedto our podcast and decided to
come to this conference.
So I have a chance to sit downnow with Andy Heddington, who is
the CEO of Adido.
Correct, that's right which isan amazing agency that works
with companies like Globus andhe actually was listening to the
Globus episode.
He does a ton of work in thedigital marketing space and he's

(40:50):
run this company for over 20years, and he's very active in
the travel space, so I'mthrilled to introduce him to you
now.
So, Andy, welcome to TravelTrends.

Speaker 14 (40:57):
Thank you very, very much for having me, Dan, and an
absolute pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
I'm thrilled that you'd made this journey all the
way across.
We kept in touch, of course, onemail.
We were keen to meet each other.
You knew I was coming to theevent.
You kindly decided to make thejourney.
You're also here with one ofyour colleagues too, Is that
right?

Speaker 14 (41:13):
That's correct, Yep.
We're here together trying tolearn as much about all the
different topics going on, findout the latest trends and meet
as many great people as we can.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
Yeah, I think it's a perfect opportunity for you.
Brennan Bliss, who runsPropellic, an amazing agency, as
well.
He's here.
He's been just doing apresentation here today.
Obviously, I think there'sgoing to be a ton of great
opportunities for networking andlearning, especially with the
world that we're both in, whichis the travel industry and
digital marketing.
So I'm thrilled that you'rehere, but let's tell everyone a
little bit about your companyand what you guys do.

Speaker 14 (41:43):
So we are, I guess, a travel-specific digital
marketing agency.
We've been, as you say, aroundfor 22 years now, which is a
very long time in any sector,but predominantly helping travel
brands in the UK to sell moreholidays through search, but
also helping them to improvetheir websites through better
data or better conversions.
So CRO is quite a big thingwe're doing this year their

(42:04):
websites through better data orbetter conversions.
So CRO is quite a big thingwe're doing this year and it's
great.
This sector, still in some waysnot quite as advanced as it
could be, gives us greatopportunity.
But also try to be very candid.
With 20 years experience, we'renot here to produce lots of
hype for our clients.
We actually try and do whatreally really works right now
and also help them navigate thecoming years, because who knows
what's going to happen in thenext two, three years?

(42:25):
Right, it's why we're here.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Well, and you just mentioned a really important
topic and I just want tohighlight exactly what CRO means
.
Do you want to just give a bitof an overview of what that is
and what you do for clientsaround that?

Speaker 14 (42:36):
Yes, so conversion rate optimization is the CRO
part Effectively looking atwebsites travel websites are for
our clients, where we mightsend traffic from PPC or email.
Looking at the landing pages,looking at the content, looking
at the functionality and tryingto find areas where things may
not be very clear, may be veryweak, may be confusing.

(42:57):
To ultimately get more peoplethrough to a booking flow
whether it's a phone call,whether it's a transaction,
whether it's a form and get morefrom their marketing spend,
because we know Google and theother powers that drive traffic
are trying to get more moneyfrom us every year.
How do we fight back againstthat?
Let's try and make our websitesjust that tiny bit better so we
don't have to give them anymore money.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, that's just it.
I mean, I think so manycompanies are used to spending a
lot of money on paid media.
Now they're addicted to it inmany ways.
And the cost, the dramaticincreases that I'm sure you've
seen as well.
Whether it be Google or Meta,the cost per clicks are way up.
A lot of these tour operatorsare competing against each other
, bidding up on keywords, seeingcrazy things like $10 clicks

(43:38):
for River Cruise exactly, ormore, which is crazy.
I remember that was the casewith mortgages.
There were certain sectorswhere you could pay $20 for a
click Hundreds.

Speaker 14 (43:45):
Some of them, the really, really medical heavy
ones in the US are hundreds ofdollars per click Astounding.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
That's crazy.
When you're going to be able togenerate a $20,000 profit or
have a multimillion dollarmortgage, you can see, but
travel I mean, the typicalpurchase for travel is anywhere
between $2,000 to $5,000.
Sure, there's luxury as well,but let's talk a little bit
about the travel space and howyou got into it.
So obviously, we've mentionedthat Globus is a client.

(44:12):
Yes, tell us a little bit abouthow you guys ventured into
travel space and what are someof the specific things you're
doing for travel clients.

Speaker 14 (44:21):
So, yeah, we've been around for 22 years as a
company.
We very nearly went bust about10 years ago and there were four
directors of the business.
A few of them left, a few ofthe team left and when it came
down to a smaller team needingdirection, I decided that travel
was the sector that we wantedto major in, because of the
complexity of the bookingprocess, the opportunity that I
saw, but also because travel isjust a fantastic sector.

(44:43):
I've done lots of travelingaround the world.
I've actually been to Canada.
I went to Vancouver for a weekand a half, which was fantastic,
so it was a sector I reallyenjoyed working in.
We had some clients at the time,we'd done some great work, we
were nominated for a few awardsand, as time went on, we shared
our existing clients to nowwhere almost every lead we get
is a travel business trying toincrease their revenue, get back

(45:04):
to sometimes pre-COVID levelsor just grow their profit, and
this is where we are now.
So we've been majoring incontent, talking to lots of
events, doing presentations.
I do a quarterly research piece, which is produced every three
months, to look at search trendson Google.
What are the destinations thatare hot, not literally, but

(45:24):
which ones have really got theinterest, and partnering up with
lots of people, maybe likeyourself in the future, to
spread the word and, I guess,try and cut through some of the
hype, because there is a lot ofhype in marketing world, there's
also a lot of hype in thetravel world and bring it back
to what's happening right now.
How do I increase your salesthe next 12 months rather than
in three or five years time?

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, well, let's talk about some of those
marketing trends, because Ithink this is what many of our
listeners are going to be willbenefit from Individuals like
you who have that specificexpertise working across
different clients, becausethat's something that I always
found unique about the role thatI had in the corporate space
working across about 40different travel brands is that
whole term of cross-pollination,which is I don't really like

(46:05):
that terminology, but it is auseful term because it does
accurately represent what it isyou're able to do by virtue of
having exposure to differentbrands and the performance, so
you can see something thatworked and apply it and realize
wait a second.
So you've talked aboutconversion rate optimization.
What are some of the otherinitiatives that you've been
working on with clients here in2025 that you're seeing success

(46:26):
with?

Speaker 14 (46:27):
I think, increasingly, google and Meta,
to some degree, are becomingmore and more AI driven.
They have been for the lastthree or four years,
fundamentally.
So, how do you train thesealgorithms to deliver better
results for you?
A lot of the time and we talkedabout a session earlier on,
actually it comes back toquality of data.
So what good signals are yousending back to Google Meta that

(46:50):
help them to understand, of theclicks and the traffic and the
visitors they've sent to you,which ones perform the best?
So we're doing a lot of workwith GA4.
We've got a specialist who doesfull-time GA4 for persons and
also looking at things likeHubSpot or Salesforce or any of
the booking platforms thatclients use.
How do we pull out data fromthat, feed it back to the
machine so that we can improveour click-through rates, our

(47:13):
bidding strategies or ourcampaigns?
Because, again, unfortunatelylots of travel businesses don't
have very good data, they don'tprioritize it and we say to our
clients if you can get thisstuff right, you've got a
massive competitive advantagewhere you don't have to bid
inefficient clicks anymore.
You can train the algorithmsand I think that's probably
going to be a direction oftravel for the next.
Sorry excuse the pun the workthat we do for the next six to

(47:35):
12 months, because increasinglythis is not the only way, but a
lot of established clients canreally benefit, rather than
setting new campaigns thatthey've already done five times
already.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah Well, you mentioned three really
interesting things there.
You mentioned booking platforms, which is obviously a big
decision that companies have tomake, and one of the reasons
they come to conferences likethis they want to see different
res tech platforms.
You also mentioned HubSpot,which, of course, is a CRM
system.
So companies are always lookingto try and figure out how can
they either introduce a CRM oroptimize their CRM strategy.

(48:06):
But the one I'm rewinding backto was GA4.

Speaker 14 (48:11):
Yeah, everyone's favorite topic, yeah well,
that's just like.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
So I wanted you to share some insights on that
topic, because I certainly havea number of companies that I
work closely with that are stillnot tracking goals effectively,
really managing their GoogleAnalytics account and data
having a digital dashboard theymake decisions off of.
Everyone talks about beingnumbers focused and trying to
make data.
Thank you, that's the correctterminology.

(48:35):
So tell everyone a bit about GA4and what it is you work on with
clients, given this transitionthat was on again, off again
with Google and then yeah, butexplain GA4 and what it is you
actually do for clients.

Speaker 14 (48:48):
I mean I've been doing presentations for
organizations in the UK likeAPTA on GA4 for a couple of
years now.
I say GA4 is not the same toolthat you've been using 10 years
previously.
So this is an analytics tool,whereas GA and its previous guys
or universal analytics somepeople refer to it is a
marketing tool, and thefundamental difference between

(49:10):
those two things is to get thebest out of GA4, you have to
think about your dataarchitecture, your data
structure and ultimately test itmore, whereas out of the box,
ua just used to give you lots ofnice reports.
So lots of people struggle withit because they go into GA4,
where's the report I used to use?
Or why doesn't this tell methis?
Because it's not designed forthat.
It's designed for people toarchitect their data in a
particular way and to do thatrequires planning, thinking,

(49:33):
budget time, effort, which a lotof smaller, I would say travel
companies don't really know orhave the time or the planning to
do.
So if you can get GA4 workingcorrectly, that's where the
benefit can be.
You get robust data, you getgood data, you get the data
modelling, which now is veryimportant in a post-cookie world
.
We still have cookies, but mostwebsites lose 20 to 40% of

(49:57):
their data when you put a cookiebar on it.
So you need that modelling tohelp you to make better
decisions in the first place.
Sadly, even some multi-millionpound businesses we've spoken to
this year, they don't even havee-commerce tracking, when most
of their priority bookings arethrough their website.
They don't have their goals setup to understand how many phone
calls they've had or how manyform fills they've had at the

(50:18):
basic level.
So if you don't have thatdivisibility, I still don't
understand how you decide whereto spend more or not.
But they're fudging it for now.
But increasingly, as I say,data is the competitive
advantage that I think morecompanies should be looking at
and hopefully they will.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, well, it's interesting when you mentioned
about goal tracking and clearlywhen you have a pixel fire at a
certain stage, that you cantrack that activity, like a form
fill, for example.
But you mentioned phone numbers, which is another tricky thing
for travel companies, because Imean, you look at a company like
Tor Radar and Tor Radar is oneof our sponsors and partners and
Travis is here at this event.
He's going to be on thishighlight reel.

(50:54):
70% of their bookings occuroffline and this is Not uncommon
.
No, not uncommon, you'reabsolutely right.
So, but that phone number veryfew companies have dynamic phone
numbers implemented to be ableto track the source of that lead
, so it's a different phonenumber if it's paid media and
you can actually track thechannel source.

Speaker 14 (51:12):
Or the keywords, if you've got a really good one,
yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
There you go, exactly .

Speaker 14 (51:15):
Yeah, but the thing is it's very easy to spend
another thousand pounds a monthon Google ads rather than spend
200 pounds a month on the phonecall system and unfortunately,
Google's made it so easy tospend more money and we've
bought into this whole, as youmentioned earlier on this psyche
of Google Ads, Google Ads,Google Ads or Meta we don't look
at our data.
It's too complicated, it's tootricky.
I don't understand it.
Someone did it before, threeyears ago, and now it's a hard

(51:44):
sell, I think, sadly, yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
And then the other one you mentioned, crm.
Is that for our listeners thatare trying to figure out their
approach to a CRM strategy?
I mean, clearly everyone knowsabout Salesforce, but Salesforce
is expensive.
Very expensive yeah, and verytime-consuming.
HubSpot's getting that way, butyes, yeah, well, interesting,
because I started off as kind oflike the Salesforce killer.
They've, all of a sudden,hubspot came along.
But you're right, it's become.

(52:06):
It's become more bloated asthey've continued to expand.
So, yeah, what would be yourrecommendation to small to
medium sized travel companies interms of going down the path of
implementing a CRM system?

Speaker 14 (52:18):
I think for a lot of companies sometimes the booking
system is their CRM and itdepends on the size you are.
Ultimately, if you're lookingat a CRM system, on top of that
you need the person to be ableto manage it.
You need a good data in and out, and one of the things I worked
with a company called Vermoosein the UK.
I don't know if you've heard ofthem.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Of course I do, yeah.

Speaker 14 (52:36):
We did a white paper together which is available on
their website, but we basicallyadvocate the fact that a lot of
these systems try to doeverything in one box and
increasingly theforward-thinking companies are
really realizing that a CRMneeds a specialist platform.
An email marketing platformneeds to be specialist, the
booking system needs aspecialist and using APIs rather

(52:57):
than AI, you can get the gooddata flowing through those
different systems.
And I think CRM is for a lot ofcompanies.
They have them not really usingit as well as they could do and
again, that comes down tohaving resource time, good data
in, good data out.
If you want to get going on that, yeah, I mean, look at what
your business challenges are.
Is it retention?
Are you struggling to getpeople to come back?

(53:18):
Some travel companies I know goback to the google ads problem.
They spend 90% of their moneyon acquisition and only 10% on
retention, where, if you couldflip that just a little bit the
other way, you wouldn't have tospend so much money on acquiring
new customers.
So CRMs, I think, definitelyhelp to solve some of that
problem, but it's not foreveryone, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Well, the other thing I wanted to ask you.
You haven't mentioned this yet,but we have to talk about AI.
I know, andy, you're going tobe back for our AI Summit in
October.
One of the things I wanted toget your take on is from the
clients from a digital marketingpoint of view, how are you
seeing companies leveraging AIat the moment, and are any of
the AI tools that you areimplementing or working with

(53:57):
clients on?

Speaker 14 (53:59):
I mean going back a few years.
The common thing for AIimplementation was stick a
chatbot on your website and Ithink there is a thing from
investors or someone somewhereneeded to show AI to the world.
All of the talks, evenincluding the one this morning,
where I think the most benefitscome is back office stuff
allowing people who are customerfacing to take away their admin

(54:19):
, all of those processes youhave internally about checking
documents, checking tour plans.
Can we train the AI to do thatfor us?
Us and I think that's whereI've seen a lot of the clients
get really good success, where alot of the investments going.
Um, there's a company calledblack tomato in the uk.
They created an ai feelingsengine on their website and if
you've seen that, worth checkingout.
Uh, they sell the experienceand so the you're going on their

(54:42):
website to try and describe allthe feelings you might want to
have and the AI then tries tomatch the best tour.
So I think a lot of the time itshould be back-end office stuff
.
Sadly, I think a lot of it'sstill front-end and I think, not
as good as user experience asit could be.
That's my answer that helps.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Yeah, no, I mean, and this is where Brennan with
Propellic I know the session hewas doing was the AI overviews
and the impact it's having onSEO.
He literally started an SEOagency and is now in the process
of transforming that to anAI-first agency, because AI is
impacting search engineoptimization to the point where
people are less likely to govisit your website if they can
see the information in the AIoverview.
So there's so many differentunique opportunities emerging
right now.
And, given that you are aleading digital marketer and

(55:31):
focus on the travel space, whatare some of the other trends
that you're paying attention toin this industry or within
marketing going into 2026?
Obviously, we've talked a bitabout AI, but what are some of
the other things that you'refocused on or that you think
companies should be aware of, orspecific initiatives that
you're undertaking that would beworth our listeners knowing?

Speaker 14 (55:48):
about Going back to the AI thing.
I actually listened to apodcast that Brennan did very
recently talking about AI, andit was very, very fascinating.
I think Google has anexistential challenge, but it
has a big, big challenge withchat, gpt, and so therefore it
has to do a lot of AI stuff.
First, a, it's very efficient,but also B, it's what users want
.
In quotes, the model that we'vehad traditionally and I've

(56:10):
actually worked with a couple oftravel companies who based
their whole business model offvolume of traffic, clicks to the
website, conversion rate,average revenue and then profit
that model is going to break, ifit hasn't already broken
already, because I think in oneof the things that Brennan
mentioned in his podcast withKevin Indig, he said that
traffic has gone down.
Ai overviews have reducedclick-through rates by from 30%

(56:34):
on the first position down to15% in some instances, so the
traffic you used to get is goingto die quite quickly.
Some of it's probably irrelevant, some of it was noise, but if
you're not in those AI overviewsor not thinking about them,
that's going to be a bigchallenge.
And then the second one is thenGoogle ads off the back of it,
because Google has to monetizethis for a $200 billion business
.
They have to make sure theclicks keep coming through and

(56:56):
they keep generating money fromthem.
So AI overviews and PPCs juststarted to be rollout.
I think that's going to be avery, very pivotal thing to
control that.
Google is very good atspreading ads all over the place
, making you pay for them andthen try and pick up the pieces
off the back of it.
So both Google, which drivesmost of the traffic to all of

(57:16):
our websites from a PPC and SEOperspective are things we're
focusing very, very heavily on.
Businesses need to be aware of,and we're publishing stuff
every month around that becauseit changes so quickly.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Yeah, and we'll definitely pick up this topic
further as we plan for the AISummit and have Andy back.
I also wanted just to bring usback to what brought us both
here, which is the event beingin Barcelona, and clearly it's
our first time at this event.
So I'm thrilled you decided tojoin and so far from my
perspective.
So I'm thrilled you decided tojoin and so far from my
perspective, I mean when you'resitting here and having this

(57:46):
conversation on day one.
So I said to Andy, we need tohave you back on day three so
you can actually review, becauseright now you're projecting
forward.
But what I'd like to ask you acouple of questions.
One is initial impressions whatare your thoughts so far from
being here kind of midwaythrough day one, in terms of the
venue and some of the initialconversations you're having?
So that'm going to put themboth out to you.
That's the first question I had.
And then also, what are some ofthe things you are hoping to

(58:07):
get?
I know we talked a little bitabout networking.
What are some of the other?
When you looked at the agendaand just planning out over the
next couple of days, what aresome of the things you're
looking forward to getting outof being here for the conference
.

Speaker 14 (58:25):
Well, first of all, just the atmospherics and the
venue are fantastic here.
So you know, that's number onegood to take for Focusrite.
Number two you know, I thinkFocusrite has very good heritage
in the US and so coming toEurope is a good thing and good
chance for me to meet companiesfrom the other side of the pond.
You know Canada and US,whatever you think of those
places, but both fantastic indifferent ways.
So, yeah, all the networkinghas been great.

(58:45):
Everyone I've met so far hasbeen great and I'm looking
forward to a great three days.
I'm sure that will happen.
On the other side of things,the talks really good to talk
already the first one I went to.
There's really openconversation about AI, how we're
using it, what the challenge is, some contentious discussions.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Was that with Christian Watts?

Speaker 14 (59:00):
It was with christian oh good, as soon as
you said it's contentious, I'mlike it's got to be christian uh
, well, I was prodding away abit because, uh, I've got some
views, but anyway, um, andreally just yeah, finding out
what the trends are acrossdifferent sectors, because you
know, travel, we put as a ai, isa bucket.
Travel is a bucket, but nichetourism is very different to
mass tourism, which is differentto luxury, which is different
to cruise.

(59:21):
You know, all these differentthings have have sub, sub sub
sectors, so just try to find outmuch about them and then bring
that value back to my clientsand find out as much as I can on
their behalf to help themshortcut some of the things that
are going to happen.

Speaker 2 (59:33):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Well, I want to make sure we'regoing to have you back, andy,
but I also want to make surethat, even as we're speaking
right now, that our listenerscan find out more about your
organization, connect with yourteam.
So what are the best ways to doso?

Speaker 14 (59:46):
So I'm on LinkedIn quite a lot.
I'm posting on there.
I have a newsletter, we have anewsletter which you can sign up
to through our website and, ifyou're a little bit patient, on
the 3rd of January 2026, my bookcalled Digital Marketing for
Travel Brands will be releasedin the UK.
So if you are interested tofind out more about how to
market your travel brand, nextyear will be the place where you

(01:00:07):
can buy 80,000 words of mywriting.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Congratulations.
That's really exciting, thankyou, and it will be available on
Amazon, I'm sure.

Speaker 14 (01:00:14):
It's already available on Waterstones in the
UK, so you can pre-order if youare so inclined.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I've got to finish writing it first, so let's get
that done.
But just remind everyone thecompany, the spelling and the
domain, so that everyone canalso go to the website and any
social channels that you mightwant to highlight too.

Speaker 14 (01:00:29):
So yeah, we're on LinkedIn A-D-I-D-O.
You can type in Adido Digital.
You'll find our website andmyself, andy Heddington, again
very active on LinkedIn andagain through our website.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
That's fantastic, Andy.
It's a real pleasure to sitdown with you.
I was really looking forward tothis conversation.
Likewise, I'm so glad we madeit happen and I look forward to
keeping in touch with you thenext few days.
We'll see you in person again,but we'll get lots of time
together in the next couple ofdays.
But thank you again.

Speaker 14 (01:00:52):
Absolute pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Thanks a lot.
Cheers, dan, this at aFocusrite conference, both in
Europe or internationally, andhe is a great friend of mine, a
fantastic colleague that I havethe privilege to work with.
Just full disclosure I'm anadvisor to the WeRoad team and I
specifically get to work withAndrea Lamparini, who is the

(01:01:17):
chief operating officer.
Welcome, andrea, so great tohave you with us.
Thank you, dan.
Thanks a lot, of course.
No, I'm so keen for you to behere at Focusrite Europe because
, as I was telling Andrea, lastnight I was at a dinner and I
was asked what is the fastestgrowing travel company?
And I was telling everyone aboutWeRoad, and a lot of our
listeners have clearly heardabout WeRoad.

(01:01:38):
I love the brand, I love thebusiness.
It's such a fantastic team andyou guys have grown from $10
million in sales to $100 millionin just four years, and the
thing that I keep coming back tois I'm convinced that it's
going to be the fastest travelcompany to reach a billion
dollars in sales, and so it's areally exciting business to be a
part of and obviously you havesuch a key role to play in the
business and its growth, and soI wanted you to join us, to be

(01:02:00):
part of this special eventspotlight, but I think the one
thing that would be great tostart off with Andrea is a
little bit of background onWeRoad for all of our listeners
that aren't familiar with thebusiness.
So tell us a little bit aboutWeRoad and then a bit about your
role.

Speaker 16 (01:02:12):
Yes, thanks, dan.
So we are a community.
We were born as a community oftravelers.
Now we are a community ofpeople in their millennial age,
so between 20 to 50 years old,we do small group experiences
which, like, mainly areadventure travel.
So multi-day weeks experiencesall around the world, from from

(01:02:36):
multi-days to just like a fewhours, and we let people mostly
strangers to meet in ourexperiences, get connected,
share experiences like taste thelocal culture and then like
build really like a long lastingrelationship together.
So people like become friendsand people like feel part of a

(01:02:58):
community.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Well and I think this is one of the things that
couldn't be more timely to befocused on the multi-day tour
category.
I know I'm a big advocate forthis industry, especially right
now, given the youngerdemographic feeling more
disconnected, more isolated inthe face of technology and
social media, and what you justmentioned about strangers coming
together and quickly becomingrealizing they're part of a

(01:03:20):
tribe.
And you guys have had such anincredible success trajectory in
Europe.
And I just want to alsohighlight to all of our
listeners Erica DeSanti, who'sone of the co-founders of WeRoad
, was on a dedicated episode ofTravel Trends back in Season 4.
So if you want to learn moreabout WeRoad, I definitely
encourage you to listen to thatepisode.
But tell us a little bit moreabout your role, andrea, because

(01:03:41):
with the Chief OperatingOfficer role, andrea, because
with the chief operating officerrole, one of the areas that
you're focused on ispartnerships and trade in
particular.
I know Clarissa on your team isobviously working with a lot of
trade partners now, so tell usa little bit about that and,
ultimately, what brings you toFocusrite this year?

Speaker 16 (01:03:55):
Yeah, so WeRode is mainly a direct-to-consumer
brand, so we sell online ourexperiences, experiences.
We over align our experiences,but then we understood that at
the end, we need to be alsocloser to our audience, to our
community, to the people thatmight, might choose our world

(01:04:15):
for, uh, for their free time.
And then we understood that atthe end, we need to also be
present and to trade them, whichwhich can be also online or
offline, and also leverage theexperience of travel agencies or
other tour operator network,especially understanding really
the consumer need, the consumerpurchasing behavior, into the

(01:04:39):
free time experiences.
So this is why we'reapproaching also this channel
and really on a worldwide scale.
So basically, we want to startworking with them, with those
partners worldwide, because atthe end, our experiences are
worldwide indeed.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Well, there's a huge demand for the product and I've
certainly seen that in themarketing that Fabio, who's the
CMO, has been doing withtakeovers and subway stations in
London and many other citiesaround Europe, and clearly
there's great marketing that'sdriving interest in the brand
and people are coming to youdirect.
But I think the one thing thatis really exciting is the fact
you're embracing trade partners,because that is such a

(01:05:17):
substantial part of the travelindustry and a key reason why
many companies are here tonetwork and realize new business
distribution opportunities.
So tell us a little bit moreabout what brings you to focus
right europe.
Obviously we collaboratetogether, so I know one of the
drivers for sure was us gettingtime together in person.
But what are some of the otherthings you're looking forward to
being here at focus rightbarcelona?

Speaker 16 (01:05:38):
so, um, I repeat that for sure, like it would be
super nice also to to meet youand meet like all the people
that you, you get connected,like remotely, and then having a
chance also to get more deeperinto the connection, because
this is what we do, we are acommunity and we let the people
be connected.
And also, like I would like tofind new partners.

(01:05:59):
I would like to get like abetter understanding into the
trade world in general, becauseI'm not from that part and I
would like to get the most andalso building a really helpful
partnership in that sense and inany other sense that can bring
value into the world growth.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
Yeah, what's interesting about that too is
that Paulina from Flytographeris here, which is a Canadian
company, an amazing successstory.
We've had Nicole Smith, thefounder, on our podcast before
and they're totally B2C andthey've realized that they've
been missing a big opportunityon B2B and it's one of the
reasons that Paulina is here aswell.
And I spoke to her after herfirst day and she was delighted
with the experience and all themeetings she had in the first

(01:06:37):
day of the conference and shewas like it's already paid back
and, from speaking to some ofthe Focusrite team, I guess
they're going to do somesponsorship for the next event
in San Diego, which is reallyexciting.
But for me, I find it soencouraging that there are all
these opportunities for you tobe here and I'm looking forward
to, after the next couple ofdays of you having had the
opportunity to meet and networkwith a lot of people, the

(01:06:58):
business opportunities that willbe realized for WeRoad.
And one thing for sure is justactually creating more brand
awareness for WeRoad Because,again, it just shocks me that so
few people know this businessthat I've come to know so well
in the last year and it gets somuch press and publicity, but
clearly there's so many otherpeople that still need to know
about WeRoad, so tell us alittle bit.
On that note, I always call youLampe that's your nickname, so

(01:07:29):
I'm going to call you Lampe,that's your nickname.
So I'm going to call you Lampeagain.
But it wasn't 10%.
The growth plans for WeRoadtell us a little bit about what
the next year looks like andwhere some obviously trade
partners is one of that for sure.
But what are some of the otherinitiatives and plans for growth
at WeRoad?
I mean, I know you've got a newapp and so, yeah, tell us a
little bit about some of theproducts and the plans for the
business yeah, so we're mainlylike our, so our main presence
in terms of community is inEurope yet.

Speaker 16 (01:07:48):
So we need to increase and be really like the
greatest community of peopleinto the millennial age that
want to meet and gather andtravel the world.
So this is why our special planis to scale in Europe even
further, to scale in Europe evenfurther and also looking
outside of Europe and be morepresent into the consumer

(01:08:09):
acquisition funnel and communitybuilding, also outside of
Europe.
Then, as I said, we startedfrom multi-day trips and then we
are also entering into thefew-hour experiences.
This is why we launched the weMeet app where you can find like
experiences run by our partners, our travel coordinators

(01:08:31):
everywhere and then also likeallowing like our community to
find experiences on the websitethat they can really like run
and design, run by reallyvertical experts, expert people
into different areas, such asactive trips, food and wine,

(01:08:54):
relaxing, well-being.
So we started as an adventuretravel brand and we are going
into a free time of ourcommunity from our experience to
still a lot of adventure tripsinto also a vertical experience

(01:09:15):
related more to the passion ofour community.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Well, I think that's one of the things that is unique
about WeRoad that you reallylive the community aspect, the
coordinators, how you actuallycreate these trips, operate
these trips, and it's one of thethings that actually a lot of
trade partners have been tryingto understand and I know, even
as coming up with ourconversations, is that they're
excited to be a part of it, butthey're trying to wrap their
head around what is their rolein this world of community and

(01:09:40):
how WeRoad has grown so wellorganically.
I know you do a lot of events,you do a lot of great offline
marketing, you do a lot of greatsocial media marketing as well,
and so one of the things that Ialso wanted to highlight with
uh we road is the fact that theproduct, even though you guys
are based in europe, you takepeople all around the world, and

(01:10:00):
so tell us a little bit aboutsome of the new destinations
that you're going to be openingup and offering to travelers in
the next year yeah, so I'm sorryto to like, uh to your first
sentence like this is why also,we might not be that known into
the b2b area is because our, ourlike product, our touristy
product, is not that commonactually if you consider with

(01:10:22):
like more like just dayactivities, but like really like
, a consumer can reallyunderstand the beauty of the, of
the, of the, of the product,thanks to our like thousands of
reviews, of positive reviews.

Speaker 16 (01:10:38):
but like it's a difficult product to run and
build and this is why like alsoit's an opportunity for B2B
partnering with us because wetake care of the operational
complexity but we guarantee alevel of quality of the
experience which is remarkableand our retention and the

(01:11:01):
growing of the community is akey indicator of how good our
experiences are and our viewerscan tell for sure.
And the new destination we see avery big trend of the old-time
areas.
So Kyrgyzstan, afghanistan,uzbekistan, all that part of the

(01:11:24):
world is getting a lot oftraction from all of our like
customers.
So this is a really like a bigtrend.
And also South America, like isgetting more attention like
this year comparing to the lastyears.
And, as you said, in our tripsthere is no flight included

(01:11:44):
because we want to leave totallythe freedom to the consumer to
decide the best way they want toreach the destination.
Everything is happening indestination and the key part of
our success is the travelcoordinator, which are like our
brand ambassador most powerfulbrand ambassador that can really
make the experience unique andso great.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Well, one other thing I just want to highlight to our
audience as well is that ifpeople think of WeRoad and more
of a youth travel brand, thereality actually is that WeRoad
is focused on 25 to 45.
And it's not 50 also oh okay.
Well, to your point, getting tothe older demographic, as
opposed to the student audienceand I think that might be, some

(01:12:28):
people may think like a brandlike Contiki, where they have a
lot of people that are 18, 19,20, it's their first trip With
re-roaders.
It is a lot of establishedyoung professionals that are
looking for more meaningfultravel to connect with others,
and so, you know, they are nowin the workforce, they have the
means to be able to take timeoff and be able to afford a
holiday.
But and the other thing too, toyour point about 45, 50, is

(01:12:50):
like it's.
This style of travel is more ofa psychographic, because the
difference between a 45 and a 25year old in terms of their
desire for travel, they don'tnecessarily see themselves that
different.
You know, and I can say thatfrom my own experience, I'm in
that mid-40s range and I don'tfeel that much different than I
did in my 20s, and so I stillwant to travel and have fun and
experience the local culturesand all the things that like.

(01:13:12):
So my travel style or travelbehavior has remained consistent
.
But, yeah, tell everyone, ifyou wouldn't mind, the ways that
people can connect with you,reach out to you, to be able to
partner with you Because, again,I think this is one of the
fantastic opportunities of beingat a focus right conference
like this and, obviously, beingon the travel trends podcast, as
well as reaching out to thefocus right audience, tell us

(01:13:32):
some of the ways that travelpartners can connect with you
and work with you guys.

Speaker 16 (01:13:37):
So you can find me like andrea lamperini, you can
find me like on linkedin or onthe focus right uh hub.
Um, so just passing by, uh justsaying hi, like anyway, like
I'm, I'm here to to connect, tolike all those uh like really
like in this industry leadersand also like a really

(01:13:58):
interesting people.
So, just passing by, uh get intouch with me.
Uh, we are open like we, welike to do things on a really
easy way, so we like quick wins,so we are not too complex.
We are super flexible, we arevery keen to understand how to
make it work.
So we're not stopping by thecomplexity but really moving by

(01:14:22):
the drive of growth.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah, and I just wanted to highlight one last
thing and it's probably one ofthe reasons that I love working
with you and the team so much isthat the team culture is very
real, it's very genuine, it'svery authentic.
You guys all put in a lot ofhours.
When we're doing calls,sometimes it's like late in the
day and there's no hesitationbetween any six people on the
call about the time.
Like our calls will go for two,two and a half hours, even when

(01:14:45):
we schedule for an hour.
And it's getting late in theday and for you guys, given time
zone differences and I'm likealways amazed the fact that it's
just nobody flinches.
You put in the time and theeffort and you guys all really
get along Like there's agenuinely warm team dynamic that
I've certainly it doesn't existin a lot of other organizations
and I think that's a testamentto the culture that's been built

(01:15:06):
internally as well as you know,externally, with how you work
with partners.
To your point about we're easyto work with, we were like and
that's certainly the case Likeit's just like people.
So I have a big advocate and abig fan of WeRoad.
I absolutely think it is thefastest growing travel company
for all the right reasons, and Ilove the style of travel, I
love the experiences that WeRoadoffers.
So I think it's reallythrilling that we finally have a

(01:15:29):
company out of Europe and Italyspecifically leading the charge
, because it's always otherwisebeen companies out of USA,
canada and Australia.
And here we are, like this andsending people to Europe, and
here you are at the heart ofEurope, capitalizing on a major
trend within the European market, but also sending these
travelers internationally.
So I want to saycongratulations and well done.

Speaker 16 (01:15:50):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:51):
And I look forward to continuing our collaborations
together and more people findingout about WeRoad.

Speaker 16 (01:15:55):
Super, like a right to me, right to Dan.
We are here to collaborate andconnect.
Thanks, awesome.
Thanks very much.
Thank you to connect.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Thanks, awesome, thanks very much, thank you.
I now have the pleasure tospeak to the CEO and co-founder
of Loyalty Status, mark RossSmith.
He and I were having a greatconversation yesterday.
I know one of his colleagues,aaron, who's based in Toronto.
We've talked about doing aloyalty episode together and my
background is certainly in theloyalty space and we have not
actually covered that yet in thetravel trends and I was telling
Mark about that yesterday.
So I'm really thrilled to havehim here because he's

(01:16:31):
representing loyalty here inBarcelona.
But, mark, tell us a little bitabout your background and give
all of our listeners a bit of anoverview of loyalty status.
What did you guys do?

Speaker 4 (01:16:41):
So no pressure at all , representing the entire global
loyalty on the first shot.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Someone's got to do it Better you.
When people hear your story,they'll understand why You've
got the place to yourself.

Speaker 4 (01:16:53):
Yeah, no, we got a pretty cool setup.
We started business about fourand a half years ago Worst time
ever, in the middle of apandemic, to start a travel
company.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Months after COVID.
You did know better, becauseCOVID started in March and you
started the company in July.
It's symbolical, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
There's clearly no other business to start, it had
to be this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
I want to start at rock bottom.
No one's flying, no airlines,but maybe they're going to need
points in the future.
They're going to need theirstatus.
Well, it's interesting you tellthis story because it actually
worked out to be timely, becausepeople like me ended up not
being able to keep up our statusand we're freaking out that we
were going to lose our status.
So, yeah, tell everyone thestory of how it came to be,
because the business really tookoff almost by virtue of the

(01:17:36):
timing.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
yeah, it worked out really well.
Yeah, there's a couple ofthings going in our favor, aside
from global travel not reallyhappening.
Uh, first thing is, in 2020,airlines were struggling for
cash and so a lot what we'redoing they're putting up their
loyalty program as collateral tosecure government loans, and
that's when we started to see,well, hang on, these loyalty
programs, some are worth morethan the airline itself.

(01:17:56):
Yeah, and this was like a realmind blow for everyone, like,
wow, hang on, how come americanairlines loyalty program is
worth nearly 30 billion dollars.
The airline is trading publiclyat something like $12 billion.
Like, this doesn't make sense.
So what happened is loyaltystarted to get a bit more of the
spotlight and, you know,stakeholders in these brands

(01:18:17):
were like how can we do morewith loyalty?
What else can we do?
How can it make more cash?
Because no one's really flyingand we're kind of burning cash
here.
It's like, how do we make more?
And so you know me and myco-founders, we've all run
airline multi programs.
So you know we've got I thinkyou know we've got to save the
world.
Right, put our thinking caps on.
How can we save the industry?
Because if we save it, if itworks for us, it'll work for

(01:18:39):
industry, we'll have jobs in thefuture.
Loosely the concept.
And so we um fast forward alittle bit to the end of 2020.
We um pitched this idea tofrontier airlines about the
world's most paid status match.
So the idea is you pay a fee toapply for a status match and uh
, and this was wildly successful.

(01:19:00):
Wild, and because it wascashing the door for the airline
.
That's what they were lookingfor, right.
So they got a bunch of great PRbecause airlines didn't have
the best PR track at the time.
So great PR, a bunch of cash inthe door, and they effectively
locked in a group of flies thatwere a bit sort of up in the air
in their status.
They had their status withanother airline.

(01:19:22):
They're not flying, they don'tknow when they're going to come
back again, but suddenly they'vegot another one.
They've got another one like,well, I could try these guys now
, because I don't know if I'mgoing to keep my gold status
over here anymore, and so that'sreally where things
kick-started for us on thisjourney.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Well, and one thing just to highlight too is Mark
was actually running thefrequent flyer program or
created it for Malaysia Airlinesand actually ran it ran.
it didn't create it, ran it.
You came in to run it and totake it to the next level.
And you are based in Australiaoriginally but you've been
living in Kuala Lumpur for anumber of years and so obviously
that was kind of set you off onthis course to really

(01:20:01):
understand loyalty.
And but interestingly you'renot in the points and miles
space and I want to highlightthat specifically because I
think that's what a lot ofpeople identify with with
loyalty, especially because somany other companies have gotten
into this.
I mean, every retailer now hastheir own loyalty program and,
to your exact point, theairlines were amongst the first
in this space and a lot ofpeople didn't realize that the

(01:20:21):
valuations of those programswere greater than the airlines
themselves.
Because of all these memberbenefits and the spend that all
of a sudden you have trueloyalty amongst this audience
and when you say you're going tobe able to earn points or miles
to keep up their status, all ofa sudden more and more
companies have gotten into thespace.
But tell everyone what isunique about the two brands you

(01:20:44):
operate, because I know Erin dida rebrand when she came in as a
CMO.
We were having an interestingchat about that yesterday.
So tell everyone about the twodifferent businesses and how
they now complement each other.
Give us a bit more of theorigin story, if you will, of
the original concept and howit's grown.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Yeah, quickly on your little point there.
Yeah, we already have twosuperpowers Points and miles
massively effective.
It's like the bedrock of thefinancial stuff.
And then the other side isstatus.
This is obviously where we playin the products that we sort of
got, and this sells seats,basically where points and miles
does less so Right.

(01:21:20):
So there's a couple of things wereally focus on.
One is if you're about to loseyour status, right, or you've
just lost it and you're likeyou're not feeling good, but
then you get this email from theairline.
It says hey, dan, click here,make it, pay 500 bucks, you can
keep your gold status foranother year.
Like that's the.
That's the stuff that we do.
Yeah, you know, because if weknow that, if people that drop

(01:21:41):
in status it's something like 30of these people have no
intention to ever fly that orstay at the hotel again, because
it's that disconnected feeling.
It's the.
You know what?
I gave it my all and eventhough I didn't quite get there,
you still dropped me down andI'm not feeling the love anymore
.
So I'll just fly whoever stay,wherever I want, cheapest flight

(01:22:02):
, whatever.
So keeping people in there.
There's an old saying, you know, it's cheaper to keep a
customer and retention than toacquire a new customer.
Absolutely it's the same thingagain.
It's like in reverse the peopleare paying to retain, so
they're basically lockingthemselves in for another year
as well.
There's all sorts of amazingfinancial benefits for the

(01:22:22):
loyalty, the airline, the hotelin that situation.
So that's kind of one big thingthat we do.
We're kind of known for StatusMatch, which is high-value
customer acquisition.
Status Match has been for 40years.
People kind of understand it.
You've got one airline, youwant it with another, for
whatever reason.
We facilitate that.
You pay a fee, right, yeah, sowe kind of do that.
That's really effective.

(01:22:43):
F-a.

Speaker 2 (01:22:44):
So we kind of do that .
That's really effective.
So statusmatchcom, and then ofcourse, you have
loyaltystatuscom.
So, starting the business, focuson statusmatch, which I totally
get, because I was telling youthat I was super elite with Air
Canada and my life changed whenall of a sudden, I was dropped
down in status and even, likesome of the messaging on your
website, change jobs, relocatein cities about to be downgraded

(01:23:04):
status and even, like some ofthe messaging on your website,
change jobs, relocated citiesabout to be downgraded, like
that, switch your loyalty statusto a new airline or hotel so
you can continue to join theperks of being a high value
traveler and I.
So that's that speaks to me andI think obviously it speaks to
I think you were referring tothis like top 5% of people that
are kind of fit into thatcriteria that they make.
They make major decisions basedon maintaining their status.

(01:23:26):
So tell us a little bit abouthow that business has grown.
And then I'm keen to know aboutyour expansion plans, given
that you've kind of now you knowI've done this rebrand and are
obviously looking to expandbeyond just status match.

Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
Yeah.
So when you've got, I'm sure alot of listeners have status or
have had status and it's prettyaddictive.
You know, once you've had, I'msure a lot of listeners have a
status or have had status andit's pretty addictive.
Once you've had a taste of it,I can't fly and not go to the
lounge.
I'm not going to the gate, I'mnot going to be in group 15 to
board the aircraft.
I need to be first on there.
I need that overhead space.
I need the champagne in thelounge.

(01:24:00):
I need to check in at businessclass, even though I'm on the
cheapest economy ticket of theday.
I need these.
There is no other way, right?

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):
I'm confused.
Even I get annoyed if theydon't put the priority ticker on
my bag, because I want to knowthat's going to come out first
as well.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
I do that when they're checking the bag in.
I'll wait there until I see thepriority tag go on.
I'll just stand there waiting.
I'll just stand there likewaiting, like looking over.
Hey, buddy, you missingsomething.
It's just so everyone else canknow that you're important, yeah
.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
Well, the thing is because I was, I traveled half
the time for work, my wife andkids flying with me was a
totally different experiencewhen they flew on their own
because they didn't have, andI've been conscientious to make
sure my wife has the 50K and,like you, then have to try and
spread the love to make surethat everyone experiences that,
even if they're travelingindependently or get the passes.
Once you've traveled withsomeone that is super elite or

(01:24:49):
even elite, the entireexperience of navigating the
airport is different.
So you're absolutely right, youdon't want life any other way.

Speaker 4 (01:24:57):
Again, to your point 100%, you do whatever it takes.
I think it's Air Canada thatlets you.
Is it the day pass that you cangive to someone else?
Yeah, whatever it takes tostart, I think it's Air Canada
that lets you.
Is it the day pass that?

Speaker 7 (01:25:06):
you can give to someone else.

Speaker 4 (01:25:06):
Yeah, I really like that I like that a lot, because
if your wife is flying withoutyou, she doesn't have status.
You can kind of give it to herso she gets the taste of what
you get every single time.
That's it.
I love that because ultimately,there's a lot of people that
fly for work.
Yeah, road was really doing theback and forth, back and forth

(01:25:29):
and it's you know the one.
Maybe twice a year they dosomething with the family and
that's really where loyalty hasto shine totally, because it's
it's it's a massive brandcampaign for your wife, your
husband, the kids, like whatever.
This is why I fly and keep mystatus for that one time that we
all get to go on the lounge andchampagne and whatever.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
So now, loyalty status you've obviously got the
status match, which is the corebusiness, but you have things
like get status status booster,status lift.
Tell us a little bit aboutwhere you're headed now as an
organization, as you've kind ofgone down the path of loyalty
status being the parent brand.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
Yeah, so we could start a status match, did really
well 24 airlines, two hotels, aretail travel, retail brand uh
sort of been using that over thelast uh, three or four years
and uh, so you know, we've gotall these, all this great
traction, all this greatmomentum, and people love what
we do and it's like what's thenext thing, uh, and so everyone

(01:26:19):
on our team we're all travelers,I think.
I think I think almost everyonein our company, or everyone,
has status with an airline.
It's like it's in the contract,right, you must keep.
It's a good idea, I might putthat in.
But uh, you know, it's likewhat's next?
Like if I can solve my problemsthat me as a traveler I'm
solving it for millions of otherpeople as well.

(01:26:39):
And so the next logical thingwas like how do I keep my status
a little bit at times or haveto make it a little bit easier?
So we've got something called astatus booster, which is, you
know, you pay a fee, it can be aone-time, it can be a
subscription with some airlines,and it gives you, like, the
double qualifying miles, thedouble tier miles, the double
status credits when you fly fora very short, short, short

(01:27:00):
period of time.
So the idea is that you pay afee, so short period of time.
So the idea is it thatencourage you pay a fee so the
airlines make money.
That's how we make money aswell, uh, and then you.
You're then booking flights youmay not have otherwise booked.
So this is incremental revenueto the brand, which is exactly
what they're looking for.
You're a status holder.
Most people that have statustend to spend a little more on
flights, and they're not in thecheapest fares.

(01:27:22):
They're in a high yield, uh,like economy, fair, premium
economy or business class,because they understand the
value of it.
Right, and airlines know thisas well.
And so how do we encouragepeople?
How do we align the loyaltyobjectives with the airline or
hotel objectives, which is tosell seats, sell the room, sell
the suites?
How do we?
How do we do that?
And so this product we've gotis absolutely fabulous in this.

(01:27:44):
It's it's got amazing tractionwith the brand of all that too.
So so it's coming back to.
My point is about if we solve itfor us, we solve for everyone
else.
If I solve your problem, youknow there's another 10 million
other people, 10 million otherdans out there doing crazy
status runs and who knows what,right, yeah and yeah, and you
know what.
These people typically havegood jobs or an employer that's

(01:28:08):
got more liberal travel policies.
They've got a bit more moneysomewhere, and so the stuff they
want to buy.
And if you're you know what, youknow what LN website, if you've
got status, look at what the LNis trying to sell you.
It's trying to sell you a seatselection fee, which you get for
free anyway.
It's trying to sell you a seatselection fee, which you get for
free anyway.
Trying to sell you extrabaggage which you never use,
because you always get 100 kilosor whatever it is and you never

(01:28:29):
use it right.
Or an insurance product you'regetting that from somewhere else
.
There's nothing to buy, and sothat's where we come in.
We're trying to create this newancillary revenue stream
through loyalty, through stuffthat you actually love and want
to buy.
You don't need to buy a seat,but you know you might buy.
Like I want bonus statusqualifying miles on my next

(01:28:50):
flight.
I want, you know, these otherthings that the propensity to
buy is very, very high, justbecause of the type of clientele
that engage with statusproducts.

Speaker 2 (01:28:59):
Yeah, and it's interesting because you
mentioned obviously there beingthe two sides the status and
then the points and miles.
I was just genuinely curious.
I know we briefly chatted aboutthis, but when we look at that
space there's companies likePointscom that power a lot of
the programs for companies likeAmerican Airlines.
They were recently acquired byPlusgrade.
Plusgrade was like the airlineupgrade Literally they were a

(01:29:22):
one-trick horse that's turnedinto this incredible loyalty
company globally based inMontreal, and obviously you know
Ken Harris as well, the founder, and so I think most people
don't have a lot of people useloyalty programs but they're not
as familiar with just howmassive this industry is.
So my one other question to you, mark, was whether or not
you're going to go into themiles and point space at some

(01:29:45):
point.

Speaker 4 (01:29:47):
We're not really looking at it, the status we see
so much to the blue skyopportunity there.
We're only really just gettingstarted in this space.
We've got a couple of thingsgoing.
They run really really strongtraction.
People love it and, to yourpoint, your plus grade points.
They do a fabulous job at whatthey do.
They really dominate.
They bring tremendous value tothe industry, just like we see

(01:30:07):
ourselves bring a lot of value,and I think you know this is.
I talk about how airlines likeyou don't build your own
aircraft.
If you're an airline, you go toBoeing or Airbus.
Like there's always a couple ofdominating forces in the
industry Like you want to sellyour miles.
You go to points If you want todo status.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
There you go exactly.
Sounds like a great futurepartnership opportunity.
So the other thing I want tocome back to is what brings you
here to Focusrite Barcelona.
Obviously, you are representingthe good fight on behalf of the
loyalty industry here at theconference.
But, yeah, what are some of thethings, Mark, that brought you
here to the conference, andwe're obviously having this

(01:30:48):
conversation on day two kind ofmidway through what have been
some of the highlights andbenefits of being here so far.

Speaker 4 (01:30:51):
Yeah, I mean, there's a really diverse crowd of
people here that typicallywouldn't go to some other events
, so it's sort of reachingpeople that are a little bit
trickier to reach sometimes andthey're all in one place, which
makes it cheaper and easier justto see people.
We also work pitching as one ofthe top travel tech startups
here as well, so we're on stageshowcasing some of the
incredible results that we'vebeen achieving over the years,

(01:31:14):
and so it's really just great tobe here and connect and meet
with new people.
And I mean, really there's onereason I'm here and that's to
see you.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Yeah, well, we were connected.
Aaron sent a note to be likeyou guys are going to be
together.
You have to meet, and we didyesterday.
We totally got on so well andyou really obviously made me
laugh as well.
But you were sharing a bit moreof, like, your personal journey
and your story, which is really,as I've come to understand, and
, aaron, I've now met one of theluckiest men that I'll probably

(01:31:41):
ever meet in my life.
You just seem to have a seriesof things that happen to you
where, like, life just works outand which clearly, you're on
this now incredible successtrajectory with Status Match.
So I'm thrilled for you andobviously, yeah, it's a delight
to meet you, but I'm clearlythere's a ton of other benefits.
I hope, certainly hope, mark,that this is going to be one of
the things that produces thebest return of being here, turn
of being here, that we actuallygot to record this live and

(01:32:02):
people listening to this will uh, we'll be reaching out to you
and the team.
But, yeah, what are some of theother things that you've seen
so far?

Speaker 4 (01:32:08):
or even planning over the course of today and
tomorrow to be able to leavehere thinking like, yes, focus,
right, europe was a success andI'll plan to be back yeah, I
like to get deep, really deep,into some of the topics that are
really just high level, someother events, so it was deep
sessions on AI personalization,which I really liked.
Some of the insights that cameout of I think it was

(01:32:30):
TripAdvisor.
Yes, some super interestingstuff there.

Speaker 2 (01:32:34):
That was a great session to open up today.
Actually, I really enjoyed thatBoth Matt Goldberg, the CEO of
TripAdvisor, and Papine, who isthe new president of Viator.
Sorry, you were saying whatwere some of the standouts for
you about that.

Speaker 4 (01:32:46):
Yeah, no, I just like hearing the insights.
I'll tell you what I like.
If I can read something on thecompany's website about what
they do and they say the samething at an event, it's not well
going to the event.
So when they're sharing realinsights that you can't read on
their about page, that's what Ireally like.

(01:33:08):
That's what I resonate with,like, ah cool, that's why I came
here to see, like, what'shappening.
What do you see day to day?
Like what the real trends likeyeah, you know we did this and
here's the outcome.
And like and you hear this, yougo, you know I can learn from
that.
Yeah, you know, you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
You don't get this from the corporate about us page
you know for sure, and it'sinteresting you mentioned that,
because I just the thing I wouldsay about that session it was
very, very much real talk, realspeak and sometimes you do have
conferences where certainleaders, especially of publicly
traded companies, can't say much.
They can't, you know, sayanything forward guidance
related, so they have to be verymindful from a PR point of view

(01:33:38):
and so you don't get ameaningful conversation
sometimes with the leaders ofpublicly traded companies at a
major conference where theircomments can be taken out of
context.
But yeah, anyway, I found thatrefreshing as well and I've
certainly this conference hasbeen much more intimate is one
way to put it as far as like theinteractions that are occurring
here and that's certainly comeup as a theme.
But the other thing, youmentioned trends, and obviously

(01:33:59):
that is the big focus of ourpodcast.
It's really what our listenerswant to know and they want to
get to and they want to hearfrom people like yourself, mark,
as to what you're payingattention to as we sit here in
2025, and obviously statusmatches your business, but
you're a travel industry guy.
You've got your finger on thepulse of this space.
What are some of the thingsyou're paying attention to in
our industry, whether it's aprediction for the next year, or

(01:34:20):
what are the key trends thatyou're focusing on, and even
keep it specifically aboutloyalty.
That might be interesting toour audience again.
That's where I think we haven'tdived deep enough into this
topic.
So, yeah, what, what, what arethe things that are motivating
you every day and what are youpaying attention to?

Speaker 4 (01:34:35):
yeah, my blinkers really are on to loyalty and,
more specifically, the statusside of it.
It's just more focusing on allthe time and what I'm interested
in.
To be frank, if I look at thelast five or six years in
loyalty and use that as a basisto try and project the next five
or six years to see sort ofwhere it's going, what are the

(01:34:56):
trends?
It's not that much incrementalbut really creative.
I think there is so many easywins on tweaking stuff.
Yeah, yeah, so like we'reeffectively building new stuff
and tweaking around status.
Yeah, Stuff around credit cards, stuff around the earn and burn
, stuff around the opportunitiesthat you know the younger

(01:35:19):
travelers want.
Yeah, Because they're justinterested in different stuff.
I think there's a bunch ofthings that very small not small
like it's called easy wins yeah, the easy wins that can be had.
I don't think there's going tobe monumental shifts, Like AI is
not going to take over, youknow, and there's going to be a
Skynet running loyalty oranything I don't see this kind
of thing happening.

(01:35:40):
I see some application for thesethings, but like, fundamentally
happening, I see someapplication for these things, uh
, but like fundamentally travelnaughty, it's.
You know where we started, like40 years ago, 45 years ago.
So it's, it's, it's been arounda long time and it works
because it taps into the humanemotion.
Right, yeah, it's stuff.
It's like you feel good whenthis thing happens or you redeem
your, your miles and you getyou know the business class

(01:36:02):
flight you were never gonna buyfor your once in a lifetime trip
to take your wife to.
You get, you know, the businessclass flight you were never
going to buy for youronce-in-a-lifetime trip to take
your wife to paris.
You know this is this kind ofstuff this is built in our dna
like this is not really goinganywhere.
You know, we're still going towant the same things and so so
I'm super optimistic about the,the uh, the sort of future of
loyalty and where and where it'sgoing, because I feel, feel

(01:36:23):
it's all about bringing moreemotional experiences to our
lives, because that's reallywhat it's about, right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
Yeah, and I was going to make one comment in
connection here that I findfascinating when you vote.
Noah Harari is one of myfavorite authors, who wrote
Sapiens, and he's a historian.
He talks about the fact that hetalks a lot about AI, and one
of the critiques that someonehad said is that how is a
historian talking abouttechnology in the future?
And, as he highlighted, it'sreally the study of change over
time.
That's how you look at historyand obviously you can project

(01:36:50):
forward.
But specifically when you lookat humans and our species, our
certain behaviors, so it startswith how humans operate, and
status is critical to allaspects of the way our society
is formed and developed, to allaspects of the way our society
is formed and developed, andthere's no.
If you start paring backwhether it's the car that you
buy, the neighborhood you livein, the school your kids go to,
the style of dress likeeverything is about status and

(01:37:13):
that's where we are very tribaland we are like we literally
everything is.
But interestingly for me, whenit comes to status, it's
actually it's not about what itsays to other people that I have
my super elite on my bag.
It's what it means for me asthe traveler and all the
benefits.
Sure, some people will be like,oh, like, look at your status,
but that's actually not why I doit, maybe subconsciously.

(01:37:34):
You could probably argue thatthere's probably some perceived
social benefit to having thatstatus, but more importantly to
me, it is the fact that I getall these amazing benefits.
So what I'm to you and I thinkthat's very exciting for your
company and your business isthat even in the face of
technological change, at the endof the day, we're still dealing
with humans and status is suchan important thing.
So I'm very excited for yourfuture.

(01:37:56):
I'm bullish on the categoryyou're in and I definitely think
we need to do more on thisspace.
So let's find a way to do that.
But also let's make sure thatall of our listeners can learn
more about Status Match andLoyalty Status.
I mentioned the website, buttell us who they should connect
with.
They should connect with you orAaron or the team to learn more
information and to partner withyou.

Speaker 4 (01:38:14):
Yeah, I mean hit me up on LinkedIn, Mark Swift.
I'm pretty active on there, youknow I was any business
inquiries, hit up Aaron ormyself.
Aaron at statusmatchcom.

Speaker 2 (01:38:24):
Yeah, Aaron at statusmatchcom Aaron Murray, and
it's Aaron at we should makeher famous.

Speaker 4 (01:38:28):
She gets like a thousand connections today.
That'd make a day.

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
Let's blow off our LinkedIn profile.
All right, you'll get a freeTravel Trends t-shirt if you
connect with Aaron.
Wow, there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:38:39):
I'll get my 8,000 Russian bots on it right now.

Speaker 2 (01:38:42):
Awesome Well it's a real pleasure to meet you here,
Mark, and I look forward tokeeping in touch and good luck
with the conference, and I wishyou and the team every success
for the year ahead.

Speaker 4 (01:38:51):
Appreciate it Dan Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
I now have the opportunity to speak to a
colleague from Rail Europe andmany of our listeners know we
had Bjorn Bender, the CEO ofRail Europe, on our podcast in
season five and it was one ofour most popular episodes.
And Bjorn is here at the event,but also his chief growth
officer, robert Frum, and I sawRobert was here and was like we
have to speak on this podcastbecause people have now taken an

(01:39:17):
interest in rail, people knowabout Rail Europe, but of course
, this is our FocusriteBarcelona spotlight episode, so
we're going to have people thatare going to be familiar with
Rail Europe, for sure from thisevent, but also our global
listeners.
So I really wanted to haveRobert join us.
So welcome to Travel Trends,robert.

Speaker 10 (01:39:33):
Thank you, Daniel.
It's an honor and a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
Yeah, no, it's a real .
I love train travel myself andactually my family.
We're headed over to Europe ina couple of weeks time for our
big summer family holiday andthe most exciting thing we're
looking forward to is the highspeed trains.
And we've booked on Rail Europe, you'll be pleased to know Very
good.
I was like adamant, my wife'slooking at options.
I was like no, I've spoken tothe team, I trust them.
I like I understand the service.

(01:39:57):
So yes, but tell us a littlebit about your role, robert.

Speaker 10 (01:40:11):
And your role, robert, and as a chief growth
officer, I know you've been inthe role for about a year.
Tell us a little bit about yourrole at Rail Europe?
Sure, so in simple terms, theidea is, my job is to make sure
that Rail Europe grows as fastas possible in the right
direction, and that reallyhappens through a couple of
different levers.
So I have the main focus on ourconsumer business, but I also

(01:40:32):
look at marketing, pr, comms anddata across the company.
So these are all ways of how wecan better understand our
customers, build and support dothe right products, the right
marketing programs, the rightactivations, the right supply,
and then connect with them inthe right products, the right
marketing programs, the rightactivations, the right supply,
and then connect with them inthe right ways at the right time
.
So this is the job.
And then supporting all of our25,000 partners and agencies

(01:40:56):
across the world.

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
Yeah, exactly, you have a massive portfolio to
manage and I know from havinghad that conversation with Bjorn
that you are B2B and B2C andthere's a lot of complexity to
rail in Europe managing multiplepartners.
You have a strong technologyand marketing background.
I know you're at Google for adecade and so now that you are
at Rail Europe you've had a yearin.
This is your very firstFocusrite conference.
I know Bjorn's been coming forthe last few years, so tell us a

(01:41:19):
little bit what brought you tothe conference this year.

Speaker 10 (01:41:25):
Look, I think uh for especially for a conference
like focus right, it's reallyabout uh kind of finding
inspiration, new connections,new people, new perspectives on
everything that is going on.
I mean, we we're so focused inthe everyday on kind of
execution, um like just running,running, running after, after
the opportunities and beingbeing like super focused, then
taking a step back and thinkinga bit further into the future,

(01:41:46):
looking at what's going on withcompetitors, with potential
partners.
This is super inspiring.
It gives you energy to go backinto the grind, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
Yeah, for sure, and I know we're sitting here on the
second day, at the end of thesecond day.
There's really just one morehalf day tomorrow.
I'd love to hear about some ofthe sessions you've attended or
some of the highlights from theevent so far.

Speaker 10 (01:42:08):
Yeah, so there's a couple ones.
I guess this theme of new waysof serving customers, like this
piece, seems to be coming up indifferent ways.
We talk a lot about AI, ofcourse, but also like how kind
of discovery, how booking, howbuying, how that is changing.
So that's one topic that Ithink it's been really
interesting to kind of take alook at.
I think the second, like one ofthe highlights, I guess, for me

(01:42:32):
so far I was listening to oneof the early sessions with the
CEO of TripAdvisor and thepresident of Viator and I think
this idea of how everyone isfiguring out in this new
distribution customer engagementecosystem, what is really the
role of companies, the brandsand the services under those

(01:42:55):
portfolios and how to get theright trip activity
accommodation in front of theright person, the fact that no
one actually knows howeverything's going to shake out
this to me is super excitingwhat's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
You mentioned that because we've had a few guests
today say that that was a bighighlight and I was able to
attend that session.
It's one of the few that I havebeen able to because I knew
matt and I wanted to meet papineand they said a number of
people were commenting howrefreshing it was to hear that
conversation.
So it's interesting to hearknow you and your role at chief
gross officer at rail Europe,getting a benefit from hearing

(01:43:27):
from trip advisor and Viator.
But in terms of the eventitself, obviously there's
startups here.
There's, you know, there's the,the, the thought leadership
sessions.
What are some of the thingsthat you are hoping to put into
practice as a result of of beinghere?
Clearly, partnerships has been abig one, but there were certain
things for you.
I know AI every session's hadan AI theme, right, so I'm sure

(01:43:47):
there's lots on the AI topicthat has been coming up.
But yeah, what are some of the?
I guess the final takeaways, ifyou will, that you'll look to
kind of embrace as anorganization from what's come
out of Focusrite.

Speaker 10 (01:43:59):
All right.
So I guess I would say thatthere are two big things.
I'm not going to touch the AIpiece again, I think that's not.
I don't have anything superinteresting to add on that one,
but there are two others thatare super relevant for us.

(01:44:20):
So the first one is you know,I've had the chance to meet
several of our distributorpartners, so travel agents, tour
operators that we're alreadyworking with, some new ones who
are just coming live with us aswell and like getting firsthand
feedback on, like how are theircustomers, or the customer of
our customers, how are theylooking for rail, like the drive
and push for routes, for newfares for sleeper train, like
overnight sleeper trains and soon and so forth, like just

(01:44:42):
getting this feedback and kindof bringing that back like this
is one big part for me.
The second one is when it comesto like the business model of
rail and train travel overall.
Everyone knows it's, you knowground transportation.
Overall it's a low marginbusiness and you need to figure
out clever ways of kind ofmonetizing the value that you're

(01:45:06):
creating for users.
So here I've had a fantasticchance to talk to a bunch of
companies with reallycomplimentary offers to what
we're doing and together, byjoining forces with them, we can
create much better services forour customers and, ultimately,
better monetizationopportunities for us and our
travel agent partners as well.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Yeah, well, it's interesting to get your
perspective.
This is where you know thiswhole ecosystem.
There's all these differentplayers in the travel space and
even you actually highlightingbeing a low margin but obviously
high volume, and so when welook at the, we look at European
rail revenue.
I mean it's like $100 billionbusiness compared to River
Cruise, which is actually abouta $2 to $3 billion business and

(01:45:46):
so but the key, of course, istrying to find a way to be able
to monetize that figure, whatyour margins are and like.
So let's, let's get a bit moreinto the conversation about rail
and the trends that you'reseeing.
You know, when I was speakingto bjorn, I was very keen to
understand some of the topselling routes around europe.
One of the things that sort ofthat definitely has happened
since my conversation with himthat I'm keen to get your take
on is that European travel,especially for summer 2025 and

(01:46:09):
even for us this year, is up.
Usa is down in a verysignificant way for a number of
geopolitical reasons that Ithink everyone understands, but
when we think about Europe, younow have to deal with the
capacity, the constraints, andso it's exciting that you're
getting more business, butobviously it's another
complexity to manage.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe trends you're seeing in

(01:46:30):
European rail for summer 2025and some of the other key trends
that you're paying attention to.

Speaker 10 (01:46:36):
All right.
So there's a couple of thingsthat are standing out.
The first one is like we see anacceleration now of
cross-border journeys on rail.
So now, on our consumer side,more than 60% of the trips are
now multi-country.
So this idea of, like the bestway to experience more of Europe

(01:46:58):
is increasingly by rail.
The other thing that I think isquite interesting I mean we
have the evergreens, like themajor cities of you know, the
beautiful major cities of Europethat are.
You know, they're always thereon the top of our routes, but
increasingly we're seeing like,more hidden gems popping up.
So we see that first main route, let's say London, Paris on a

(01:47:18):
Eurostar, but then thecontinuation from there to
lesser known places.
I think people are getting alittle bit maybe fed up of being
elbow to elbow in super crowdedplaces, even though they might
be iconic, and just looking forsomething fresh, something
interesting, something new.
So this is something that we'reseeing more of as well.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
Very interesting.
Hidden gems was actually a bigtopic when I was speaking at the
ITB conference and I was askingBjorn a little bit about that.
So highlight, if you wouldn'tmind, some of the hidden gems in
Europe that travelers.
This is where both B2B and B2Cas I was explaining to Robert,
our audience is largely B2B, butmany of those B2B listeners are
also avid travelers or they'reservicing customers that might

(01:48:00):
be interested in knowing whatare some of the hidden gems in
Europe.
So, if you wouldn't mindsharing, here we are and going
into summer 2025, and certainlythe travelers are looking for
those hidden gems, Even ourfamily.
Last week, as we were makingour plans for our European trip
and doing the high-speed railfrom Madrid down to Malaga, we
were trying to figure out well,how are we going to be able to
see everything that we want tosee?

(01:48:21):
I would love if you wouldn'tmind sharing a few hidden gems.

Speaker 10 (01:48:25):
So, yeah, I think the great things about hidden
gems right is that they're alittle bit hidden and when it
comes to where we see new placespopping up, it's not that some
place suddenly becomes supercool, it's more that people are
kind of discovering these placesa little bit, even on their own
.
Of course we're working withour partners to kind of surface
this more and more as well.
But what I would encourage youto do, just go into

(01:48:48):
raileuropecom.
You can look at some of our newitineraries and travel plans
there.
I'm sure you'll find the hiddengem.

Speaker 2 (01:48:54):
That's perfect for you and your family.
We're going to keep looking,that's for sure, and make the
most of this trip, definitely.
And the opportunities to travelthrough rail in Europe are so
plentiful.
And that's the thing, even whenwe've been looking at different
places like, let's just jump onthe train, it's like it's the
default position in Europe,which is not familiar to North

(01:49:15):
Americans, because otherwisewe're going to drive or we're
going to get on a plane.
It's like usually those are thetwo options.
The train is a distant third.

Speaker 10 (01:49:23):
For sure.
I mean there's a bigeducational piece around this.
I think increasingly what we'reseeing when we kind of pull our
customers from overseas marketis that like it's not entirely
unfamiliar that the quality ofrail in Europe is quite high,
but still the gap between thisidea of train and then how do I
plan my trip in, you know,country X to country Y.

(01:49:45):
I think it's more about nudgingon inspiration and making it a
bit more accessible, but it'scertainly.
I mean we're seeing some niceincrease here as well.

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):
Well, I'm certainly familiar with the brand and have
been for a number of years,ever since we did our Eurorail
trip, and so one of the things Iwant to make sure that our
listeners understand, especiallygiven your role as a chief

(01:50:14):
growth officer working acrossB2B and B2C what are sort of the
?
If you wouldn't mind justgiving us a bit of an overview
of your marketing strategy, justa few highlights of how you
approach marketing this brand,and especially when you're
trying to balance the interestsof B2B and B2C, because
obviously both are important and, as you well know, b2c drives
B2B.
So if you're doing marketing,they'll book with partners just
as easily as they'll come directto your website.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe marketing strategy of Rail
Europe.
All right, fantastic.

Speaker 10 (01:50:34):
So there are a couple of key themes that are
really at the core of how weapproach marketing at Rail
Europe, and the first keyword iscollaboration.
So we work extensively with ournetwork of partners, with DMOs,
tourism organizations indifferent countries, to kind of

(01:50:55):
inspire, educate and activate.
So we work, of course, withTravel Engine hopefully many of
you are listening to this aswell but also to just make
everyone better informed abouthow, why and when, like how to
make the most out of RHEL.
So this is a big part of whatwe do globally and we've been
doing this for a long time.
The second part, I think, forus is it's really around how do

(01:51:21):
we activate users at the righttime.
Where we are really reallyquite good is at closing the
loop, so going from the planningstage to then closing and
actually buying that trip.
And our approach here is kindof one part of the traditional
performance marketing book, andthis is really what the guys

(01:51:43):
from Viator and TripAdvisor weretalking about at the stage this
morning as well.
But then having this transitioninto being more assistive, more
useful, more present on LLMsurfaces and whatnot.
So I think it's a one-two punchof really working extensively
in activating and collaboratingin the ecosystem and then

(01:52:04):
serving customers really well intheir planning and buying
fashion.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
One of the things I wanted to ask you as well, just
in terms of the marketingstrategy.
We had Travis Pittman, the CEOof TourRadar, as part of this
podcast and he was talking abouttheir social first strategy and
all their efforts to connectwith creators and specifically
focus on video content, and soI'm curious just when you're
looking at making sure that yourmarketing strategy connects

(01:52:30):
with the next generation ofcustomers, especially that next
generation that is likely goingto be coming across from
Australia or the US and doingrail trips.
How important are things likeTikTok and social media?
How do you see that space?

Speaker 10 (01:52:46):
It's vital, it's non-negotiable for us as well, I
think, for a couple ofdifferent reasons.
First of all, you need to bewhere customers are, and we know
how media behavior and shiftsare happening.
We know in what surfaces, whatplatforms, where people are when
they are getting inspired,where they're doing some of

(01:53:07):
their planning, looking foroptions and so on.
So we simply need to be there,and this we've been doing for a
long time, working withinfluencers to also again like
inform, educate and inspirecustomers as well, like this is
something that we've been doingfor years and years.
So for us, the question thereis more about how do we
effectively scale that up in ameaningful way, and maybe the
final part on this one is now,with the way we see zero-click

(01:53:33):
behavior across search engines,like AI mode on Google and chat
GP to perplexity and so on, kindof being more influential on
the customer journey.
The best way to actually bethere and show there is simply
to be famous.
It's to have a fantastic brand,and that really happens through

(01:53:54):
PR, through influencers,through just doing the right
things over and over again overyears and decades.

Speaker 2 (01:54:00):
Yeah, no, that's well said, and I think the other
thing I want to just ask youabout is the partnerships, given
how important that is to thebusiness as well.
And again, this is, like youknow, in roles that I've had in
the past, and you know it's suchan important global role that
you have for Rail Europe to workwith all these different
partners and be here.
How do you engage partners, howdo you do marketing activity
and how do you expand yourdistribution side as well?

(01:54:22):
As this is where it's thecomplexity of modern day
marketers.
You've got to go everythingfrom managing an instagram reel
and a tiktok campaign to beingable to go into a boardroom and,
you know, present to um, to keypartners.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe partner side of the business
and how you manage that yeah,yeah, and I've done a bit of
both like that.

Speaker 10 (01:54:39):
We're just saying from the extremes, but.
But I, so our partners come inin different shapes and sizes
right, and with some it's aboutjust being super well connected
into their needs and thenconnecting our marketing,
product and tech teams to reallybuild the right offer, the
right setup, the right API, theright experience on our rail

(01:55:02):
portal, for example.
But increasingly it's not justabout working with partner X,
it's really about who else do webring into the room?
So we will work with a carriertowards a specific market.
We'll work together with DMOand we'll sit down and think
about how do we?
Because we all have a uniquepart to play in this.
Like our partners in themarkets, they're ultimately

(01:55:25):
taking care of their customers,they're serving them, they know
them best.
Then we have a DMO who'sfantastic at animating and
bringing to life, like all thefantastic locations and
experiences that are there inEurope, and our job is then to
be the glue between these twoand kind of make it accessible,
useful, simple and just simplywork.
So it's increasingly ourbuilding this ecosystem where

(01:55:48):
everyone can win and we can kindof grow the overall rail market
in Europe together.

Speaker 2 (01:55:54):
Yeah, and the reason that I asked that question is
that obviously one, it's thechallenge to manage your role,
but more importantly, I thinkit's the key to success is being
channel agnostic oromni-channel, those two things
omni-channel with marketing andchannel agnostic when it comes
to where the business is goingto come from, because really
it's not a zero-sum game.
You want business from alldifferent sources.

Speaker 10 (01:56:14):
That's a perfect way to summarize it.
At the end of the day, whatthis market overall needs is
that we have hundreds, you knowwe have hundreds of millions of
overnight and travelers intoEurope, like from outside,
overseas and within Europe.
For many, many of these people,many will take a train already

(01:56:35):
today.
It's fine Like we'll try toserve them or, you know,
competitors and partners willserve them.
This is good, but there are somany of these journeys that
would either benefitsignificantly, or even train
might be even necessary forthese journeys to be successful.
Here we need to figure out whatis the best way to get that rail
ticket as part of that person'sjourney.
It could be throughraileuropecom I'm happy to do it

(01:56:57):
on our own website butoftentimes they will go to a
travel agent because this is howthey solve for trip planning
complexity.
Or they will go to a touroperator because they want to
have these packages and somesecurity from there.
Or they will go to a large OTA.
They will go to one of ourpartners and they will book
there.
At the end of the day, I don'treally care today about what
service they use, as long as wecan make their travels great.

Speaker 2 (01:57:21):
Yeah, very well said.
Just to finish up, one thing Ialso wanted to get your read on
is where Rail Europe is headedover the next six to 12 months.
So I'd love to hear some of theother initiatives that you have
underway, whether it bemarketing, distribution.
What are some of the how thebrand is going to continue to
evolve?
So tell us some of the things.
I know we've talked on AI.
Of course that has to be a partof it, and we talked to Bjorn

(01:57:43):
about that.
We've talked about that.
So obviously that's a key piece.
But, yeah, tell us what aresome of the things we should be
looking for expecting from RailEurope over the next year.

Speaker 10 (01:57:50):
Okay.
So I guess the first thing isfor us is Rail, rail, rail.
So it's about deepening ouroffer, making sure we're doing a
fantastic job of bringing thesupply to all of our partners.
This is priority number one.
Then, I think number two to meis we've been working quite a

(01:58:14):
lot actually these past three,four months on our company
strategy, on our productstrategy, how we're thinking
about our focus and what type oftrips and travelers we want to
be serving.
So we have a pretty excitingroadmap of features,
functionalities and ideas thatmy product colleagues would kill
me if I give too much up inadvance.
But it's really about how canwe better serve the customer.

(01:58:36):
The one thing we hear loud andclear planning and buying, not
train even, but travel intoEurope.
It's somewhat broken, like youhave a million different options
to choose from, so you're goingto end up feeling overwhelmed,
a little bit exhausted, feelinglike I'm making substandard
choices for what I do Likesimplifying this complexity in

(01:58:58):
the right ways.
This is probably what I'm mostexcited about that we're working
on with the teams.

Speaker 2 (01:59:03):
No, it's great to hear.
I mean, obviously I'm thrilledthat we got a chance to meet and
have this conversation.
I want to make sure that ourlisteners can find out more
information about Rail Europeand obviously connect with you
too, robert, if there might bepartnership opportunities or
marketing opportunities.
So where would you suggestpeople reach?

Speaker 10 (01:59:18):
out.
So raileuropecom to find outmore, and just find me on
LinkedIn, robert Fromm, andlet's connect there and we'll
continue the discussionFantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:59:28):
Thanks so much for joining us, Robert.
Look forward to keeping intouch.

Speaker 10 (01:59:31):
Fantastic.
Thanks so much, Daniel.

Speaker 2 (01:59:35):
I now have the pleasure to speak to the CEO of
RaiseUp, rita J Varga.
Now, rita and I have had theopportunity to collaborate on a
number of different projectsover the years.
Travel Tech Nation, you were apart of.
You brought me in to speak atone of the events, and the
really cool thing is we've notmet in person yet.
We've seen each other so manytimes online and so five minutes
ago, rita and I just gave eachother a big hug and finally met

(01:59:57):
in person.
It's a delight to finally meetyou, and I'm thrilled that
you're going to be on the TravelTrends podcast.
Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 19 (02:00:03):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
And I think the realconnections happen when you are
exactly the same online asoffline and then just the
conversation goes as if you knowanything happened just in other
circumstances.
So, yeah, thank you so much forhaving me.

Speaker 2 (02:00:19):
So, rita, it's so great to finally meet you in
person.
Tell everyone about Raise Upand what you do.

Speaker 19 (02:00:24):
Yeah, so Raise Up was born as Women in Hospitality
and Travel Tech, as anon-profit organization in 2019.
And six years onwards, we arestill on one side a non-profit
organization for diversity andinclusion within the travel
industry, but we also run aconsultancy, working with
businesses towards morediversity on the top through

(02:00:47):
trainings, through recruitment,and I'm also a big advocate for
a diverse ecosystem within thetravel technology space.
So we support a number ofstartups within our lovely
industry.

Speaker 2 (02:01:00):
And you also work with women's-only organizations
too, right?
Tell us a bit about that.

Speaker 19 (02:01:04):
I love to support female businesses.
I think that's part of thediverse ecosystem.
There are a number ofchallenges that women face in
the workplace in general andthen when it comes to getting
access to different, not onlyfunding but just opportunities
in terms of partnerships,business opportunities in terms

(02:01:24):
of branding and positioning.
There are so many commonchallenges that we know and
support and want to untackle andmake it easier the journey for
other female founders yeah,that's great.

Speaker 2 (02:01:40):
I see the the terrific work that you do and I
commend you for it because it'sin the in the travel industry.
I mean it is a theme.
What's really interesting islike it should be a female
dominated industry.
A lot of the executives are men.
That is changing.
Most of the decisions aroundtravel are made by women
especially, 80 percent of traveldecisions are made by women.
And one of our partners who'shere, a flightographer, nicole

(02:02:03):
Smith great example of a femalefounder.
And even the fact that it camefrom a problem of a mom not
being in the photos with herfamily and always looking like
it's a single dad with two kids,and so it was a problem that
only a mother would understand.
And then now she's up and mostof the women making these
decisions and booking thesepackages are women.

(02:02:25):
But tell everyone a bit moreabout what brings you to the
event this year.
And also, one thing I want tohighlight too is that Rita
speaks seven languages, andthat's just astounding.
I mean, when you come to Europe, you're Hungarian originally
and you divide your time betweenthree different cities yeah, is
that right?

Speaker 19 (02:02:46):
Yeah, so our base because I have three kids myself
as well and they have to go toschool somewhere is close to
Budapest.
But for the past 12 years Ibuilt a business in Berlin and
then our nonprofit angle isbased here in Barcelona, so I
actually made sure I'm aroundthe three cities all the time
and get some time in everysingle place as well.
B, B, B.

Speaker 2 (02:03:04):
And how old are your kids now?
Do you mind me asking?

Speaker 19 (02:03:06):
Oh, two, three and seven Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:03:09):
And I ask just because it's like you're at that
.
You know that's the tough stage.
We've got young kids to betraveling, to be working as hard
as you do.
It is that much more impressive.

Speaker 19 (02:03:19):
So credit to you but I've been pregnant a lot during
focus right conferences, to behonest well, at least that's not
the case this year.

Speaker 2 (02:03:27):
No, no, no, we get to have a drink this year now tell
us yeah, this year, 2025, theeurope conference is the first
one for me, but you've beenbefore pregnant multiple times.
Tell us what, besides not beingpregnant this time?
What else are you lookingforward to being at this event?

Speaker 19 (02:03:42):
Yeah, so I've been and they tell me I'm a unique
person.
I've been young leader at FocusRight for two years
consecutively, before I actuallydisqualified as a young leader,
but it's always you think youknow before I actually
disqualified as a young leader,but it's always you think you

(02:04:02):
know the industry and then youcome to a place like this and
then it's just like I'm Jon SnowI know nothing, because there
are so many innovations, thereare so many niche challenges
that are getting solved throughnew technology, through new
solutions coming up in the space, and I think Focusrite is the
place where you learn aboutthese things and kind of look
into the future.
But on the other hand, I'vebeen working with Focusrite on

(02:04:25):
and off as an external part,supporting different initiatives
, hosting workshops.
On the DEI angle, this year weare going to co-host with Walter
Busta, who is the SVP ofmarketing a startup networking
launch.
So there is always a good piecefor myself in terms of business,

(02:04:47):
in terms of supporting ourcommunity, but, of course,
looking at the innovation pieceright, For sure, that's
fantastic.

Speaker 2 (02:04:54):
And this year, are you doing any sessions or
hosting any sessions?
This year?
For sure, that's fantastic.
And this year are you doing anysessions or?

Speaker 19 (02:04:58):
hosting any sessions this year?
Yeah, so we are actually goingto host a networking launch for
startup founders in the space,so that's particularly female
founders, but female foundersare very much invited to these
events and to participate and bepart of the conversation.
But when we talk aboutdiversity, I think we have to

(02:05:19):
look on the big scope that someof the customers.
They look at providers that areXYZ old and have financial XYZ
behind them and I think a goodpiece of the startups that are
coming out right now they solveniche challenges, but these

(02:05:39):
niche challenges can be actuallybig for the end customer.

Speaker 2 (02:05:43):
For sure.

Speaker 19 (02:05:44):
And that's why the advocacy needs to be done that
there are new solutions that areexactly going to solve that has
been your biggest pain for thepast 10 years, and maybe you
didn't even know about that.

Speaker 2 (02:05:56):
Now this year's event is in a new venue, which I I'm
understanding.
For a number of people, this isa big upgrade yeah and it's
beautiful, but, um, what aresome of the things this year
that, when you looked at theagenda and the overall plans for
this year, that brought youback to the event?
Obviously, you know a lot ofpeople there's, there's many
reasons for you to be here, butwas there other things that
stood out about this year'sagenda, speakers or the sessions

(02:06:19):
that were planned?

Speaker 19 (02:06:21):
Yeah, I mean, I'm always a huge fan of, again,
practical things and everyone istalking about AI, but different
ways to A build your use casefor the usage of AI and what are
actually the technologies thatare out there to cover those
needs, and kind of looking atthe whole process.

(02:06:44):
And then, of course, there isthe sustainability piece, where
you look into different anglesin terms of over-tourism.
I'm also a huge fan of lookingfrom a sustainability angle of
destination revenue management,so selecting different groups of
travelers to your destinationsto avoid over tourism but at the

(02:07:09):
same time, your destination isactually making more revenue at
the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (02:07:14):
So that's a nice piece for me to connect yeah,
explain that a little bit more,because I think that would be
really interesting for ourglobal audience.
Um, the destination revenuemanagement exactly how does that
apply and how do you?
Um, how do you helporganizations increase that?

Speaker 19 (02:07:29):
yeah, so, um, in general, last year we had a
focus right had um the presidentof barcelona tourism here who
was talking about.
You know, there are all thesecruise ships that offload that
whole bunch of people who arethere in the city, crowding the
city, walking around, butactually not spending any money.

(02:07:50):
Right so they are coming out,but they have their lunch on
their cruise ship.
That's it, you know you buy atoy or something like a glass of
red or something like that, butyou don't actually spend money
you're not really supporting thecommunity yeah, and and you are
not purposeful at the end ofthe day.
You are with the curiosity oflike, okay, let's check off

(02:08:12):
seven destinations in 12 days orsomething like that, but there
is there is no large biggerpurpose to that.
So he was talking about come tobarcelona for xyz reason, but
then stay for, for the culture,stay for everything that
barcelona has to offer besidesbeing, you know, on the
checklist, yes, and things likethat.

(02:08:33):
So we we spoke a lot about inthe sustainability breakout room
the same thing happening inScotland or in Bhutan, where
they actually managed to ifyou're not spending a certain
amount of money in the country,then you are not eligible to
stay.

Speaker 11 (02:08:51):
Right.

Speaker 19 (02:08:52):
But you know, the two things connect
Sustainability.
You avoid overtourism at theend of the day.
But you also have the right toselect and if you let someone in
, what is the level that you areallowing?
To stay with you Well it'sreally interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
I had a guide this morning with context travel to
go and explore one of themarkets and one of the questions
I had for the guide wasactually understanding this
question of over-tourism,because I think a lot of
international travelers haveseen that some of the images
from Barcelona, the water gunsand how tourists have been
treated.
What he wanted to clarify to meis it's more of an anti-Airbnb

(02:09:31):
or anti-short-term rental thanit is anti-tourism, because this
city relies so much on tourism,but it's the concern that these
short-term rentals are drivingup the cost of housing for
locals.

Speaker 19 (02:09:42):
That's been a pain for the past 20 years, to be
honest.

Speaker 2 (02:09:45):
Tell us about some of the things that you're paying
attention to.
What's happening in Europeantravel?

Speaker 19 (02:09:55):
Well, it's basically setting up purposeful travel,
whatever you need to get out ofthe destination.
I work quite a lot with hotelsas well, and hotel technologies
and I think things that are likeI'm planning, trip planning and
activities and experiences.
These are the things that AIcan help you with and you get an

(02:10:21):
itinerary based on yourpersonal needs and your focus
group and the purpose of yourtravel, and this is something
that I think is going to grow,also, because a lot of the hotel
brands that I see around theydon't really offer branded
recommendations on that.

(02:10:42):
So, I think some sort ofdestination guide, tailored
experiences in the hotelindustry, that you have the
access to information the wayyou haven't had the chance to,
because until now, you Googlethings, now you chat, gpt things
, and that's changing massivelythe way you haven't had the
chance to because until now yougoogle things.
Yeah, now you chat, gpt thingssure and that's changing
massively the way we look attravel.

(02:11:03):
We research travel and then wespend our experience because, um
, you don't want to come tobarcelona and take a hotel and
take the first restaurant nextto you just because, because
it's next to it, you can havelike the worst food.
You know, we all have theexperience when you are like I
went to Geneva, genova, sorry,in Italy, yeah, and I had the

(02:11:29):
worst pizza of my life.
You know, it was like one ofthose that you took out from the
freezer and it was half frozen,and then, like, you're going to
italy for a pizza, right, youhave to have a pizza when you're
in italy and then it was justthe worst thing.
And I think that's what, like,ai can help you with with, with
giving um, personalizedrecommendations and and this is

(02:11:53):
not only for europe, I I thinkit's global, given the number of
searches that chat, gptprocesses on a daily basis but
it's massively changing how weactually approach travel and
giving prompts about what we areexpecting from a journey.

Speaker 2 (02:12:08):
Yeah, well, the key word there is personalized
travel, because that's what AIcertainly has the opportunity to
better customize based on whatit knows about you.
Sure, Google's been doing thatfor years with.

Speaker 19 (02:12:20):
I turned off my memory, by the way.
Ah, smart lady, very smart lady.

Speaker 2 (02:12:26):
Tell us a little bit more about Rise Up, where you
guys are headed as anorganization and some of the
exciting projects that you haveon the go.

Speaker 19 (02:12:33):
Yeah, so we are working with a number of event
organizations such as Focusrite,but we are also hosting our own
programs.
We host a program for revenueand commercial leaders within
the hotel technology spacebecause, again, AI is coming,

(02:12:53):
there is a lot more changing andwe are looking to educate but
also kind of approaching agrowth mindset with leadership
in the hotel space but alsobringing in new technology
solutions that people can becurious about.
So we launched a program calledRevenue Leadership Program where
C-level leaders can join andsort of build a learning

(02:13:16):
community and learning about newthings as well.
As we started as anorganization advocating for
diversity and inclusion, and oneway to actually effectively do
it is via recruitment Right.
So we tapped into therecruitment space, making sure

(02:13:38):
that in a growing economy aswell as a changing economy,
there is a right angle toapproach talent, how the roles
are shifting, how you actuallygo and market.
So there is a big piece inemployment branding approach new
generations, because theyobviously expect different

(02:13:59):
things than you know ourgeneration and different
generations on the market.
So there is a recruitment piecethat is happening as working
with startups that we see thathave a major purpose as well as

(02:14:21):
great niche solutions on themarket, so that's why I'm quite
biased.
I love a solution called Obvlothat builds experiences and
activities, itineraries fordestinations and hotels, Giving
personalized recommendations ViaAI.

Speaker 2 (02:14:39):
Very interesting Say the name of that.

Speaker 19 (02:14:42):
Obvlo Obviously local.

Speaker 2 (02:14:46):
Clever naming.

Speaker 19 (02:14:48):
That's a startup, for example, that we are
supporting, but there are anumber of startups that are
looking into nurturing and sortof looking into Go-to-market
plans, investment plans.
How do I build my brand, how doI build my partnership strategy
?
Because one good thing aboutFocusrite as well if you are
looking into new partnerships,both technically speaking as

(02:15:12):
well as commercially speaking,this is the right place.
You just set up a meeting withsomeone they accept.
There you have the conversationwhich normally, maybe you would
have to lobby for for sixmonths.

Speaker 2 (02:15:24):
Right, very true, yeah.
And the other thing I wanted tohighlight for all of our
listeners too.
I know you partner with anumber of organizations.
You've shared some examples.
I know a number of colleaguesthat have worked with you and
have thoroughly enjoyed workingwith you.
I see you doing some fantasticcollaborations, so tell all of
our listeners how they canpartner with you and where best

(02:15:44):
to follow up and connect withyou and the team.

Speaker 19 (02:15:46):
Well, if you want to know me, go to my LinkedIn Rita
J Varga.
Don't forget the J.
The J is very important in thispiece.

Speaker 2 (02:15:53):
Don't forget the J the.

Speaker 19 (02:15:56):
J is very important in this piece.
But yeah, beriseupcom, and thenyou can find out about all our
initiatives.
We are hosting a couple ofbigger events, offline as well
as online, and just drop me aline, I'm very, very accessible.

Speaker 2 (02:16:12):
That's fantastic.
One last question for you toleave our audience with, given
that we're here in 2025 andwe'll be back again in Europe in
2026.
I'm certain of it.

Speaker 9 (02:16:23):
Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (02:16:24):
No, thank you, and we've got a great partnership.
I'll be in San Diego later thisyear, so we're continuing to
deepen our partnership andexplore new opportunities to
work together, and they're goingto get involved in our AI
summit and so we're going to dosome virtual events together.
So, similar to you, it's agreat company to partner with.
But what I was going to ask you, as we sit here now and you

(02:16:45):
think about what the world andwhat the travel industry will
look like a year from now, whatwould be one thing that you're
paying attention to?

Speaker 19 (02:16:53):
I think I've already said that as well.
More personalization it startswith what data to collect from
your travelers and translatingit into actionable items.
Whether that's translated totechnology or simply service, it

(02:17:16):
kind of goes into the same.
But I think personalization andthe way we collect data to be
able to provide personalizedexperiences, that's where we
need further development andthat's where the industry is
going to.

Speaker 2 (02:17:30):
I'm going to give you a 99% chance of success with
that.

Speaker 19 (02:17:33):
Thank you that was a safe one right.

Speaker 2 (02:17:34):
Yeah you played it very safe, rita, I'm impressed
You're you are.
Thank you, that was a safe one,right?
Yeah, you played it very safe,rita I'm impressed.
You are a senior statesman andyou know this industry well, and
so it's a great pleasure tofinally meet you in person.
I'm so glad we made time forthis.

Speaker 19 (02:17:49):
Likewise.
Thank you so much.
That was spontaneous.

Speaker 2 (02:17:53):
Yeah, it was wonderful and I look forward to
keeping in touch and I'm suremany of our listeners will reach
out to you.
But yeah, thanks for being sucha great supporter and being on
our show and I look forward tocontinued collaborations
together.

Speaker 19 (02:18:01):
Yeah, thank you Likewise.

Speaker 2 (02:18:08):
Thank you, dan.
Our next guest requires nointroduction, but I'm going to
give him one anyway because he'sa dear friend and a valued
colleague of mine over the lastdecade.
It is Travis Pittman, the CEOand founder of Tour Radar Now
Travis and I.
The reason I wanted to givesome context to this
conversation is because we're atFocusrite Europe.
It's my very first time atFocusrite Europe and I would
always see Travis every year atFocusrite in the US and I would

(02:18:31):
always look forward to seeinghim because him and I were the
two people fighting the goodfight to get multi-day tour
recognized and on stage, and sowe were always back to back
trying to raise recognition andwe finally I eventually got on
stage, you eventually got onstage.
You're presenting here today,finally, the category that I
remember.
Speaking to one of yourinvestors in that moment, they
said we have conviction on thecategory.

(02:18:52):
And here we are, travis,sitting here together.
I'm running this podcast,you're running tour radar and uh
, we're still pals and um, butso much has happened over that
time, so I'm thrilled thatyou're such a great partner of
ours and and such a great friend.

Speaker 18 (02:19:06):
So welcome back to Travel Trends thank you, dan and
uh, thanks for the kind wordsand and obviously, yeah,
fighting the, the good fight formulti-day or organized
adventure, as we try to call it.
So, yeah, today it's been aneye-opener to see that there's a
lot more awareness of ourcategory now, so we, slowly but
surely, we're getting there.

Speaker 2 (02:19:25):
Well, and you are a pioneer in this space, so let's
just make sure that we don't.
With our global audience, Idon't want to leave anyone
behind.
Travis has been on our podcast.
He's been on our podcast twice.
He's been in event episodes wedid we recorded in Toronto.
He's going to be a part ofseason six.
He's going to be a part of ourAI summit.
So he's known to many of ourlisteners, but this also goes
out to the entire Focusritecommunity.

(02:19:46):
So I just want to make surethat we don't leave anyone
behind.
Travis, if you wouldn't mindjust giving everyone an overview
of TourRadar and how longyou've been at it.
That's why I say you're a truepioneer in this space, because
you are ahead of your time andfinally it's getting the
recognition it deserves.
Give a bit of an overview ofTourRadar.

Speaker 18 (02:20:01):
Yeah, thanks, dan.
So we're 15 years in, sodefinitely not straight out of
the starting blocks, but wefocus on multi-day tours, so
it's the part of the industrythat kind of got forgotten about
and everyone said, oh, no onedoes those things anymore, do
they?
They don't follow an umbrellaaround, but clearly there's a
$200 billion segment that neededto be digitized, and that's

(02:20:28):
very much what TourRadar hasbeen doing, since DayDot is
really driving forward withpartners like TTC and
G-Adventures and Intrepid andworking with them on their APIs,
and now we work with 2,500 touroperators globally, dmcs, we
have 30,000 travel agents in ourB2B platform and, yeah, we've
got some exciting launches thatI'm actually doing here at the
show as well.

Speaker 2 (02:20:47):
So, that's cool.
I definitely want to ask youwhat brings you here this year,
because obviously that's a bigtheme of us doing this event
spotlight.
But just before we do, you justhighlighted a couple important
things that I think that I wantto just underscore, which is the
size of the global multi-daytour or organized adventure, and
again, it's like what's thenomenclature for this category?
The reality is is thatorganizations you just

(02:21:08):
highlighted, you know, 10, 15years ago they were 50, $100
million companies.
Now many of them are $500million, a billion dollar
companies, intrepid being onegreat example of that.
You mentioned GE as well.
We think about Collette andGlobus and all of these brands.
These are all billion dollarbusinesses today.
And then you also have to yourpoint about 2,500 tour operators
.
You have all of these smallerplayers like One Life Adventures

(02:21:31):
and like that, you know, cameout of nowhere and all of a
sudden have 10,000, 20,000passengers and they're becoming
meaningful businesses.
So it is a very exciting timeto be in this space.
So tell us I know you've got somany different initiatives on
the go and different launchesbut tell us what specifically
brought you to Focusrite Europe.

Speaker 18 (02:21:48):
Yeah, so perfect timing.
We've been working in thebackground for a while.
We built out our mobile appabout nine months ago and people
said, look, people won't book a$3,000, $5,000 experience on
mobile.
We prove it does.
So.
About 15% of our bookings arenow transacting through the
mobile app and we saw a massivegap in social discovery.

(02:22:09):
So think of a multi-day tour.
How can you look at one pictureand book a $3,000 eight-day
experience?
How can you really do that?
And so what we actually havedone is gone full circle.
I don't know if you rememberthe bug-bitten days.

Speaker 2 (02:22:22):
Yeah, of course I do, so that's what TourRadar
evolved out of.

Speaker 18 (02:22:26):
It was all about photos, videos, community and
reviews and we've come fullcircle.
So we've now spent 15 yearsbuilding this commerce platform.
Now we're plugging in social.
So we are launching tour radarmoments uh, tomorrow.
Uh, live to the world.
And it is essentially oursocial commerce play, connecting
the social inspiration with thebookability in the app.

(02:22:48):
So any customer, any traveler,can upload a video, a reel, and
it's attached directly to anindividual tour.
So one click, one tap, you'reactually booking that product.
So you can see a serengetivideo, you go, wow, that's
amazing, click it and you bookit straight away.
So that's something no one elsehas done and, being an
experiential product, we havethe advantage over, say,

(02:23:10):
accommodation or whatever it is,where you're not going to take
a picture of your hotel room inparis, but you're actually going
to want to share your bucketlist adventure that you've done
in Africa, and then you want toshare it on Tour Radar Moments,
but also on TikTok and Instagram, and that's where we're trying
to work in between all thedifferent social networks.

Speaker 2 (02:23:26):
Very cool.
Well, as you know, travis, Ilove the team, I love the
business and one of the things Ijust wanted to call out is that
a lot of Tour Radar stafflisten to our podcast and it
connects to the point you werejust making, which is that there
was an episode of our podcastin season four about social is
the new SEO and I had understoodfrom the team that it became
required listening and it'sactually one of the things that

(02:23:47):
we're going to focus on inseason six.
We're going to bring Travis andAzaz onto the show to talk about
this social first strategy.
So tell everyone, if youwouldn't mind, just a brief
little highlight of that withthe learnings from the podcast,
because we're going to reallydive into that in season six.
So we'll bring a lot of peopleon the journey for that
conversation.
But just to kind of, I guess,whet everyone's appetite for to

(02:24:07):
learn more about the socialfirst.
Tell everyone a little bit ofthat connectivity, because I was
thrilled to hear that andobviously conrad runs at hotels
as a very successful business,but you're obviously to take
that idea and shift it in adifferent direction for
adventure travel.
Clearly now it's proving to bevery successful for your
business, which I'm thrilledabout.

Speaker 18 (02:24:24):
Yeah, for sure we talk about it all next time, but
the core elements is we need tobe video, we need to be social,
we need to be working withcreators, guides, travelers,
tour operators to get thiscontent and share it.
And so we have seen that,working with creators that are
what you call micro sorryinfluencers where 5,000, 10,000

(02:24:47):
followers is the sweet spot ofwhere you actually get them
leaning into you because theywant exposure to your network.
And then, obviously, you know,working with the bigger ones is
good, but they're more expensiveand there's a lot more of these
people who want to actuallyalmost have a bit of a side
hustle, and that's what we'veseen.
There's some companies likeFora Travel.
They're doing the side hustleadvisor thing, and we're tapping

(02:25:09):
into a similar psyche whereambassadors can join TourRadar
or apply and then they can earnmoney on the side, either
through affiliate links orbooking travel or creating
content, and we're going to bedropping something in about
three or four weeks, which ispretty exciting for creators.
So it's on the back of the appas well.

Speaker 2 (02:25:25):
That's fantastic.
I know Travel Massive and Stage22 recently did a study about
the creator economy and itrevealed a lot of these insights
, which is, the vast majority ofthem don't earn a full living
wage off of these.
They hold full-time jobs andthey love traveling so much that
they want to work with partnersand it's meaningful to them the
additional revenue that theygenerate from it.
But it's literally like 80% ofthe creators are doing it as a

(02:25:46):
side hustle and it's those microor nano influencers that are
actually driving a huge volumeof the business.
That's really exciting, travis.
The other thing I wanted tohighlight too, too, was your
talk that you did today, becausehere's a really cool thing and
again, that's why I wanted tostart the introduction the way I
did, because you know, it usedto be the case that we couldn't
get on stage Even when I was atthe Travel Corporation trying to
represent Trafalgar and Contikiand all those brands, and I

(02:26:09):
knew the size of the businessand I couldn't understand why
more people didn't want to hearour story or be able to talk
about this category.
And all of a sudden now you area featured speaker at multiple
Focusrite conferences.
You're on a panel today and I'dsaid to Travis just before we
started recording, there was twopeople standing outside of the
room that had come out after thesession Paulina from
Flytographer and Alex fromZoftify just to be specific

(02:26:32):
about who they were that don'tactually know, travis and said
to me that was the best sessionI've attended today.
That was so interesting and Iwas like wait a second.
Oh, that's the moment, travis,and you came out of the room and
I was like it was so cool thatbeing at an event like this,
these are people that were justimpacted by the session.
You just ran the fact thatyou're on stage talking about
this category and other peopleare going wow, and they don't

(02:26:53):
even know you, and I'm just likethat's my buddy, travis, and so
here we are.

Speaker 18 (02:26:56):
It wasn't just me there was a panel of people.
But no, glad to hear that itwas informative and we had a
pretty good chat yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:27:04):
You had Sarah from Viator, sarah Dines from Viator.

Speaker 18 (02:27:08):
Mariano from Civitatis yeah, and Angus from
Hollybob Right and myself yeah,bob right and myself yeah.
So tell everyone a little bitabout what you guys talked about
.
That had people coming outraving about it.
It was we.
We went, you know, I think, on aon a journey, but uh, it

(02:27:29):
started out talking a bit aboutthe state of how each of us see
the current, I guess, changesthat we're all experiencing from
different perspectives.
So everyone from their ownperspective spoke about it and I
think we're all facingdifferent challenges.
But what I tried to sort ofhighlight and then there was
actually a vc in there who whoasked a question about it
customer acquisition iseverything like.
So we know that in travel, thatis the for the b2c consumer

(02:27:50):
side.
How do you acquire customersefficiently and scalably is the
challenge, and and we knowGoogle is changing so much, like
you know, we felt that over thelast 12 to 18 months with SEO,
we were so reliant on it andit's hurt us, but it's forced us
now to pivot to find other youknow channels of acquisition,
and so there was a good chatthere about what people are

(02:28:11):
doing.
Is it B2B, is it B2C, is itpaid search?
I mean Viator sort of said well, we're at a scale that we're
spending a lot but it works.
And I think it's true Like ifyou have the money and you've
got the machine you've builtover years and years at scale,
it probably does work.

Speaker 2 (02:28:28):
Well, it's interesting you mentioned
something there, obviously, andI want to just dive into this
SEO and AI and where we're, thecurrent challenges that we're
facing in the travel industry.
There's a book called who movedmy cheese?
Yeah, and.
I've seen it's, it's um, it'slike, it's like all of like 80
pages, right, yeah, it's iconicand if, for those of you who
haven't read the book, just goto Wikipedia and in 30 seconds

(02:28:49):
you'll get the gist of it, butthe part of it and I've seen
sales teams get get trained onthis and teams get get trained
on this and it very much appliesto the situation of seo, which
is that you know the.
The premise of the book, ofcourse, is that as soon as the
cheese is moved, there's themice that otherwise go back
every day thinking the cheese isgoing to be there, and then
there's the mice that set out totry and find where the cheese
is going to be, and ultimately,those are the ones that survive

(02:29:12):
and thrive, and the ones thatkeep going back will ultimately,
um, not survive and so youdon't need to go to wikipedia
but your point it's it's veryrelevant to the situation with
seo, because a lot of people arejust trying to get it back and
it's just like they think likethey've done something wrong, I
need to win back seo, but thereality is that search volume
isn't there the same way that itwas, because ai is changing and

(02:29:35):
I know you know bre Brendanfrom Propellec is a great
partner of ours.
He did a session just beforeyours today.

Speaker 18 (02:29:40):
That was great.

Speaker 2 (02:29:41):
About AI overviews, and the reality is that the
people are not visiting websitesbecause they're getting the AI
overviews instead.
So one of the areas I knowyou're really focused on now is
AI, and one of the developmentsfor you was around chatbots and
the importance of gettingconversions with chatbots.
So tell us a little bit aboutyour journey with AI, because I
know it's going to be a bigtopic for us at our AI Summit

(02:30:02):
later this year.

Speaker 18 (02:30:03):
Yeah, it's been super interesting and I think
it's just about getting startedwith it and when you try also to
do it all yourself, as in tryto access some of the tools and
then try and build all thisstuff yourself.
There's so many good productsout there now that you can
leverage, and so we decided togo with a vendor to actually
help us on that front, and thataccelerated, I guess, the time

(02:30:27):
to market.
And so now when we launched, wewere 50% of the interactions
from a customer on the websitewere being handled by the bot,
and so we're like, okay, great,that's a first try, we're
actually at 80% now.
Interactions from a customer onthe website were being handled
by the bot, and so we're like,okay, great, that's a first try,
we're actually at 80% now.
The difference is so we nowtrack people who interact with

(02:30:52):
the chatbot and then go on toconvert to a booking, versus
those who get to a human.
So who we do pass to a human,who get to a human, so who we do
pass to a human.
There is about a 10% 15%difference in terms of but it's
handling 80% of the volume, soit means that we can actually
have the people who werepotentially on those chats on
more revenue-generating things,so making calls or dealing with
other upsells or whatever itmight be.

(02:31:13):
So, yeah, it definitely hasbeen a journey, and we talked
about data and stuff in the AIsession this morning.
It's really about setting theguardrails first, getting those
guardrails right so that itcan't go off and do stupid
things like yeah, canada did, Ithink, where they got sued or
whatever else, but then givingit room and the data to be able

(02:31:37):
to generatively create the stuffthat maybe will get us to 85%
or maybe 88%.
And that's the journey we'rekind of on.
Now is how do we take that nextstep?

Speaker 2 (02:31:46):
Yeah Well, in that exact example there, canada
which I've just happened to befamiliar with, of course, being
based in Toronto, and it's comeup as an example this is where,
sometimes, when AI doesn't workand in that example, where it
gave a price that was far lowerand Air Canada tried to say we
can't honor that price, and thenthe customer was like, well, ai
offered it to me and ultimatelyyou have to honor that price.

(02:32:07):
It doesn't matter if thecompany offered it to the
customer and they had to honorit.
I know some people it's freakedthem out about using chatbots
in case they go wrong.
The reality is, obviously theycan go incredibly right and
provide great efficiency foryour business and great gains,
and you've certainly seen that.
Tell us a little bit more aboutyour roadmap with AI at Tor

(02:32:27):
Radar and some of the thingsyou're going to be looking to
highlight at our AI Summit atthe end of October.

Speaker 18 (02:32:32):
Yeah, so there's a ton of stuff we're doing around
content which is nothingexciting or revolutionary, but
it's interesting to be combiningyour stuff that's hidden away
in your database, basically, andcombining that with your
content that you have on yourwebsite or in your itineraries

(02:32:54):
or in your brochures or whateverit might be, and then trying to
add a bit of a personalizationfeel to it.
So your example for us is thatwe get the tour operator
itineraries, which are reallylong but pretty hard to read at
times.
We actually then know all thebooking data around every
listing.
We know that 50% areAustralians or 30% are% are 25

(02:33:17):
years old, and so we start tosprinkle in information like
that to try and help people goam I a like-minded person who's
going to book this?
That's where video comes ineven more as well.
The more they interact withthese reels that we've got, the
more we'll understand whatthey're liking and we connect
all that together, and so rightnow, the first version of
moments that we launched todayis literally there's no, there's

(02:33:40):
no smartness in the algorithmput it that way but likes,
comments and more machinelearning type stuff is coming,
and so we've got all the.
You know the tiktok algorithmis, you know open source, so you
can actually understand whatthat is.
So we're really looking at howdo we start to bring that ai
component into what we'resurfacing on the front end,

(02:34:01):
because right now I talked abouthere, there's not much
innovation on the front end forai.
Right, it's all kind of belowthe surface, which I think is
great, but at some point it'sgot to try and come to the
surface and we're getting closerand closer.
Um, but yeah, I mean we'relooking at everything from mcp
servers, like we're gettingcloser and closer.
But yeah, I mean, we're lookingat everything from MCP servers,
like we're looking, how do wenot be disintermediated?
And we had a good conversationthis morning about you know some

(02:34:24):
Kenyan basket weaver that youwant to find on ChatGPT.
And then my point is well, howthe hell do you book that thing?

Speaker 2 (02:34:32):
Right.

Speaker 18 (02:34:33):
They're not connected, they have no
real-time availability, theyhave no booking engine yeah and
that's really what we're tryingto provide to all the partners.
We work with their own mcpserver or that.
We're the payment rail, sowe're the one who is feeding
into these llms so that theagentics uh, the agents can
actually be using those rails tomake these bookings.
So there's different models,different plays, and so there's

(02:34:56):
a lot of exciting stuff, and I'mreally enjoying combining the
mobile, the social and the AIside and how we can bring it all
to life.

Speaker 2 (02:35:03):
Well, the area that I'm specifically bullish on for
you, and then where I think youhave a moat to use that term
that startups often use in termsof how they protect themselves
against competition or beingdisrupted in this instance of
new distribution channels is thefact that you have 2,500
partners and you have all ofthis access to inventory.
You work with B2B partners, soyou're well positioned in this

(02:35:25):
world of agentic AI, where youwant an agent to be able to
actually act on your behalf togo and get you the tour that you
want.
Why wouldn't that agentic AI goto tour radar and be able to
bring that back for you?
And that this is where OTAslike to use.
The Expedia's and the they'rethey're on, they are all on the
move to make sure that they'reworking with LLMs to, and

(02:35:47):
optimize towards them.
So I'm sure that is obviouslygot to be a big focus for you
and the team is what used to betrying to work with search
engines and make sure that youget crawled and indexed properly
, and now you, what used to betrying to work with search
engines and make sure that youget crawled and indexed properly
, now you need to make sure thatyou are well optimized for
every LLM out there that's goingto be using your website, even
if it's not a consumer anymore.
It's an AI model that is tryingto get the information on

(02:36:09):
behalf of its user.

Speaker 18 (02:36:10):
Exactly, and I think the opportunity whether we get
there by October when we havethe summit is how do you put
these tools a little bit more atthe fingertips of SME like tour
operators, who just don't havethe resource, who don't have the
technical capability, but theywant to be able to access this?
And so we've got tens ofmillions of messages that have

(02:36:33):
been passed in the TourRadarplatform between tour operator
and customer and our agent.
You know, team, that's all nowfeeding the llms and that's what
we're creating faqs for everytour, everything.
Where's the meeting point?
You know what's?
Do you get an internal flightin brazil from here to here,
like?
so all of that, it's there yeahwe've just got to surface that
now yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:36:53):
So I'm going to make a bold projection whether we'll
get to it October.
I'm going to say we're going toget AGI by October 2020.
Jeez, that's a big year.
People are saying five years,10 years, two or three.
I'm going to call it right now.
It's October 28th and 29th.
It's going to happen in Torontoat our event.

Speaker 18 (02:37:09):
Travis is going to be there.
There'll be an AGI there.
Yeah, in some form or another.
Yeah, in some form or anotheryeah.

Speaker 2 (02:37:16):
Last thing I want to ask you, given that, well,
actually, one thing I want tosay and one thing I want to ask
you, travis.
So the thing I want to say toall of our listeners is that
Travis and his team kindly cameon as a platinum sponsor for our
AI Summit.
So it's truly in partnershipbetween Travel Trends and Tour
Radar that we're bringing thisevent together.
So, everywhere you see AISummit, you see Tour Radar and

(02:37:37):
you guys, travis is going to flyacross.
We're looking to actually hostit in a studio for the speakers
that are going to be there.
It's going to be a landmarkevent.
So obviously, I wanted just torecognize that.
Thank you again for thepartnership.

Speaker 18 (02:37:46):
First of all, I mean we wouldn't just sponsor if we
didn't think you're doingawesome stuff.
So yeah, like we saw the firstone, how successful that was and
obviously it's been great tosee Dan.
Yeah, you evolve and, as wesaid, dan 2.0.
It's been awesome to see andI'm very happy to be supporting
it.

Speaker 2 (02:38:05):
Thank you very much that means a lot and what Travis
is also referring to there.
I'll just highlight it since mycorporate days, when I used to
come to events like this and I'dbe wearing a jacket with my
little badge, it's finallycoming to the point where Travis
and Christian can say you weredifferent.
Before there was a corporateDan, and then there's this Dan
2.0.
Anyway, this feels like it'sthe real authentic me, so thank

(02:38:27):
you for that.
But the thing I wanted to leaveeveryone off with because I
know you've got to run for ameeting, just in terms of the
Focusrite, I know you're herefor the launch, you're here for
your session.
Any other specific things thatyou're looking forward to, any
other highlights coming out ofFocusrite Europe 2025?

Speaker 18 (02:38:46):
I mean the theme of the new agents.
There has been a couple ofconversations around it.
I think it's still a little bittoo surface level.
I really want to see andunderstand use cases of what
people are doing in this front.
Uh, and because it's just, it'slike this whole vibe coding
stuff like so you can createdemos and prototypes, but things

(02:39:06):
that are at production levelthat you can put into millions
of visitors or tens of millionsof visitors and it works.
We're not there at all in somany cases, and I think that's
what I'm looking for is alsochatting to people who have got
anything that's at that scale.
I think that's the you know.
Looking forward to that.

Speaker 2 (02:39:24):
For sure, Travis, thanks again for our partnership
and thanks for being such agreat colleague and friend over
so many years.
I look forward to many morecollaborations.
We'll be speaking again soon,but thanks again.

Speaker 18 (02:39:34):
Yeah, thanks a lot, dan.
We speaking again, sue, butthanks again.

Speaker 2 (02:39:38):
Yeah, thanks a lot, dan, appreciate it.
My next guest is someone that Iwas so keen to rejoin us.
It is Charlotte Lamp Davies,and many of you remember her.
From the very first FocusriteSpotlight that we did last year
she joined us.
For that she's been a greatfriend and colleague.
She brought me to ITB earlierthis year.
Anyway, I can say so manywonderful things about Charlotte
, but I'm just thrilled to haveher back on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:40:00):
Thank you, my dear.

Speaker 2 (02:40:00):
It's wonderful to be back of course, a number of
people were saying last nightand this is where your
reputation is, everything inthis industry and you know that
and we were actually in a carand it was really nice there
were six of us driving to anevent and someone actually said
do you guys know Charlotte LampDavies and I just sat quiet as
the conversation unfolded andthey're like, oh my God, she is

(02:40:21):
so lovely and I was like, whatdoes she do?
And everyone's like, oh, shehelps with CEOs and she helps
advise companies.
She's like she's amazing.
And it was just wonderful tohear people like speaking about
you and so, yeah, so know thatthose are the things that people
say in other taxis heading toother events and I just so, yeah
, I think so highly of Charlotteand she's done so much in this
industry.
But I wanted to specificallytalk about the event.

(02:40:43):
So, charlotte, tell us a littlebit about the plans to bring
the event to this new venue thisyear and some of the things you
were involved in in terms ofplanning, which is now we're
midway through the event, whichhas clearly been an incredible
success.
But tell us a little bit aboutthe backstory of how we got here
.

Speaker 1 (02:40:59):
Well, first of all, thank you for that very glorious
introduction one more time.
I'm sure much is being saidabout me and it might not always
be good, but it is indeed niceto get that feedback, of course.
But all that said and done, Ihave to disappoint you.
I can't really take much creditfor the planning of this
particular event, but I haveworked with the Focusrite team

(02:41:19):
over a number of years,particularly as, obviously, this
event itself has really grownvery substantially since we
kicked off the European eventsome 10 years ago first in
Dublin.
Yes, so far there's been threeevents in Dublin, four in
Amsterdam and this will be ourthird here in Barcelona, and, as

(02:41:43):
I said, we have seen continuousgrowth and it's an event that
now is completely sort ofstandalone away from the major
US event in November.

Speaker 2 (02:41:51):
Well, tell me more about that, because actually
this is really interesting forme to understand too, because
it's my first event FocusriteEurope, as you know and our
listeners have been hearing inthese interviews, but I didn't
realize.
I knew it was in Dublin before,but tell us a little bit why
you brought the event toBarcelona three years ago.

Speaker 1 (02:42:05):
Well, I think again the Focusrite team, not
necessarily with me, advisingthem we realized that the kind
of moving the event aroundEurope made sense, both in terms
of actually enticing acontinuous new audience to come
along and we know that locallyin Europe sometimes people will
join if it's a local event,which, should we say, a bit of a

(02:42:26):
global flavor, right?
So you know, we had the Irishsupporting us for three years,
the Dutch supporting us and nowthe Spanish, and of course, in
between there's everybody elsein Europe who knows what they
will get from attending aFocusrite conference and who
would be here wherever, whateverdestination was chosen by the
team.

Speaker 2 (02:42:46):
Truly, and it seems like a perfect place.
Ireland is obviously a big techhub, but certainly Spain has
really taken that position,especially when it comes to
travel technology.
There's quite a few that arebased even in Palma and Mallorca
, for example, and, as you know,in Madrid.
Civitadas is here.
There's so much traveltechnology in Spain, a lot of
innovation here.
It's still an affordable placeto actually establish a business

(02:43:07):
.
They're very welcoming tointernational businesses and a
number of people that I've metthat have just moved here or in
the process of moving here fromSouth America, and so it seems
like an exciting time to be inSpain and Barcelona.
Everyone I've spoken to thatI've told them here.
They're so incredibly envious.
I love Barcelona, so for manyreasons it seems like a perfect
place to be and obviously thenew venue is extraordinary.

(02:43:30):
It's like and I haven'texperienced from what was before
, but I know that was a big stepI spoke to Pete and he was
telling me a couple weeks agoand I saw him for coffee in
denver just you know thecommitment to investing in the
venue, in the hotel, andeveryone's saying how amazing it
is.

Speaker 1 (02:43:46):
So that obviously is another big change yeah, I mean,
this is a, this is a true focus, right venue, I would say
because, focus right is so muchmore than just a conference.
It's so much more than anexhibition ground.
It's so much more thannetworking, and this really,
really allowed.
The sheer scale of this allowsfor the conference to be and
perform at its very, very best.
There are quiet corners whereyou can sit and discuss your

(02:44:08):
next funding round, you know,with the VCs.
There's the big center stage,there's the smaller stages.
We have all the round tablesthat are happening sort of in
rooms, separate rooms that arekind of just.
We have access to so many nooksand crannies here, as I think
the British say that.
You know, it's just wonderfulthat you can both find privacy
when you need that for certainconversations.

(02:44:28):
And then there's the bignetworking opportunities during
lunch and dinner and so on andso forth.

Speaker 2 (02:44:33):
Yeah, and the space that we're in the exhibitor
space is really at the heart ofwhere all the meeting rooms are,
so everyone is connectingthrough here and you're forced
to interact and bump into people, although you can, as you said,
have private meetings, but thefocus is certainly on connecting
everyone and it seems to methat it's a much more intimate
setting.
I love Focusrite USA and willcontinue.
That is by far my favoriteindustry conference, but when I

(02:44:58):
think about this now in Europe,this is 600 people versus 1500
plus.
It's all C-level executives andexciting startups, and so it's
a really amazing group of peoplethat come to this event.
But it feels more intimate andyou feel like you have more time
to connect with people and havereally interesting
conversations.
But tell us a little bit aboutthe sessions, because obviously
I've been focused on recordingthese conversations, which I
love, but there's been so manyamazing sessions I also would

(02:45:22):
have loved to attend.
What have you attended?

Speaker 1 (02:45:23):
What have been some of the interesting speakers,
sessions and takeaways for you.
Well, I have.
Like you, I will also have towatch a lot afterwards because,
you know, as you know, thenetworking part of it and the
meeting part of the conferenceis, of course, very, very key,
and it is.
There was a.
We were at a show of handsyesterday when Pete and Mitra
Mitra Sorrells from Focuswirethe editor of Focuswire when she
opened up the show, you know,we were asked you know, what are

(02:45:46):
you predominantly here for?
And all the hands went uparound the networking.
Having said that, the content,of course, is put together over
the course of six months atleast and it's absolutely the
very, very best in the industry.
And you know, from theTripAdvisors to the Bookingcom
to the yeah, even Nizaza thisyear was back on stage, you know
.
So it's kind of all sorts ofcompanies from the entire

(02:46:08):
industry that are represented atthe stage.
And I think, again, the focus,of course, is very much around
AI, although somebody hasliterally just said, if somebody
says AI one more time, I'mgoing to leave the conference.
But you know, I mean not tosuch an extent that this is just
.
Ai is absolutely in almostevery single conversation at the
moment, and I think it was Ithink it was Cara from Cara

(02:46:32):
Whitehill who actually saidlet's maybe try and see when we
move the conversation from AI inplanning to AI in doing, and I
really like that.
That's a really, really greatcomment.
So it's difficult for me tosingle out one big thing.
There was a great interviewwith the CEOs of Viator and
TripAdvisor this morning as well, and then, of course, we've had
the launch stage, you know,where new innovators and

(02:46:56):
innovations are being presentedat stage and being judged.
It's pretty hardcore, but it'salso extremely gratifying to
hear your presentation beingjudged straight away after
coming off stage.

Speaker 2 (02:47:07):
For sure.
You hit a few highlights thereand it's interesting.
You mentioned the TripAdvisorViator session earlier today,
which has been mentioned todayon the interviews that I've done
, because I attended thatsession and I was because I was
meeting Papine afterwards, who'sthe new president of Viator,
and Matt Goldberg, of course, isthe CEO of TripAdvisor, and the
two of them were on stagetogether, which I think is the

(02:47:27):
first time, yeah, and so it wasreally great to see the two of
them, the dynamic and the waythe conversation flowed.
So I agree, and the complimentthat one of our other guests
gave was that it felt like areally genuine conversation,
that they were actually beingvery honest and open, and they
found it quite refreshing thatthey were actually saying things
that were meaningful.
A lot of times, when you're thehead of a public traded company,
it can be more challenging, andso that was a great highlight.

(02:47:50):
The startups, for sure, but youmentioned Kara Whitehill from
Thayer Ventures and she isextraordinary and she's been on
our podcast and actually I wasspeaking to Chris Hemeter, who
heads up Thayer Ventures,earlier today, and I was
speaking to him because there'sa plug and play event happening
at the same time and I said tohim I'm surprised you're not
there.
And he's like I'm always atFocusrite.
Focusrite is my priority.

Speaker 1 (02:48:10):
Yeah, yeah, he is certainly always to be found
here, and I think I don't knowif you were lucky enough to be
at the breakfast meeting betweenChris and Rod Koffberg.
You know, founder, of course ofViator.

Speaker 2 (02:48:22):
Yes, that was the opening session with like the
coffee with Rod.

Speaker 1 (02:48:25):
It was absolutely phenomenal, it really really was
, and just that we all in oneroom had access to one another
and lots and lots of ideas andlots of comments and lots of
opinions were being banteredaround.
And I mean those guys, theyreally are incredibly supportive
not just of the Focusrite eventbut of the industry as a whole,
and it's just phenomenal tohave people like that in your

(02:48:48):
midst and also knowing that youcan go to them.

Speaker 2 (02:48:50):
Totally To exactly your point.
They're the ones that openedthe conference.
They didn't then disappear on aprivate jet and they have been
around this desk 10 times overthe last two days and I've, like
, I've had great conversationswith both of them, but they've
also made themselves accessible.
So rod is wandering aroundtalking to startups and chris is
obviously that's his space butthe two of them have.

(02:49:11):
Having seen them on that stage,you would think they wouldn't
be accessible, and at FocusriteEurope they very much are.

Speaker 1 (02:49:18):
Indeed, and they both , you know they both do it as
they preach and I think you knowone of the things you'll hear
them always say is look afteryour relationships, look after
your relationships and keepdoing that, because you know
what goes around, as we know theold saying comes around, and
you know we're all very, verydependent on one another and

(02:49:39):
help people Remember who youmeet on your way up and all of
that because you never know whenit's the other way around.
So I think they really live bythat and they are very, as you
say, very happy to give theirtime.

Speaker 2 (02:49:47):
Yeah, and now clearly , there's been so many
highlights and benefits.
So, being here, we've mentioneda number or you've highlighted
several what is yourunderstanding of the plans going
into next year at this point?
How does this actually work,because we're going to.
Obviously, many people are here.
I've been asking them if we'regoing to come back and they're
absolutely committed to comingback.
When does it get officiallyannounced about the location for

(02:50:07):
next year in the venue, or isthat coming up?

Speaker 1 (02:50:10):
Well, I can't spill that many beans and some I don't
even know to spill.
But I think we can probablysafely say that we think it's
going to be another year inBarcelona.

Speaker 2 (02:50:22):
Very exciting.
I'd be thrilled if that's thecase, but we'll wait and share
with our listeners once weabsolutely know for sure.
I know it's interesting.
Some conferences announce it atthe very end, like ATTA it's
going to be.
Other conferences wait tilllater.
So everyone's got their ownstrategy and approach.
I know negotiations need to behad and decisions need to be
made, but it would be fantasticif it's back again In terms of

(02:50:44):
working with Focusrite,obviously your role as an
advisor.
What do we think about Focusritegoing into San Diego, Because
obviously we'll see each otheragain later this year and that
is the big event for Focusriteglobally.
What are some of the otherthings about Focusrite that our
listeners should be payingattention to?
Obviously, you mentioned Mitrafrom Focuswire she's a great
industry executive and doingfantastic interviews here her

(02:51:06):
and Morgan.
What are some of the otherthings?
And I'm asking you because I'veasked Pete, I've asked Florence
and it's kind of nice to hearfrom your perspective, because
you're kind of like one foot inand one foot out, right, You've
got one foot in to support Focus, right, but you also have a
bright approach.
You work with multipledifferent clients, like the
strip boutique Fernando, whoadores you as well, and this is
where you're just getting insuch a great reputation.
But what I'd like to know forall of our listeners, when they

(02:51:29):
think about Focus right, whatare some of the other things
they should be paying attentionto, about getting involved and
ensuring that they benefit frombeing connected to this great
organization?

Speaker 1 (02:51:40):
But I think one of the last words there was the
word connection and connectingand I think my role as much as I
connect for the sake of myself,my role has really over the
years developed into being oneof a very supportive one for the
Focusrite team where I ensurethat anybody who might be new to

(02:52:01):
the show has a I help at leastas many as I can have the very
best possible experience andmaybe give them a little bit of
my experience from over theyears of how best to navigate
the show, what to do when youare here and maybe also sort of
the follow-up strategy from theshow, because of course, a lot

(02:52:21):
of people that are here aremaybe here under the radar a
little bit.
As much as we have access to alot of people, there are some
people that are here in aslightly more private capacity
and for somebody like me who mayor may not know these people,
it's important that when I hookup with, should we say, new
people to the show that theyunderstand that you will get

(02:52:42):
access to everyone you know youjust got to be part of this.
You will become part of theclub, of the group, and the
networking and the connectinghere is, to my mind, it's done
nowhere as easy as it is at thisevent, because we are all
together for three days.
So you know you will.
Patience is a virtue, but youwill get to meet the people you

(02:53:04):
need to meet.

Speaker 2 (02:53:05):
I can almost guarantee it so I think
connecting and connecting theindustry and people within the
industry that is what focus,right hands down, does better
than any other events organizerin our sector and I think what's
terrific of what you're sayingthere is that and I've
experienced this firsthand nowbecause we encourage a lot of
our listeners to come toFocusrite Europe we had quite a

(02:53:26):
number of our listeners andpeople that work in the industry
decide to come to FocusriteEurope, which I was genuinely
thrilled about.
I know Pete and Jean and theFocusrite team that we work
closely with were also thrilled,but, as Jean said, it's really
working and we work closely with.
We're all so thrilled but, asJean said, it's really working
and I was like, yeah, it'sreally working.
People listen to this show andthey make decisions based on
that.
And Paulina from Flytographer,alex from Zoff to Fly we had
WeRoad, I saw.

Speaker 1 (02:53:47):
Yeah, weroad is here, Exactly yes, WeRoad is here.

Speaker 2 (02:53:50):
That's Andrea Lamparini that people would have
heard from this podcast.
A guy have heard from thispodcast, a guy named alan
headington who runs a digitalagency based in the uk.
Listen to the podcast.
He brought a couple of teammembers.
He's been on this, so it's justwonderful again that sense of
community.
I love this organization andyou bring other people in and
all of them I've spoken to, evenafter day one.
We're so glad they came likethey made enough connections

(02:54:11):
already to justify the cost andthe time and the effort to be
here.

Speaker 1 (02:54:15):
So all the ROI is really multilayered, if I could.
If I could explain it like thatit's not just about necessarily
signing up your next client oryour next partner.
It's actually, it's it's thelearning you know that you get
from being with this, thistremendous crowd so many
different people representing somany different types of

(02:54:35):
companies and skill sets, arebeing represented as well.
So if you come with a very openmind and you are in and out of
sessions and in and out ofmeetings and you join also some
of the more intimate should wesay opportunities that the show
always presents, such as theround tables or the breakout
sessions, where you really, in amuch smaller environment, can

(02:54:58):
learn and dig in and have avoice.
It's not just people on centerstage who have a voice here.
You very much have a voice ifyou want to take it.

Speaker 2 (02:55:05):
Yeah, yeah, very well said, charlotte.
And, on that note, because youhave such a great voice to the
industry, both with theorganizations you work with,
including ITB and Focusrite, andyou manage it all seemingly so
effortlessly, like that's whyit's always a joy to see you and
you're just kind of a pleasureto be around, but you're also
very smart and very switched onand obviously help a lot of

(02:55:26):
different organizations.
So I want to make sure that ourlisteners know how to connect
with you, those people that arenow meeting you for the first
time, which I can't believe thatthere would be, but there
clearly is Plenty.

Speaker 1 (02:55:38):
Yeah, plenty of people exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:55:38):
Thank God, so I know you have the brighter brooch.
Why don't you just leaveeveryone with how best to
connect with you, charlotte, andfollow up with you for future
collaboration opportunities?

Speaker 1 (02:55:47):
I'm very happy for anyone to just find me on
LinkedIn.
It's probably the easiest placeand it is, of course, charlotte
Lab Davies A Bright Approachand I yet again thank you so so
much for having me.
It's an absolute pleasure.
Very few people know theindustry and can speak as
passionately about the industryas you, and it's an absolute

(02:56:08):
pleasure to see you again and behere.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:56:10):
That's very kind, charlotte.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to catching upwith you over the next couple of
days, getting a bit more timetogether and then seeing you
again in a few months' time.
So thanks again for being hereand I look forward to keeping in
touch over the course of theyear.

Speaker 1 (02:56:21):
My pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:56:27):
I now have the chance to speak to someone who's
become a real legend in thetravel industry and someone that
has spoken at so manyconferences to rave reviews, and
I'm speaking about Mark Mechie.
He's a name that many of ourlisteners might be familiar with
, especially if you've gone toan arrival conference.
He did this extraordinary AIkeynote in Berlin a couple of

(02:56:48):
years ago that everyone wastalking about.
He came back and did afollow-up performance in Orlando
and I had the chance to catchup with him there.
Mark is a really extraordinaryfigure in the industry.
He's an advisor, keynotespeaker.
He does a lot of work in theMiddle East, so he's really kind
of ahead of the curve withunderstanding what's happening
in that market and it's a realjoy to get time with him here at
Focusrite Barcelona and welcomehim to the Travel Trends
podcast.

(02:57:08):
Great to have you on here, mark.
Great to be here, dan.
Thank you so much, for sure,and I didn't realize until we
were catching up here thatyou're actually based in
Barcelona and your family isbased here.

Speaker 6 (02:57:18):
Yeah, the family is here mostly for lifestyle
reasons.
I don't really have anybusiness relations with Spain in
any shape or form.
It's purely a lifestyledecision which, as soon as you
walk out, you realize what Imean.
But yeah, the majority of mywork is in the Middle East and
so I have another base there,and I spent at least half my
time there actually.

Speaker 2 (02:57:36):
Oh, that's amazing.
Tell everyone a little bitabout your backstory.
I know you're from Belgium, butyou had a company and sold it
and then you kind oftransitioned into a thought
leader, a public speaker and allthese amazing things that I've
come to know you as.
But just tell everyone a littlebit about your background and
how you ended up in the placeyou are now.

Speaker 6 (02:57:53):
Yeah, I'm Belgian originally.
I always tell people it's notmy fault.
Could?

Speaker 2 (02:57:55):
have been worse.

Speaker 6 (02:57:56):
Um, and you know, I left for china when I was at the
ripe old age of 24, looking foradventure, and and boy did I
find it.
I sort of rotated into china,not knowing what to expect at
all.
Just an adventure, uh.
And then I found a country thatwas in the middle of the
greatest transformation inrecent human history, and so I
rode that wave.
I built a company.
I built two companies, but onewas a tour operator, one of the

(02:58:19):
first foreign-owned ones andthen I started building in a
tech component, and then lateron, about 11 years ago now, I
got an offer to sell it and Itook the offer.
I was happy with it, and then Ididn't know what to do with
myself.
So I rotated gradually intowhat I do now, which is sort of
evangelizing.
Gradually, into what I do now,which is sort of evangelizing,
if I can use that word, abouttechnology, but human-centered

(02:58:39):
technology, like how do we makethe human experience better
through technology?
Because I believe very stronglythat that's doable.
We can reconcile those twothings, and so, of course, ai is
now, you know, a big part ofthat conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:58:51):
For sure, and it's interesting that you had your
big breakthrough in the travelindustry, but I also know that
that's only part of the areathat you work in today.
You're kind of across differentsectors and I know that you are
always focused on innovationand technology, and so clearly,
one of the big topics thateveryone wants you to speak
about is AI.
They want Mark Mechie, tell usabout AI, and that's why you've
been brought into a number ofconferences on that topic and

(02:59:12):
you've absolutely nailed it.
So let's give everyone a bit ofan overview of what actually
happened in Berlin.
And for those people that areclose to Arrival, that's Arrival
with one R and Bruce andDouglas and the team there that
I have the greatest respect for.
I'm a big fan of Arrival, andso this particular video is

(02:59:32):
available on their website, butI think it's only for members.
But tell everyone about yourpresentation.
What happened, what magicalthings happened there.

Speaker 6 (02:59:40):
Well, I mean, that was sort of the first major
keynote for the travel industryspecifically.
I've done many for otherindustries before that and
certainly after that, but thatone was close to my heart
because it was related to anindustry that I'm passionate
about still, even if I don'tlive it day to day, and the
keynote was about.
The first part was about warningpeople about something that

(03:00:00):
actually is happening in frontof our eyes, which is the
disappearance of the old searchparadigm blue links on Google,
all that stuff.
We see that shifting away.
That was the first part, butit's the second part that really
sort of lit the room on fire,which was me just basically
showing a workflow and byworkflow I talk about this a lot
I mean leveraging not one toolvery efficiently, but stringing

(03:00:23):
together the best parts ofmultiple tools to achieve
something that you otherwisewould not be able to achieve in
weeks or months or at all.
And so I built effectively torelate to the audience there, I
built you know, know,hypothetically built a tourism
activities business in the spanof four hours right now.
I built characters and awebsite and an ai talking

(03:00:45):
version of alan turing.
It was all related to alanturing and all of that so, and
that really sort of connectedbecause people saw the, the raw
power of that right.

Speaker 2 (03:00:55):
So that was essentially what it was about.
Well, it's clever that youpicked Alan Turing, of course,
who's kind of the godfather ofAI, if we want to trace it all
the way back.
And there's a fascinatinghistory there World War II and
his unfortunate demise Like it'sjust like it's a tragic ending
to his life for someone that wasresponsible for breaking the
Enigma code Absolutely yeah, butalso inspiring so many people

(03:01:16):
to go down this path of AI.
So I thought that wasinteresting, clever, historical
and also it clearly connectedwith the audience, because the
idea of creating touring toursand the idea that and bringing
him back to life and being ableto and I think that just had
incredible wow factor andclearly it did.
And this is where you knowthere's a gentleman that's going
to be joining our AI Summit.

(03:01:36):
His name is JP Deschanaux andhe's the closest that I can
think of that I've come acrosssince your talk, where I was in
Quebec City earlier this year.
He did a presentation for 30minutes, a workshop to show the
audience how you could use GenAI tools.
And this is a guy that is alawyer by training, doesn't have
a technical background, hastourism businesses and has
started to apply this forhimself and just decided to

(03:01:57):
create a session to highlighthow, in 30 minutes, you can
create a brand, launch a website, a marketing campaign and
actually create essentially afull-blown business in 30
minutes and it had such a hugewow factor and similar to the
experience of you being inBerlin and then following up in
Orlando.
There's just like highlightingto everyone the power of these

(03:02:19):
tools so that they're notintimidated by them, because one
of the things you certainly seein your, you know, key to
having conversation innovation.
A lot of people do like to burytheir head in the sand or they
find any reason not to acceptthe change.
They hear one bad example andthey point that as why they
shouldn't move in that direction, or just you know, there's an
inertia there and I think one ofthe things that was really

(03:02:39):
clever about what you did is youjust highlighted all the
potential and all theopportunity and it unlocked
people's imaginations.
So is that something that youit seems to me like you love
doing and it comes naturally toyou.
So tell me a bit more about you, mark, and how you you know the
journey you're currently on andhow you you know the journey
you're currently on, and evenactually how you came up with
that in the first place and howyou prepare for these kind of
keynotes.

Speaker 6 (03:03:00):
Sure, I mean, you know, as paradoxical as it may
seem on the surface and I don'tthink it is my interest is in
people.
Right, my interest is in a fewthings in people and,
additionally, in the mostimportant asset that every
person has, and it's not money.
I go around the room very oftennow in sessions I do in the

(03:03:21):
Middle East, and I haveministers and government level
people and top corporates andall that.
And the first question I alwaysask you know, if there's one
asset I could give to you orgive back to you that's most
important to you in life, whatwould it be?
And you know, without fault,it's always time, and that's
sort of the perspective that Iuse to approach this question

(03:03:44):
about AI.
I don't care about AI.
What I care about is and that'swhat the Alan Turing thing was
about all the demos that I dowhat I care about is the outcome
and how quickly I've been ableto get to the outcome, even more
than the outcome itself.
Like for me, the Alan Turingdemo've been able to get to the
outcome even more than theoutcome itself.
Like, for me, the Alan Turingdemo whatever you want to call
it was not about showing themagic of AI tools, but really

(03:04:05):
the magic of me saving in thatinstance.
In that case, probably you knowthree, 400 hours of my life,
that that that should be thewild factor, not that alan
turing is talking on screen,which is cool, but the fact that
I got all of that done whilesaving three, four hundred hours
of my life, which previouslywould have taken to do what I

(03:04:28):
showed off there.
Yeah, and so that's for me thatthe razor, if you want that we
should use to drive theconversation about ai, because
you know if the way I get peopleinterested in AI when they're
skeptical or they go like I'mscared or whatever, is I always
approach it the same way.
I said if I can give you backfive hours of your week
consistently every week, wouldyou listen to me and sit with me

(03:04:50):
for a few hours?
The answer is unequivocally yes, for sure, all the time I'm
interested.

Speaker 2 (03:04:55):
You had me at that.

Speaker 6 (03:04:56):
Yeah, exactly, but everyone is right Because, deep
down, everyone's major asset inlife is time, not money.
Money matters, we all know, buttime is your asset and that's
the one thing that AI, if youstart using it, will give you
back.

Speaker 4 (03:05:12):
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2 (03:05:13):
That's a great way to frame it, for sure

(03:05:35):
no-transcript.

Speaker 6 (03:05:38):
For example, I'm doing a project with Dubai
Economy and Tourism where we,you know, the topic is usually
innovation and future readiness,but obviously AI plays a big
role in that as well.
And maybe surprisingly againand somewhat paradoxically, half
my time in these workshops andadvisory sessions.
And all that is not talkingabout technology, but it's

(03:05:59):
talking about culture, becausewhat you realize very quickly in
this game, that is that none ofthe big shifts happen without
culture change inside theorganization.
Right, so it's a mindset, mindshift dilemma more than a
technological dilemma, althoughit's that as well, and so a lot
of the workshops are not metalking about.

(03:06:19):
Like here's how chat gpt works.
Here's what a neural net is.
Who cares?
Nobody gives a damn.
Right is what can it do for me?
What can save you time?
How do you consistently get itto save you time?
By changing the culture of theorganization, how it thinks
about doing new things, yeahright, how to approach new ways
of thinking.
So everything boils down reallyto mindset.

(03:06:40):
That's what the AI dilemma andthe change that we need to sort
of promulgate and talk about isreally about.
It's about mindset.

Speaker 2 (03:06:49):
Yeah, and to bring us back to where we are now, and
this is where you are certainlyleading the way in engaging and
having these conversations as welook at where we are at focus
right europe.
I know you had a sessionearlier today.
Unfortunately I wasn't able toattend given, obviously, my
priority recording podcast, butI would.
I would have loved to have beenthere and I know a few of my
colleagues were um.

(03:07:10):
Tell me a little bit about whatbrought you here this year and
the talk you gave today yeah, soI was.

Speaker 6 (03:07:16):
I was invited to to, uh, come and speak again, have a
little little session, a littlesparring session, with mitra
from focus right, because sheattended one of my keynotes at
one of the arrival events.
So that's how we connected.
She actually moderated thesession for me on ai at arrival
in orlando, I think two yearsago or something, I can't
remember, um.
So she invited me back to havethe conversation and it was a

(03:07:38):
sort of very rapid fire session25 minutes and she had a few
core questions that she'd pickedup from my LinkedIn posts and
articles that I write about,various aspects of this, one
being mindset, the other onebeing the one that I love to
talk about, is the adoptionparadox that people are not
really aware of.
The one that I love to talkabout is the adoption paradox
that people are not really awareof, right, and so, very briefly

(03:07:59):
, what am I talking about?
The adoption paradox is, untilnow, mostly in the last 50 years
, since the advent of digitaltech, the adoption has always
been from the center Governmentlabs, military labs, coming up
with inventions the laserpointer, microwave, gps, the
internet itself.
Spreading to large companiesthat can afford it, perfecting
it, spreading to smallercompanies, smes, finally making

(03:08:22):
its way to the consumer right atthe end.
With AI we've seen the completedisruption of that because chat
GPT came out, jumps immediatelyto the outside circle.
I see it as concentric circlesmass adoption by consumers way
before it trickles into theinner sanctum of large companies
.
That's a complete paradox inthe adoption that we need to

(03:08:44):
talk about, because it meansthat a lot of the learning and
experimentation is actuallyhappening outside of
organizations.

Speaker 2 (03:08:50):
That's a really big one Well.
I'll give you an exact exampleof that for our audience I think
it'll be interesting which isJP Deschanaux to bring him up
again because this justhighlights the point you just
made One of the things that heimplemented in his organization
because they have a lot ofsummer workers that come in like
they hire about four to 500people, and he wanted to make
his entire recruitment processmuch more efficient and reduce

(03:09:12):
the time that one of his teamwas spending.
He worked out that she wasspending what?
800 hours and he's been able touse AI to set up automation to
reduce it down to 200 hours, touse your example of saving time.
And it wasn't about savingcosts.
It was like what else can thatperson do instead of this that's
so time-consuming and make it abetter experience for people
applying for the roles.
And he literally used makecomand Gmail and Chat, chat, gpt to

(03:09:36):
create this automation flow.
And I've talked to a number ofmy acceleration team clients and
they their reaction is we wantthat and the interesting thing
is that like, like, where wouldyou go for that?
Right now, there's not anenterprise organization that is
out there knocking on doors,unlike that early stage of the
internet when everyone wasselling websites.
You know everyone needed awebsite, so you'd find a web
design agency and all this wasthis big proliferation of them.

(03:09:57):
You kind of knew where to goand I would say, right now,
people don't know where to go.
They're hearing these thingsthat are happening and they're
like I want that and it's justlike, well, where do you go?
For that is a and is there anai web development company that
I need to like?
Like who's offering theseturnkey solutions?
I?
This is going to change a lotfor sure in the next 12 to 18
months.
So many companies are springing.

(03:10:18):
Everything's an AI-firstcompany.
Now, right, but to make thepoint is like there still is.
It is the.
What you just said is quiteprofound, which is like it's
from the outside coming in, asopposed to the traditional way
of working.
So tell me more about what youthink this means, mark in the
next year, for all thesecompanies and organizations in

(03:10:38):
the travel space trying to wraptheir head around AI in
particular, how should they bethinking about this?
How should they be approachingthis to make sure that they're
not one of the ones that's leftbehind?

Speaker 6 (03:10:48):
Yeah, I think one of the things that everyone needs
to acknowledge whether it's onthe employee side or the
employer side the companies isthat this is not a work
technology shift.
This is a life shift.
So this is embedding itself inall aspects of life in a way
that supersedes anything that wedo at work alone, and so that's

(03:11:10):
again where that adoptionparadox is really profound,
because you see people on theoutside having a better
understanding of AI than anyoneinside the company.
So what I think companiesshould do to make sure they
don't get left behind is to, ineffect and I know this is very
abstract, but in effect, ceaseto be a company.

(03:11:34):
Nobody questions this Like I'mgoing to set up a company, this
is what a company is.
We know blah blah.
A company is a company.
We have hierarchy.
Questions this Like I'm going toset up a company, this is what
a company is?
We know blah blah.
A company is a company.
We have hierarchy, we haveleaders and all that.
And so you have to startthinking more in terms of
building this ecosystem where,particularly, the flow of
information is arrangeddifferently, because right now,
in hierarchical, what we call acompany, the experimentation

(03:11:58):
that you know, bob and Jane aredoing very bad at creative
naming here, the experimentationthat Bob and Jane are doing at
the bottom of the so-called rank, you know at home, with their
chat, gpt and fixing this anddoing menus and doing financial
planning.
None of that learning, which isthe actual experimental-driven

(03:12:18):
learning that AI thrives on,none of that is trickling back
into the organization, so it's asort of osmosis that's not
happening.
That needs to happen forcompany leaders to be able to
say we never even consideredthat, because the big problem is
the unknown unknowns.
They don't know what they don'tknow, and it turns out those

(03:12:40):
people on the periphery are theones doing the experimentation.
To close that thought, I amconvinced because I see it
happen in companies that I workwith that there are people on
the periphery or lower down theranks who have the key to some
new workflow that might save you5% of time across the entire
organization.

(03:13:01):
Now put that in revenue termsor in savings terms.
It is transformation.
So that's how we need to startthinking about.
Make sure the flow ofinformation in your organization
is reconfigured so that thoselearnings on what I call the
periphery are flowing back intothe community.
That's what you need to do.

Speaker 2 (03:13:21):
Yeah, it's really interesting because, obviously,
that idea of you have to disruptyourself or be prepared to
literally re-evaluate yourbusiness in the face of this new
technology now and someindustry leaders I'll use the
example of Toby from Shopify,because he's now challenged all
of his employees to rethinktheir role in the face of AI and

(03:13:43):
how they're going to use AI asmuch as possible to automate and
enhance their role and everyoneneeds to be completely
reevaluating their role withinthe organization, which is
highly unsettling for anyemployee.
Humans, by and large, arecreatures of habit and don't
often like change, and this ismajor disruptive change and even

(03:14:04):
the idea that this is going tohave dramatic ramifications.
It almost feels like a lot ofpeople are just like, but when
Like show me it's like.
When's it going to end?
It's already happening, butit's not necessarily it's.
Most people haven't realized yet, but all of our lives are
starting to be changed by thistechnology and our travel
experiences will be as well.

(03:14:24):
And that's what I wanted to askyou too, because one of the big
focuses for our AI Summit laterthis year is real valuable use
cases not just people talkingabout AI, but actually showing
how companies are leveragingthis technology to totally
transform, rethink theirbusinesses, launch new ventures,
and I want to help similar tothe way you approach these

(03:14:44):
keynotes is just to expandpeople's mind and thinking so
with that in mind, I would loveif you wouldn't mind sharing
some of the examples you see intravel today of companies that
are leveraging AI in reallyuseful, innovative ways, because
I think far too many peoplejust think, oh, it's a chatbot
or like.
They point to certain examples,but what are some of the more
compelling ways that you'reseeing travel companies embrace

(03:15:06):
AI?

Speaker 6 (03:15:07):
I wish I could give you a long list of those where I
see that, but one of the issuesand I brought that up in the
session today as well is thatthe travel industry for better
and for worse for both is, inthat sense, fairly conservative.
I think there is a tendency inthe travel industry to almost
retreat behind the old creedthat we're a people business

(03:15:30):
first, not to be traipsed on bytechnology, and we all know that
that doesn't really work.
Now what are we starting to see?
I think a lot of the actualchange that the traveler doesn't
necessarily immediately getconfronted with on the front end
is the AI integration in theback end, and we shouldn't
neglect that right, I knowthat's not sexy stuff to talk

(03:15:51):
about in keynotes and all that,but just the way that companies
handle their data processingright.
So the volume of data thatcomes in, for example, one of
the ones that I think wherecompanies are doing in travel is
starting to do a better job isdepersonalization.
The travel industry has, sinceI started my business in China
26 years ago, whatever it washave been talking about.

(03:16:14):
You know travel is personal.
Sorry, bs, most of the time itis not personal.
You are just a number andyou'll be treated as such.
And maybe we have a fewplasters like a few loyalty
programs that pretend they knowyou, but it's nonsense, it's not
really personal.
And I think where I see a shiftis in some of the companies and
also travel organizations thathelp companies think, like in

(03:16:36):
middle east.
I'm seeing this in thinkingabout how do we leverage all
this back-end data to designsomething that is truly personal
, real deep personalization andalso on the front end.
I think that's where companiesare starting to make a
difference.
Now there is the whole thing inthe travel industry that's been
around also for 20 years.
Whether there's any merit intrip planners, ai trip planners.

(03:16:58):
Yeah, I think the answer is yesand no.
No in the sense that manypeople would probably agree with
me when I say the planning partis part of the fun, right, so
that's one of the reasons itkeeps failing.
But the personalization part?
I think that's the biggestuntapped potential and I'm
starting to see some peoplebeginning to understand that
distinction.
You don't want to remove thefun part of the planning, but

(03:17:20):
you want to double down on thepersonalization that happens
alongside and after the planning.
That's where AI can reallyboost.
You know travel.

Speaker 2 (03:17:29):
Yeah, well, as you mentioned the travel planners,
because yesterday in the startupcompetition there was a company
that went into the wholestartup, the travel planning and
they're an AI focused company.
But Rod Cusper from Viator, thefounder he's actually closing
out our season five of ourpodcast.
He's known and I joke aboutthis in my interview with him
that he's kind of the SimonCowell of the judges, because he

(03:17:51):
says it like it is andsometimes it's well.
Most often it's refreshing,it's honest and it's like it's
what they need to hear.
But sometimes it is like it'shard to swallow and everyone was
talking about the fact he tooksomeone down pretty hard.
I guess maybe some reactionharshly yesterday, but maybe
that's exactly what they neededto, you know, to rethink their

(03:18:11):
business, and so I think that'swhere he adds a lot of value.
But anyway, your point abouthere we are 2025, someone's
talking about trip planners,where he adds a lot of value.
But anyway, your point abouthere we are 2025, someone's
talking about trip planners.
They've been talking about tripplanners for 10 years.
It's a graveyard of tripplanners that have come along,
and I think that was his mainpoint was like what are you
going to do?
That's really that differentthan what's been done before to
really break through, andclearly that answer didn't come
across.

Speaker 6 (03:18:30):
Yeah, and the other thing you know is people and
this is my issue with industryin general, but also within the
travel industry, with AI,everyone's thinking about
optimization.
You know everyone's justapplying a linear human mindset
to it, and it's understandable.
You say let's take the thingsthat we already have to some
extent, because we've had tripplanners where you could drag

(03:18:50):
and drop things.
Now it's just AI powered, soit's just an iteration of
something that's been going onfor a long time and where we
know the uptake hasn't beenamazing.
And my sort of creed that Ilive by is telling people, don't
optimize that which shouldn'texist.
Forget this mindset ofoptimization and instead ask the

(03:19:14):
question does this process needto exist at all?
Can we rip up the playbook anddo something completely new?

Speaker 14 (03:19:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:19:21):
Like why do you need to build an AI trip planner?
It's not as sophisticated orstate-of-the-art as you think it
is just because it's got AI init.
You've got to completelyrethink what travel even means.
I think that's the big questionto ask what does it mean to
think about travel?
What does it mean to get peopleto dream?
Maybe you need an app that runson a Roku screen that immerses

(03:19:47):
people and they don't need atrip planner.
Maybe you need to not build atrip planner.
Maybe you need to build an AIenablement tool for conventional
travel agents face-to-face,that facilitates that discussion
Like think broader.
It's not a tech deficit.
We have in many industries, notjust in travel, an imagination

(03:20:08):
deficit.
That's the problem.

Speaker 2 (03:20:09):
Yeah, so one of the things I just want to highlight,
too, to your point, is that oneof the things that's held a lot
of companies back on the travelside is the cost of marketing
and like creating videoproductions, for example.
People buying high-end trips.
The reality is they're buyingthem off of brochure images that
have existed for 20 years andnow they're just on the website.
One of the things that a lot ofcompanies have been trying to

(03:20:31):
plan for is better video contentand now that we live in this
age of gen ai and some of thetools that I've seen with
companies like Gannai, they cancreate videos at a very low
production cost that are as goodor better than the actual real
life experience.
The only concern is, obviouslyit's not the real world, but
nevertheless you can at leastgive someone a much more
accurate idea of what the tripexperience is going to be.

(03:20:52):
They showed me an example of acampaign they had run for
Australia for a tourism board,and I swear to God I could not
believe.
I'm not seeing Australia,having lived there, like it
looked so true to life.
But this is where thetechnology is now available and
companies are going to startembracing it for all these
different ways, but there's somuch more we could chat about
and obviously I want to have youback for our AI Summit.
I want to also acknowledgeBruce Rosard for bringing you

(03:21:13):
into Arrival in the first placeand introducing us, and you know
he's obviously a big fan ofyours, as am I.

Speaker 6 (03:21:19):
He's a big shout out to Bruce.
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:21:22):
He's a big fan of our podcast.
He's always listening in andsending me text messages and
commenting on things, and he'sso engaged in our industry.
So, yeah, full credit to Brucefor that and obviously the
Focused Right team for bringingyou in this year and bringing
you back and having thisopportunity.
I want to make sure all of ourlisteners can follow you, just
like I do on LinkedIn or socialchannels, so tell everyone how

(03:21:43):
to follow along on your journeys, mark Mechie, or look to
collaborate with you in some way.

Speaker 6 (03:21:47):
I'm a single social media kind of thing no Insta, no
Facebook, none of that.
No TikTok, no, nothing exceptLinkedIn.
Linkedin is where I double down, so just find me by name, mark
Mekki Mark, with a C-M-E-K-K-IEasy to find.
There's not that many.
I think there's one.
So find me on LinkedIn and,yeah, follow along.
I post a lot about this stuff,including the mindset stuff, the

(03:22:09):
culture stuff and experimentsand tips.

Speaker 2 (03:22:11):
So that's where to find me.
That's awesome.
I'm so glad we got thisopportunity.
Mark, Great to see you againand look forward to keeping in
touch.

Speaker 6 (03:22:17):
Pleasure.
Thanks Dan.

Speaker 2 (03:22:23):
I now have the privilege to speak to two of the
event team here at theFocusrite conference in
Barcelona.
We have an intern and more of aspecialist.
We've got Valentina Walsh,who's been running these events
for the last few years.
So welcome Valentina.
Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for having us, thankyou.
And we also have Matisse Casey,who is a student intern, and

(03:22:43):
his mom actually has been on ourpodcast, Florence.
So welcome, Matisse.
Great to have you on thepodcast as well.
Thank you very much.
Now tell us a little bit aboutthe event this year.
So we'll start Valentina.
Tell us a little bit aboutFocusrite Barcelona 2025.
How has this conference beendifferent for the last few years
?
Obviously, the venue haschanged.
It's much more extraordinarythis year.
But tell us a little bit aboutwhat you've seen from the

(03:23:06):
conference this year, what someof the highlights have been.

Speaker 8 (03:23:09):
Yeah, so, as you said , we're lucky to be in a
different location this year.
I think it's fitting theatmosphere a bit better and I
think, in terms of thedifference, I think it's fitting
the atmosphere a bit better andI think, in terms of the
difference, I think it's a bitmore intimate this year.
The new theme, especially ofthe technology takeover, is
really exciting.
We're seeing a lot more of theAI being spoken about in
comparison to last year, so it'svery exciting, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:23:37):
Tell us a little bit about your role, because
obviously the Focusrite teamputs a lot of time and effort
and care into these events.
I love attending them.
Everyone I've spoken to andpeople I've heard from on the
podcast have absolutely lovedbeing at your Focusrite Europe
this year and it's my first timeat the Europe conference.
But tell us a little bit aboutwhat goes into putting on an
event like this, because I see Iwouldn't say the stress level,
but because obviously you've gota great team dynamic, but there
is certainly you guys arefocused on delivering a great

(03:23:57):
conference.
So tell us a little bit aboutyour role and what you've been
doing over the last couple ofdays.

Speaker 8 (03:24:01):
Yeah, so a lot goes into this.
I've been lucky to be helpingLaurie Harris plan the events,
trying to get as many startupsjoining new attendees.
It's really important,especially in the build up to
the event, so a lot goes into it.
And especially in the build-upto the event, so a lot goes into
it.
In the last couple of dayswe've just been focusing on
making sure everyone's got asmooth experience here, make

(03:24:23):
sure the speakers are gettingready.
So, yeah, it's just a lot ofthe background work, but it's
been very exciting.

Speaker 2 (03:24:29):
It's kind of like the swan on the water it looks
graceful, but you guys are theones paddling with feet
underneath to keep it alltogether.
Exactly exactly.
That's awesome.
And, Matisse, bring you intothe conversation too.
Tell us a little bit about whatbrought you this year.
Obviously, you're a student,you're an intern, so likely a
bright future ahead of you atFocusrite.
But yeah, tell us a little bitabout what brought you here this
year and your role.
So.

Speaker 20 (03:24:48):
I've been here for one year.
I started in Barcelona lastyear as well, in June, and I
also headed to the US for theconference in November in
Arizona, and so I came back thisyear.
I had a great opportunity, andso I'm very thankful for it.
I love it here.
The experience is great, we'redoing loads of things, we're
seeing loads of interestingpeople, and it's a very nice
conference and it's veryentertaining.

Speaker 2 (03:25:10):
Tell us a little bit more of some of the highlights
from this year.
Is it some of the people thatyou've met or some of the
sessions?
I mean, I know you're not inthe sessions.
You're trying to make sure thatpeople get to the sessions and
like everyone's where they needto be, but I'm still interested
to hear some of the highlightsfrom Barcelona from your
perspective.

Speaker 20 (03:25:25):
Well, there is something I really like to see.
It's the global startup pitchesthat they have.
So there are two on two days.
There is a startup pitch forsmaller companies that have been
here for just two years, andthen there's a another startup
pitch for, like, older companieswho are already uh in the game,
let's say, and uh.
So I love seeing them.
I've been able to chat with acouple of them and there are

(03:25:47):
still very interesting peoplethat I have been able to meet
and that I have seen, uh and uhon the conference, uh theater
stage.
So, yeah, it's great, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:25:56):
Yeah, that's fantastic.
Actually, the startups has beenalways one of the things I look
forward to at a Focusriteconference.
I love that Focusrite buildsthat into the ecosystem.
I've spoken to a lot of themhere.
I know quite a few of thesestartups and this is such an
important opportunity for themto get exposure to the large
corporate clients.
So it's interesting that standsout to you, and especially
being an intern and seeing someof those people that are
hustling.
They're like you know they'regoing to maximize the benefit of

(03:26:18):
being here for this opportunity.
Tell us a little bit what'sahead for you in terms of future
events as far as you know rightnow.
Are you going to be in SanDiego?
Are you going to be back forEurope next year?

Speaker 20 (03:26:29):
Well, I hope I will be in San Diego.
I hope so.
It will depend on my schedulebecause I'm supposed to work,
I'm supposed to do an internship, starting in September, I hope
being there.
And well, if they want me forthe next years, I'll be here.
It'll be a great opportunityagain.

Speaker 2 (03:26:43):
So it's fantastic.
It's great to meet you.
I'm thrilled it has worked outas well as it has for you and
Valentina.
Tell us a little bit about yourfuture plans with Focusrite.

Speaker 8 (03:26:58):
So in the next two weeks I'm going to TTS in London
, which is run by Northstar, sothat's the next event we've got
going on.
It's a bit more of anexhibition, less, more of a
conference, and then I'm tied toBarcelona.
So I hope to be back next year,and I haven't been to San Diego
or the folks right conference,but I hope to join that and
you're based in London is thatright?
Yeah, I'm based in London.
I've been based here for thelast couple years, though.
Like studying yeah uh.
So yeah, it's been quiteconvenient to join the event,

(03:27:20):
but I go back to London for theevent and that's fantastic and I
know Focusrite is very focusedon the European market.

Speaker 2 (03:27:26):
This is a big year for Europe in so many ways,
given the geopolitical eventsthat are happening, so I'm
thrilled to be here in Europeand a lot of people feel the
same way.
A lot of Americans I've spokento on the podcast that many of
our listeners have heard fromare here because they see a lot
of business opportunity inEurope, so it's obviously an
exciting time to be based inLondon and focused on the
European market.
Yeah, exactly.
And then, in terms of Matisse,where are you based?

(03:27:47):
Remind me again where you'rebased.

Speaker 20 (03:27:51):
So I'm currently a student in a business school
called EDEC.
So I'm based in Lille, so inthe north of France, right?
But right now I'm in the southof France, so I came back.

Speaker 2 (03:27:59):
Yeah, great place to spend the summer.
It is, yeah, it's fantastic.
Well, it's terrific to meet youboth.
I look forward to keeping intouch and hopefully having you
back on the podcast again in thefuture.

Speaker 8 (03:28:08):
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you and goodbye.

Speaker 2 (03:28:13):
I'm now excited to introduce someone to all of our
listeners who I've gotten toknow quite well over the last
couple of years but we've neverrecorded a podcast together and
he's finally on Travel Trends.
He is the Global Head of Travelfor Stripe, james Lemon.
James, welcome to Travel Trends.

Speaker 21 (03:28:33):
Thanks.

Speaker 2 (03:28:33):
Dan, it is brilliant to be here finally.
Like you say, it's been a longtime, but why not do it at a big
travel event?
Yeah, exactly.
So here we are at Focus.
Right, I'm sure most of ourlisteners know what Stripe is,
but just give everyone a quickoverview because obviously your
role is unique at Stripe thefact you guys have gotten into
the travel space.
So just tell everyone a littlebit of background of Stripe and
specifically your role.

Speaker 21 (03:28:49):
Yeah, so Stripe is.
Ultimately, stripe's vision isthat financial infrastructure
will fix the world right.
So we started off as a paymentsbusiness so that any customer,
any business, can take money inas many ways it needs to.
And these days it's a prettycomplicated space.
People want to use wallets,they want to use buy now, pay
later.
They want to use local paymenttypes that are popular

(03:29:10):
Businesses and goodness.
This is so true in travel.
They want to pay out right,you're paying out around the
world and that's been typicallypretty clunky.
And then also, you want tomanage that money.
So actually, you know, if youare a big global business, you
want to manage it all.
So Stripe came together sayinglike we want to be the
infrastructure that solves forthat, from the biggest companies
down to the smallest.
And we're not travel specific.
You know we work with theAmazons, the Shopify's, some of

(03:29:33):
the world's biggest retailers,about half of the S&P 500.
But my job is to make us reallypopular in travel and make sure
everyone understands how youtranslate something that sounds
quite technical.
That just makes sense for travelbusinesses.

Speaker 2 (03:29:45):
Well, and Stripe itself has an amazing technology
story and is a remarkablecompany that has just had
explosive growth and obviously,given the size of the travel
industry, it makes total senseto have someone like yourself
leading that practice.
And I think one of the things Ijust wanted to acknowledge
James for is that connects tothe reason that we've actually
met a number of times is that ashe built out the travel
practice, he partnered withTravel Massive and Ian Cumming,

(03:30:08):
who is a good friend to both ofus and I would say is very much
a pioneer and a legend in thetravel industry.
He's been on our podcast.
I think very highly of Ian andthe organization he's built and
you guys have partnered togetherto run events all over the
world.
So tell everyone a little bitabout that partnership between
Stripe and Travel Massive.

Speaker 21 (03:30:26):
Yeah, I think, probably driven by lockdown, I
came to realize just theabsolute value of community
having people around you thatyou can learn from, you can
share ideas with, you can getstuff done, and I think travel
is the ultimate ecosystem thatneeds to be driven by community.
So I first went to a travelmassive event 2018.
I think it was upstairs at apub in london.

(03:30:47):
They fit 50 people into a roomthat was clearly designed for 25
and I was doing a differentstartup at the time, but they
put me on a panel about.
You know why it's so hard tohire people in hospitality and
we just had the best time justgreat energy, great passion.
So when I came to Stripe and Ithought we have millions of
users around the world in travel, not everyone actually spends
much time with people fromStripe.

(03:31:07):
So why not do this world tourwhere, as I go to these events
or as I visit customers you know, let's put a tab behind a bar
in the evening, maybe let's runa panel or an innovation
showcase or just buy the drinks,but it's a great chance to hear
what's going on, hear whatpeople are building, say thank
you to our customers, find newcustomers.
So massive shout out not justto Ian but to the entire
volunteer community at TravelMassive.

(03:31:29):
It is a phenomenal business,but also just a big shout out to
anyone building travelcommunities Like we've got to
pull together to build an evenbetter industry for our
customers.

Speaker 2 (03:31:39):
Well and to exactly your point.
I mean the fact that youdecided to go down the path of
partnering with Travel Massive,connecting with their chapter
leaders and all of these majorurban centers that have large
Travel Massive communities, andyou can all of a sudden go in as
Stripe, connect with thatcommunity, bring more people out
, and I've had the privilege tobe probably three or four of
these events, including one atITB in Berlin a few months ago,

(03:32:00):
and it was fantastic just to seethe community come together.
And, of course, ian is the onethat introduced the two of us in
the first place when it waslike and again, that's just his
spirit of community is like asuper connector, and obviously
then we've met a number of times, we genuinely get along and
it's kind of like that's, youknow, that sense, the spirit of
community which brings us toFocusrite.
And all of a sudden we're herein Barcelona.

(03:32:22):
So tell me, james, what bringsyou to Focusrite Barcelona this
year?

Speaker 21 (03:32:27):
I think, ultimately, we're talking about innovation
at a faster pace than we've evertalked about it before, and
Focusrite is great for bringingtogether people from across the
ecosystem.
You've got the distributionlayer, you've got OTAs, you've
got hotel groups.
You've got a whole range ofpeople that are just really
passionate and building in thespace.
It's not just about hotels,it's not just about travel

(03:32:48):
agencies.
So I guess it's the best placeto hear what people really think
about, like what's going to bethe practical use cases in AI?
What's going to be happening instable coins?
Like, like, what's going to bethe practical use cases in AI,
what's going to be happening instable coins?
Like, what are the partnershipswe need to be thinking about
for the next couple of years?
So I'm here to learn.
I'm here to reconnect withpeople.
I know I'm here to findStripe's next kind of cohort of
customers that we don't alreadyhave.
I'm here to host drinks tonightwith Travel Massive.

(03:33:08):
So yeah, every year for thelast three years we've been
having.

Speaker 2 (03:33:25):
This is the first day and james and I are connecting
at the end of the first day, butthe conversations that I've
heard so far are they love thevenue, they've already benefited
immensely from the sessionsthey've attended and all I've
heard so far is just positivefeedback.
On day one and this isn't evenreally officially day one, this
is kind of the pre-day ReallyThings kick off.
Things officially kick offtomorrow morning.

(03:33:46):
Yeah, so from your experienceon day one, how does this
compare to previous years?
And are there certain otheraspects to being here, other
highlights that you would callout to our global listeners that
you know don't quite have theprivilege that we have to be
here in this room amongst thiscompany, attending these
sessions?
What are some of the otherthings that maybe stood out to
you this year, james?

Speaker 21 (03:34:06):
I think they've got some really fantastic speakers.
I think I've heard people fromyou know the world of AI and
some of the big OTAs and I thinkthat's great.
I think those guys are reallysetting the pace.
I think they have got a niceround table format where they
maybe get three or four experts,but actually they want people
to chip in.
They want people to throw theirthoughts into the hat.

(03:34:27):
I've unfortunately missed thestartup presentations, but I'm
hoping, as I'm sure yourlisteners are hoping, we can
catch all this stuff.
Watch it back later, becauseyou've got to look at the top 10
, top 20 startups today, becausethey are the guys that will be
disrupting things tomorrow.
So I will definitely be kind ofdownloading those catching up

(03:34:47):
when I get them over.

Speaker 2 (03:34:48):
Yeah, no, you bring up a really good point, which is
Focusrite.
Europe is the main website,focusriteconferencecom.
But if you look up Focusrite, alot of these videos.
I know they are videoing a lotof these sessions and that's not
always the case with a lot ofconferences, so a lot of the
content will be available.
They've obviously got Focuswireand they've got us here, but
they've also got videos in eachof the rooms.
So I, like you, have not hadthe opportunity to attend some

(03:35:09):
of those sessions, and I keeplooking at the agenda.
I'm like, oh my God, one missed,another one, but it's all good,
I'm loving what I do and I'mhoping that I'm going to be able
to catch those later, likeyourself.
Let's get back to Stripe Jamesand some of the plans that you
have.
I know you've got an additionalteam member and he's actually
going to be speaking at our AISummit a little later this year,

(03:35:35):
which I'm thrilled about, buttell.

Speaker 21 (03:35:37):
Yeah, in travel we are really excited about what we
would call the platform space.
This is software businessesthat build for their customers.
So you think about a hotelproperty management system, a
travel agency reservation system, a system that does reservation
tech like.
Those guys are fantastic atdoing what they do with stripe.

(03:35:58):
They effectively white labelpayments.
They make sure everyone gets agreat booking engine.
You might have a terminal thatyou can kind of walk around and
take payments with.
Maybe you can even issue cardsfor your staff or for your
customers.
Like that's the space we wantto win, and I think that means
that they can help theircustomers be innovators.
And then in the enterprisespace, it's really about working
with the big hotel chains,helping them drive more direct
bookings, big kind of travelagencies, as they think about

(03:36:21):
not just taking money in fromtheir customers but actually
paying out to their suppliersaround the world.
It is hard to be the CFO of atravel agency today.
You've got virtual cards.
People are talking to you aboutstable coins.
You've got all these differentways to pay out.
We want to make that much, muchmore programmable like lower
cost, programmable, faster, sowe never stop innovating.
The funny thing about Stripe isthat most of what we do is what

(03:36:44):
I would call horizontal.
We didn't necessarily buildeverything we have for the
travel industry.
I just get the really fun jobof translating that to make sure
it works for travel.
Travel customers are happy, andso it means I've got to really
skill up as well.
Like, what are we doing in AIthat helps our customers?
What is stable coins?
How do you talk about it?
To someone who's been you knowit's just brand new.
It's completely alien.

Speaker 2 (03:37:03):
Well, let's demystify that for our audience that just
asked themselves that questionwhat are stable coins?

Speaker 21 (03:37:08):
So here's my layman's version.
So the world of crypto is splitinto two.
Right, it's got the consumerstuff we all know and it's like
you know, it's the meme coins.
There's a ton of junk in there.
Anything can happen.
Maybe you're investing in it,maybe you're not.
And then you get what's calledthe stable coin space.

(03:37:28):
People think about blockchain orWeb3 in terms you hear, but
effectively every dollar youhave of a stable coin think of
the words USDC is a good one.
Every dollar you have of astable coin is backed by a real
dollar sitting in the UStreasury somewhere.
So it means you now have thiscompletely programmable tool to
move money around the world,hold money in developing
countries, but it's all safelyinflation-backed to the dollar,

(03:37:49):
so it's never going to go up,but it's never going to go down.
Now look, if you're in the US orEurope or Australia, you're
probably like my money's fine inmy bank, that's fine.
But if you're offshore inAfrica or LATAM, these guys are
already holding something like$16 trillion every year in
US-backed security somewhere.
So we're now giving them a wayto do that that is programmable,

(03:38:10):
safe, lower cost to move around.
So it's a real revolution inthe way that travel companies
can pay out and receive money,but also that travel companies
might want to hold funds andthen pay out their own suppliers
and staff in time.
So lots more to come.
We're just getting some pilotsout the door now, but we know of
a leading OTA that have putsomeone on this full time this

(03:38:31):
year and they're basicallysaying his only metric is find
us our first stablecoin use case.
So every travel business needsa stable coin strategy.

Speaker 2 (03:38:38):
Interesting.
Well, one of the things thatcame up when I was on the
Tourpreneur podcast and lookingat tour operators, one of the
things that I'd highlighted frommy experience is that actually
one of the main profit driversis currency exchange and
interest, like actually how youmanage the money, and obviously
this is the world that you're inand a lot of tour operators
think of the profit they need todrive from their business, not
the other financial instrumentsthat are at play.

(03:38:59):
So having someone like you hereis actually really interesting
for me and for our listeners,because some of the questions
and the discussions we can have.
So one of the things I wantedto ask you, james, since we're
finally having the opportunityto have this conversation and
this is just going to be asnippet we're going to have
James back in season six.
We'll have them involved in theAI summits.
You're going to hear more fromStripe and from James and the
team, but one of the things I'mkeen to know is that when travel

(03:39:21):
companies are looking atdifferent options around
payments, what is it aboutStripe that you find really
resonates and, if you wouldn'tmind sharing along those lines,
is like that where are youseeing the growth?
Like what specific verticalswithin travel are embracing
Stripe the most.

Speaker 21 (03:39:37):
Yeah, I think those businesses that see that
payments is a strategic kind ofalmost business of its own are
the ones that do really wellwith Stripe.
So you go.
If you're just obsessing aboutthe cost of your credit card
payments and transactions,you're probably not going to do
very well with Stripe.
But if you're thinking, lookactually my checkout where
customers pay, it's actuallyjust part of my marketing funnel

(03:39:57):
and I've paid all of this moneyto drive traffic through my
marketing funnel why are wekicking everyone out at the last
minute?
Because the payments doesn'twork?
We don't have the popularpayment type they want.
So I think that's really thatglobal reach and optionality of
hundreds of ways to pay isprobably like our dominant
proposition.
But Stripe was built bydevelopers and I think, even
though we're great in enterprise, we're still very, very

(03:40:19):
developer friendly.
So if you want to get movingquickly in an agile way, it's
completely programmable.
It's a single stack and asingle API.
Like these are parts of our DNAthat like we just we obsess
about as kind of almost likewith craft and beauty, like we
want this to be a wonderfulexperience for developers.
So you combine those two thingsgreat business outcomes, really
easy to work with really funpeople that host drinks around

(03:40:41):
the world.
There's your magic secret sauceof why Stripe's doing well.
So, yeah, anyone in travel canuse it.
There's a big kind of.
If you want to attract yourcustomers on the front end, if
you want to pay out suppliers onthe back end, if you just want
to think strategically about themoney running through your
business, now's the time to comeand talk to Stripe.

Speaker 2 (03:40:58):
Very cool.
I got one more question for youand then I want to make sure
people know where to find youand connect with Stripe and
learn more.
But the specific question I haveis that, as we sit here at
Focusrite, one of the thingsthat I love about the Focusrite
conferences I've been to is that, based on the meetings you see
here and the presentations, youhave a pretty good idea of
what's going to happen in thetravel industry over the next
six months.

(03:41:18):
I've talked to Pete Como aboutthis and he's very humble.
He's like, oh, maybe threemonths, but I've typically seen
what's going to happen in thenext six to 12 months in our
industry is often shaped by theopportunities that are realized
at a conference like this, andso one of the things I wanted to
ask you, since you've been inthis industry for many years,

(03:41:43):
you have a great understandingof the travel space, and here we
are almost in mid 2025.
What is one of the major trendsthat you're paying attention to
in the travel industry that youthink will have a meaningful
impact over the next year?

Speaker 21 (03:41:50):
So the biggest trend in travel at the moment is
absolutely AI, and I can'tbelieve you've had anyone here
that hasn't told you that.
But let me just like dig intothat a little bit so it doesn't
feel like a generic answer.
I think that we're sitting hereright now not knowing what
direction it's going to take,and so there are ways to
position your business with theright tech stack to go.

(03:42:10):
Whichever way it's going to go,you'll be ready.
We need to get out of some ofthe legacy ways of thinking of
like my property managementsystem will hold me back or we
can't do it that way because Idon't want to be merchant record
.
There's so much optionality now.
There's so much modularity tothe way that you can build this
in.
But from inspiration, search,book and now payments, there's
going to be an explosion of waysthat consumers want to do that

(03:42:31):
Really new, popular ways, andthat could be AI chatbots.
It could be within your socialmedia.
It could be companies that havenever been travel agents before
, like banks and rugby clubs andfootball clubs.
Your content could show upanywhere and no one knows if
intermediaries will do well orsuppliers will do well.
But it's going to be a reallyexciting time where everyone can
show up with their valueproposition and, by the way,

(03:42:51):
value propositions need to like.
You should have that by now.
Are you known for price?
Do you have a great loyaltyprogram, so people just really
resonate with your brand?
Those things will still beimportant in ai.
Our job is making sure and wehave these sdks ready to go.
Now we have our first casestudies.
People like the plexity.
There will absolutely be a paybutton in all of these new
channels, from social media toai agents to wherever your

(03:43:12):
travel content shows up.
So you need to be ready with acompany like strike to, to go
whenever that customer needs topay, be there with like a
one-click checkout.

Speaker 2 (03:43:20):
So that's what we're obsessing about and that, I
think, is what we're going to betalking about for the next 12
months Exciting and you heard ithere first and we'll pick up
that conversation definitely ina few months time at the AI
Summit.
But thanks so much for joiningus, james.
This certainly didn'tdisappoint.
I was so looking forward tothis and I want this
conversation to go on, but Iknow this is like a short
spotlight from this event.
But I certainly look forward tofuture collaborations and

(03:43:44):
certainly learning more aboutthe Stripe journey.
So thanks again for making thetime for this.

Speaker 21 (03:43:47):
Thank you for having me Cheers.

Speaker 2 (03:43:50):
I just had the pleasure to meet Aaron and Ryan,
who are working on a reallyexciting project with a
colleague in the UK, and Ithought let's bring them on the
podcast because I'm reallyintrigued specifically by Ryan
because he works at Feedonomicsand Aaron works with BigCommerce
and it turns out this is allnow under one parent company.
So I'm intrigued to get thewhole story, but I worked very

(03:44:12):
closely with Feedonomics for anumber of years so I was really
excited to see that you werehere, ryan.
But, aaron, let's start withyou on the big commerce side.
Tell us a little bit about yourrole, what you do and what
brings you here to FocusriteAwesome, yeah, thanks for that,
daniel.

Speaker 7 (03:44:24):
So Aaron Gelhaus actually the Senior Director of
both Feedonomics and BigCommercehere in Europe originally came
over to London to really helpexpand the Feedonomics presence
and have just recently kind ofovertaken the BigCommerce
enterprise sales team which Ihelp lead here in Europe and
really excited to be here at theconference the Focusrite

(03:44:45):
conference today, especially inpartnership with Ubique Digital,
which is an agency partner ofboth feedonomics and BigCommerce
and really helping to launch aunique accelerator that is tying
together all of our portfolioproducts and services under
BigTravel.
So that's what brings us heretoday.

Speaker 2 (03:45:04):
That's great.
No, thank you.
Let's just give everyone a bitof an overview of BigCommerce.

Speaker 7 (03:45:07):
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, we're not trying
to replace Shopify, right,shopify has a place.
They are an excellente-commerce platform,
particularly in kind of, youknow, simple, generic
direct-to-consumer retail usecases.
Right, I think where we havefound a lot of traction on the
big commerce side is for thosekind of more discerning use

(03:45:28):
cases in industries that havemore bespoke needs.
Right, we're API first, we'recomposable, we're very flexible
in terms of, ultimately,whatever additional tech you
need to build out the optimalexperiences that consumers are
looking for, including thingslike having complete optionality
around payment gateways andother things that are a little

(03:45:50):
bit different for morecomplicated and complex use
cases.

Speaker 2 (03:45:55):
Yeah.
Well, for me, that connects thedots, especially when you think
about the travel industry andwhy many travel brands and I'll
say this that they don't useShopify.
I mean, if you're going to buya t-shirt, if you're going to
buy some sneakers or you're at amarket, you know Shopify is a
great solution for so manye-commerce applications, but
travel is complex.
It's a considered purchase,unique needs, which is where you

(03:46:18):
need an API.
I'm going to come back to this,but let's bring in Ryan in the
conversation, Tell everyoneabout your role and also explain
Feedonomics, because I loveFeedonomics, but I want everyone
to know about Feedonomicsbecause we swore by it with our
digital marketing team.
There's so many greatapplications for that platform,
but yeah, yeah, sure, and thanksfor inviting us on the podcast.

Speaker 5 (03:46:33):
So I'm Ryan.
I'm a solutions engineer withFeedonomics.
I've been with the company fromvery early days, from when we
were really just like workingwith like small businesses.
I was based in Los Angeles butultimately moved to Europe to
really help build out ourenterprise offering within
Europe itself.
So, yeah, but ultimately whatFeedonomics is doing is we're
taking data from wherever itlives within its source.
Systems could be BigCommerce,could be Shopify any sort of

(03:46:54):
e-commerce system manipulatingthat, transforming it and then
exporting it out to differentadvertising channels and
marketplaces as well.
That obviously translates quitewell to travel, especially if
we're looking to actually sortof advertise different flight
routes, different hotels,different rooms and rate values
that could be associated withthose.

Speaker 2 (03:47:10):
Yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned Los
Angeles because that's where Iwas based when the team came to
me and recommended usingFeedonomics, and at the time I
think our budget was around $10million in paid media and I was
trying to convince Facebook andGoogle to work with us directly,
and they don't work withcompanies directly for often
less than $50 or $100 million,or so they said, what's your
monthly spend?

(03:47:34):
And we didn't meet that criteria, and so many companies that
listen to this podcast are inthat same space.
They're small to medium ormedium to consider themselves
larger businesses, but large fortravel is not the same as large
in other sectors, and so it canbe more difficult to work with
those big brands directly.
So you need solutions, you needpartners, intermediaries.
So we used Feedonomics forexactly what you described was
basically creating a feed of allof our travel products to be

(03:47:57):
able to do paid socialadvertising very effectively and
carousels and remarketing, andso that's why I'm such a big fan
of it, because it massivelyincreased our conversion rates
and the team loved using it.
So tell everyone a little bitmore about who uses Feedonomics
in the travel space.
Yeah, so I probably can't dropany specific names.
I might have to defer to Aaronon that.

(03:48:18):
But yeah, you guys are undernon-disclosure.
You're like yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:48:22):
It's a little bit tricky.
So, I would say there are largeflights, there's a lot of large
hotel brands.
Also, travel aggregators isanother big one.
Anyone who has a lot of dataand they're looking to advertise
that elsewhere, right yeah, andwe typically look the more
complex, the bigger sort of usecases are a good fit for
feedonomics.

Speaker 2 (03:48:37):
Yeah, and then tell us a little bit of this project.
There's nothing I want to getinto, so jump back in here,
aaron, and tell us a little bitabout this project you're
working on.
What brings you to theFocusrite conference?

Speaker 7 (03:48:47):
Yeah, thanks for that .
So so again, it's really inpartnership with Big Travel,
which is really the brainchildof a agency partner of ours,
ubique Digital, based out ofLondon but with presence
globally, and what they've done,which is really unique, is
essentially take theenterprise-leading products that
are underneath the BigCommerceumbrella, so that includes the

(03:49:10):
modern website experiences thatBigCommerce is able to deliver
at enterprise grade.
And obviously there's a lot oflegacy players in this space
right X, hybris and Magento andSAP.
And so I think what bigcommerce can do on the platform
side is really kind of drivedown total cost of ownership and

(03:49:31):
really create those morepersonalized experience.
And so what they're doing ismarrying that value proposition
on the big commerce side withfeedonomics and what we're able
to do in terms of optimized dataout to all of the major
channels that are relevant fortravel.
And again to Ryan's point, wecan't share too many logo rights
, but major airlines, hotelsystems, resorts, are all super

(03:49:53):
reliant on having reallyup-to-date data in these
channels in a personalizedmanner to help ensure that we're
getting the conversion ratesthat we need.
And then, thirdly, underneaththe umbrella is MakeSwift, which
is really a really modernmarketing digital editor which
really empowers marketing teamsto have everything from really
sophisticated A-B testing ofexperiences on their own site

(03:50:18):
and be able to pivot thoseexperiences very quickly, as we
know that the demands of today'sconsumers are changing rapidly.
And so how do we best set upthese travel organizations,
hospitality organizations, withreally agile tools that are
going to add incremental revenueto their go-to-market teams,
and that's the goal.

Speaker 2 (03:50:39):
Well, it's really interesting, and what I didn't
understand until we sat down tohave this conversation is just
that you guys are all integratedinto one larger organization
now.
So if you're going to want todo business with BigCommerce or
with Feedonomics, it's all partof a family of brands.

Speaker 7 (03:50:53):
Well, yes, and you're teasing out what I so much wish
I could share.
At the end of July, we'reactually announcing a new parent
brand as well, which all ofthese will be housed under,
which I think will help unifythat total commerce story in a
real way.
But at the end of the day, justlike you, and what attracted me
to Feedonomics leading thatteam, even though I now wear
both hats right is thatFeedonomics will always be a

(03:51:16):
brand unto itself too.
It has its own brand equity.
It has its own followers.
It will always be e-commerceplatform agnostic.
30% of our install base is onShopify Plus.
That's not going away, right,so I think that's an important
message for folks to know too.

Speaker 2 (03:51:31):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Well, I think the one thingthat would be helpful for all of
our listeners, given this bigproject that you're working on
and one of the key reasonsyou're here at the Focusrite
conference is just sharing someinsights for other travel
companies that are looking toimprove their digital game,
whether it's like they're goingthrough a digital transformation
, which I think we've beentalking about for more than a
decade, and now obviously we'rein this world of AI.

(03:51:51):
But I'd love to hear from thetwo of you Clearly, you're
experts in this space and have alot of relevant experience what
would be a couple ofrecommendations you'd have to
our global listeners, whetherit's utilizing your technology
stack or looking at working withdifferent travel brands.
What are some of the big trendsin digital marketing that our
listeners should be payingattention to?

Speaker 5 (03:52:13):
Yeah, sure, I'll take a swing at it.
So I'd say it comes down to acouple of different things.
Yeah, sure, I'll take a swingat it.
So I'd say it comes down to acouple of different things.
So probably the biggest one ismaking sure that you have
dynamic data being presentedonto these different social
channels and remarketingchannels, affiliate channels,
right.
A lot of times the travelagencies that we're speaking to
they're large, massive brandsthat everyone's heard of, like
household names throughoutEurope, but they don't have a
way to get their data from theirsource systems into these

(03:52:35):
different channels, actuallymarket it to the people that
want to buy them, right?
So a big thing for Feedonomicsis helping us understand what
their source systems are, makingit as simple as possible for
their teams to come in andleverage that data for those
different marketing channels and, as you know, the powerful
transformations that go behindthat in terms of merging
multiple different data sources.
Transforming that data on ourchannel-specific basis is

(03:52:56):
something that we do on aday-to-day basis for our clients
.

Speaker 2 (03:52:58):
Yeah, data, data, data.
Yes, that line, the data, isthe new oil.
That's another one of those.
But yeah, what about you, aaron?

Speaker 7 (03:53:06):
No, I mean not to belabor that point and you kind
of hit the nail on the head.
Right, that's a saying that isout and flooded in the market,
the data is the new oil isresonating right for a reason.
I think in this era in which nowwe're a couple years removed
from, obviously, ai being abuzzword and it's been
operationalized by nearly everybrand in retail, I think there's

(03:53:28):
still a lot of valuable groundto be covered in travel around
AI.
But, going back to your pointand kind of underpinning what
Ryan said, even applications ofAI and agentic AI and what's
coming down the queue is onlygoing to be as the data that's
underpinning those LLMs andthose bots and all of those
things, right, and so that'swhat's super interesting about

(03:53:49):
the feedonomics side of thehouse is the ability to really
ensure that the best catalogproduct, et cetera data is not
only being syndicated out, butthen you are having what I would
call the virtuous feedbackloops of further enriching that
data, further targeting thatdata and personalizing it over
time, and obviously then thathas significant implications on
the owned website too.

(03:54:10):
I think the only other thing I'dadd to your point is that you
know, digital transformation nolonger has to take a 12 or 15
person internal team and workinggroups and six months process
to align on which products youwould like.
I think modern SaaS providersthat are really at the cutting

(03:54:31):
edge in this space and I thinkwhat really big travel
represents is the ability toreally, in an agile way, deploy
revenue generating technologies,prove out the business case and
grow that more internally withyour.

Speaker 2 (03:54:46):
to leverage is the efficiency gains, the
productivity and being able toscale content at such an
incredible rate that you can nowhave a marketing team of one

(03:55:06):
that would have outpaced a teamof eight or 10 just by
leveraging these tools, so it'san exciting time for many of us
to be in the travel marketingspace.
As far as listeners want tofind out more information about
feedonomics, about big commerce,where should they go or where
should they follow up witheither of you guys to learn more
information?

Speaker 7 (03:55:24):
Yeah, I think the easiest way in the travel
industry is just go tobigtravelcom.
That's really going to be kindof the wrapping up all of our
value propositions and reallywhere Ubique has been a thought
leader in this space to helpreally cohesively bring together
the value proposition of ourenterprise software and services
across these differentofferings.

Speaker 2 (03:55:46):
And then we mentioned Ubeak.
I just want to make sure thatall of our listeners can find
Ubeak, which is U-B-I-Q-U-Edigital.
So Ubeak Digital if you wantmore information on this project
.
But it's a real pleasuremeeting you both, aaron and Ryan
.
This was a surprise highlightof this conference and one of
the reasons that we're all here.
Any last thoughts on whatyou're hoping to get out of the
conference in the next couple ofdays?

Speaker 5 (03:56:08):
So I would say, just really understanding the problem
, right, I think from myperspective, I really get into
data, data, data, right, that'skind kind of my entire role, so
really understanding, like, whatare the specific issues that
everyone's seeing in today andlike especially integrating the
different AI, llms and wherepseudonyms could fit in there.

Speaker 2 (03:56:24):
Cool, that's great, and Aaron, bring us home.

Speaker 7 (03:56:27):
Oh, I mean, I can't.
I don't know if I can top Ryan.
So, you know, knowing theproblem is always critical.
I mean, look, at the end of theday, I always get amazing
insights and learn at every oneof these conferences from what
everybody is doing.
I think the pace of change inthe travel industry over the
next few years is going to makethe last decade look like a

(03:56:50):
snail's pace, right, and sowe're super excited to lean in
and the travel vertical, ourteam partners, you know, as you
noted, with performancemarketing agencies globally.
Next week we're at Cannes.
It's a busy Cannes line.
It's a busy summer for us interms of really ensuring that
we're staying ahead of all ofthe trends that are going to be

(03:57:10):
critical for brands to stayahead in this AI-driven world,
and so, yeah, very excited to behere and thanks for having us.

Speaker 2 (03:57:18):
For sure.
Thanks a lot, guys.
My next guest is Jillian Jones,and she's the identity lead at
Condatus and you may rememberyou heard from one of her
colleagues at our event inPhoenix with Focusrite.
And here we are in Barcelona,and it's Jillian's first time at
this conference as well, and Iwas looking forward to catching
up with you.
So welcome to Travel Trends,Gillian.

Speaker 22 (03:57:39):
Thank you so much, Dan.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (03:57:41):
Of course, yeah, thrilled to have you and the
organization back on the podcast, especially given how important
the concept that your businessapplies to.
So let's give everyone a bit ofan overview of what you do at
Condatas.

Speaker 22 (03:57:52):
Yeah, no, that's great, thank you.
So, yeah, condatas, we are ateam of around 45 digital
identity experts and we workacross the full range of
identity.
So, whether that be kind ofemployee centric or consumer
centric, and just really makingsure that our customers and the
organizations that we work withare at the forefront of their
identity strategy as it buildsin with cybersecurity.

(03:58:12):
And yeah, we're really very,very heavily partnered with
Microsoft.
So, again, we work very heavilyon the Microsoft Entry Platform
and, yeah, just making surethat identity is front and
center for a lot of people justnow, because it is a growing and
really important part of yourcybersecurity strategy.

Speaker 2 (03:58:27):
For sure, and I've definitely heard a lot of talk
about it here at the conferenceand there's a few people in this
space you, of course, gave agreat presentation in Phoenix on
stage, and then I spoke to Lucy, of course, your colleague, but
one of the things I was keen toask you is, given it is your
first time coming to Europe,you've traveled all the way
across the US.
Yeah, you're based in Scotland.

(03:58:48):
I think most people will pickup on your lovely accent right
away because you're based inEdinburgh.
But tell everyone what broughtyou to Focusrite Europe this
year yeah, so.

Speaker 22 (03:58:57):
So I mean, focusrite in Arizona was the first time
that I'd gone to any Focusriteconference and I have to say I
was just like really blown awayby the quality of attendees, the
quality of conversation, theinterest levels in digital
identity.
I think what we found,particularly with the European
one, is it is smaller but it'svery much more intimate lots and
lots of really interestingconversations.

(03:59:18):
But I think that Europe is in aslightly different position
when it comes to digitalidentity.
There are some pretty bigregulatory movements.
We've got EIDAS, europeanDigital Identity Wallets.
It's a little bit furtherforward.
So I think people are closer toreally feeling the impact of
these solutions and what's goingto happen to them.
So the interest is definitely alittle bit more advanced, but

(03:59:39):
only because I think that theactual technology is really on
our doorstep now, right, and Ithink that we'll see something
similar in San Diego, hopefullylater on in the year.
We'll see the interest kind offiltering through.

Speaker 2 (03:59:50):
Yeah, for sure.
I'm convinced of that becausemy good friend, Shane at
Microsoft, who's been on ourpodcast, he's also part of our
AI Summit later in October.
We wanted to talk about havingyou involved there because he is
very focused on this topic aswell in any of his presentations
and obviously he was on stageas well in Phoenix.

(04:00:10):
But at this conference, I'mvery keen to know, since you
weren't presenting and you'veobviously had a lot of
opportunity to attend thesessions what are some of the
highlights and standouts beyondthe digital identity side from
focus right europe.
What are some of the thingsthat brought you here and some
of the things that you all of uswere surprised to discover?

Speaker 22 (04:00:27):
yeah, I mean, I think, um, what's been,
obviously, ai like everyoneloves to talk about ai and I I
completely understand why it'sgoing to be so important,
particularly for travel andhospitality.
It's going to be so importantparticularly for travel and
hospitality.
It's going to reallyrevolutionize the industry in so
many great ways.
I think that what's been reallyreally good to hear about,
though, is people kind of reallyacknowledging that actually

(04:00:48):
it's already here.
In fact, it's been here for awhile, and if you are not
already thinking about this oractively doing things, you need
to be, and actually it wasreally interesting.
A couple of the presentationswere talking about, you know, um
, some companies have said youhave to use this internally.
Build a bot, build an ai agent,get get comfortable with the
tech yourself as an employee, asan individual, and then you can

(04:01:10):
see how it can extrapolate outto clients and really kind of
getting under the hood of things.
And it's quite interestingbecause we we do something very
similar in terms of digitalidentity.
I'm'm always saying, like,start with your employees, get
your employees secured first,really look at what you're doing
around your join, remove orleave processes and then go
through the different phases andthen take it to your customers,
because that's a great way tomake sure you've got a really

(04:01:31):
rounded strategy.
So it was quite interesting tosee some of the parallels and
conversation across differenttechnologies.

Speaker 2 (04:01:37):
For sure, and that's where the topic of AI I know
it's come up in a number ofdifferent sessions.
I've heard some of the feedbackthat many of our listeners would
have heard over the course ofthis podcast from various guests
and it really is sort of amixed bag and I think one of the
key things that many of ourlisteners and many people in the
industry are trying tounderstand, like the best use
cases of AI, like show meactually an example of it, don't

(04:01:58):
talk about it, like show me,and so on that topic, I'm just
given that you are very activein technology and travel and one
of the areas I know that.
I was at the aviation festivalconference a couple of weeks ago
and there was big talk.
I was moderated a panel andwith an airport and a startup
incubator that works veryclosely with airports and we

(04:02:20):
were talking about how AI isbeing applied and facial
recognition.
So obviously you're doingdigital identity.
So, yeah, I'm keen to know,from an implementation point of
view, what are some of the moreinteresting utilizations of AI
that you have seen.

Speaker 22 (04:02:34):
Yeah, it's a really good question.
I think this is the thing.
There's a lot of discussionabout AI, but I think that
sometimes people don't reallyget into that, and this is how
this is where you start, so yourfirst agent should be X.
This is the sort of challengeyou can solve for because it's
reasonably low barrier to entry,but it's a good impact.
I think sometimes we miss that,and I think it's the same with
digital identity.
To be honest, I think sometimeswe try to solve for a really

(04:02:56):
really, really big problem, butactually you need to take it
down a smaller chunk.
So I think it just depends onwhat the customer requirements
are and figuring that out.
I think that one of the reallyinteresting things that we're
seeing with AI is it makes menervous.
In full disclosure, I thinkthat we have the opportunity for
so many different things to behandled by an agent, but who is

(04:03:19):
that agent?
And if you're acting on mybehalf, how are you going to
make sure that that is done in asecure way?
So identity actually, I thinkfor me it should be in lockstep
with AI agents, because youshould be able to verify that
the agent that you're talking tois, in fact, the agent of a
company.
It is, in fact, my agent andespecially when we get into
agent to KI and they'reactioning things they're making

(04:03:40):
payments, they're makingbookings on your behalf you
would better make sure that'sdone securely, because otherwise
you're just opening up a wholenew channel for attack and it's
scary.
But the tech is there, we knowwhat to do, we know how to
implement this in a secure wayand we know how to advise people
.
So I think one of my big thingsis speak to the experts, speak
to Microsoft.
They're launching you know somany different platforms to

(04:04:03):
really combat that.
And again, they've got, youknow, entra for Agents that
they've just announced as well.
So that's going to be part oftheir Entra platform.
It's going to be part of theircybersecurity strategy.

Speaker 2 (04:04:22):
Like the tools there.
Just ask the questions andreally make sure you're leaning
on your advisors.
I think, yeah, no, all valuableadvice.
And so moving beyond AI for amoment, since obviously there's
so many aspects to this industryand you're clearly close to all
of the developments, certainlyfrom a technology point of view,
but I'm just generally curious,what else you're focusing on in
2025, going into 2026?
What are some of the othermajor trends that you're seeing
in your business or just you'reconscientious of in the industry
?

Speaker 22 (04:04:42):
Yeah, I think that what's been really, really
exciting is identity becomingsuch a big part of cybersecurity
and therefore people having amuch more holistic view of it.
So previously, what we wouldhave seen would have been, for
example, you would have an IAMteam within an organization,
super focused on the employeeswould not be minded to, or

(04:05:04):
empowered to, or even requiredto, look at the customer side of
things.
But I think that that's changingbecause actually what we're
seeing is the tooling is nowsuch that you can have the same
kind of tools to do internalidentity and external.
So actually it's likemaximizing your investment that
you've made on your tooling, butalso seeing the repeatable
patterns and processes.
So across the industry, we seeloads of different challenges

(04:05:27):
between you know, seasonalworkers, temporary workers and
people that are not always goingto be part of your organization
but need to access informationand need to access resources
always going to be part of yourorganization but need to access
information and need to accessresources.
This is common across airports,airlines, tour operators, the
whole hotels, everybody.
So I think it's really goodthat we're seeing people
actually having a more holisticview on it and actually we're
now in a position to say, okay,start here, here's day one,

(04:05:50):
here's day 10, here's day 50,like and work them through the
process.

Speaker 2 (04:05:53):
Yeah, I know it's really fascinating.
I think tell us a little bitmore about what the plans are at
Condatus over the next year,since obviously you're in a
category with, I would say,explosive growth.
Like you said, you're 40 teammembers now, but clearly there's
so many utilizations,implementations and, especially
as Microsoft continues tohighlight this technology and
push in this direction, havepeople become that much more

(04:06:13):
aware of not only data securitybut specifically the impacts of
it to themselves?
Absolutely, they've had somesort of exposure to a risk or
they've had a scare.
But, yeah, tell us a little bitabout how you see your business
evolving the next year.

Speaker 22 (04:06:30):
Yeah, so no, we are on the cusp of some really
exciting times.
So, based on the client basethat we have and based on kind
of, I suppose, the industryexpertise that we have, we're
really going to.
So, based on the client basethat we have and based on kind
of, I suppose, the industryexpertise that we have, you know
, we're really going to bedoubling down on our travel and
hospitality business.
So we're going to grow in thatarea and we, as I say, have a
number of really excitingclients in that industry anyway,
and we're looking to expandupon that and grow our team on
that basis.
But, yeah, as you say, thepartnership with Microsoft

(04:06:52):
really is, I think, what'sreally taken off.
And because they are now soempowered around Entra and
around digital identity, we'rejust going to see more and more
requests coming in in terms of,okay, what do we do about this?
What happens?
I think we've seen, obviously inthe last couple of days, like
huge announcements from Apple,google.
They are going to be movinginto the digital identity wallet
space.
I think that that's only goingto drive adoption.

(04:07:15):
Apple Pay is the new norm,right?
Everyone just kind of pays inthat way, and I think it's going
to be very similar for digitalidentity and therefore people
are going to have to respond.
And where do they start?
How do they do it?
And I think that's going todrive the growth of Condatus.
But we have big plans and bigaspirations.
So, yeah, watch this space.
I'll probably be here next yearwith here and a little bit more
stressed.

Speaker 2 (04:07:34):
That's really exciting.
Well, I'm certainly lookingforward to seeing you again in
San Diego, and hopefully you'llbe back on stage doing another
great presentation.
So tell everyone, Gillian, howpeople can follow up with you
and learn more about Condata.

Speaker 22 (04:07:45):
Yeah, absolutely so.
Of course you can find me onLinkedIn, you can find me on the
website and, and you know,obviously I'm sure we can
publish my, my email addressafter this.
But really, I mean, just get intouch with any way you can and
you can book time with me, Ithink even on our website, I'm
pretty sure.
But but yeah, I think it's,even if it's just for an
informal chat of okay, we hearall this stuff about ID.

(04:08:05):
What does that mean?
Where do we start?
What does it look like?
You know, I'm really passionateabout travel and hospitality.
It's been my, it's been my bagfor a long time and it's a great
industry and I sometimes thinkit's forgotten in, like retail
and things like that.
It kind of gets lost in thenoise sometimes, but for me,
it's the best industry, full ofreally really talented, really
smart people, and this issomething that is going to
change the way that we work.
So I want to get in front of itas much as possible yeah, for

(04:08:27):
sure.

Speaker 2 (04:08:27):
So we clearly share that passion, like a love for
this industry and also theawareness of how it's going to
change, sure, and so that'sobviously, um, clearly a strong
bond that we have.
And that's obviously clearly astrong bond that we have, and
that's one of the things I waslike, so looking forward to
seeing you again and catching up, but I definitely am going to
continue to follow your journeyand look forward to further
collaborations together, butalso just keeping in touch and
then seeing you again in SanDiego.

(04:08:47):
So, jillian, great to see youagain.
Thanks a lot for being here.

Speaker 22 (04:08:49):
Thank you so much, dan, and yeah, we'll catch up in
San Diego.

Speaker 2 (04:08:55):
I'm delighted now to introduce you to two co-founders
of a really fascinating travelcompany called Traversingai, and
I'm going to speak to Blairfirst and then bring Kyle into
the conversation.
And the reason for that isbecause Blair gave a
presentation here at the event,but also because Blair and I
have been in touch but not metyet.
I was in Vegas for Virtuosolast year and Blair had reached

(04:09:15):
out.
We tried to get a coffee andcatch up there, and so we're
finally meeting in person today.
So, blair, it's a pleasure tomeet you and welcome to Travel
Trends.

Speaker 12 (04:09:22):
Thank you, it's a pleasure to meet you too.

Speaker 2 (04:09:24):
Awesome.
Well, tell everyone aboutTraversingai.
Tell everyone what this companyand what it is you guys do.

Speaker 12 (04:09:29):
I would be happy to so.
Traversingai is the AI contactcenter designed for hospitality,
and I think that's the mainthing that sets us apart.
We are specifically focused oncalls, messages, bookings.
As a hospitality backgroundcompany.
I'm an ex-hospitality executive, I have 25 years of hotel
background and experience, andKyle here has founded a

(04:09:52):
hospitality technology company,and we've taken our two multiple
decades of experience andcombined them into this
powerhouse of AI contact centerand transition for properties as
small as eight rooms into aslarge as 3,000 rooms and a few
properties in between, to helpthem transition what was a cost
center into a true revenuecenter for our partners.

Speaker 2 (04:10:15):
That's really cool.
And obviously, being based inVegas, which is home for you,
that's obviously the heart ofhospitality in many ways with
the hotels and the industry inthe US, and you've come all the
way across to Barcelona to behere for Focusrite Europe.
So I'm really keen tounderstand what brought you over
here.
Is it European market expansion, partnership opportunities?
Tell us a little bit about whatbrings you here to this
conference.

Speaker 12 (04:10:34):
Yeah, all of the above I mean the opportunity
obviously to participate andfocus right, I think, is a huge
one and have the opportunity topitch and present our company.
It's an amazing platform.
We're happy to be here and toshare what we're doing.
We have some partners that wejust launched here in Spain, and
so we want to continue to growour reach here in Europe overall

(04:10:55):
and continue to expand ourpartnerships worldwide and
really just showcase the productand be able to help more and
more hotels because they need it.

Speaker 2 (04:11:03):
Yeah, that's exciting .
Tell us a little bit about thesession that you're involved in
here at the conference.

Speaker 12 (04:11:08):
It's a startup session, so we are specifically
a startup.
We were competing against someother amazing startups about 15
different startups that are alsoscaling amongst some pretty
amazing technology that's outthere and we will find out today
at one o'clock how we did Ilike to use the word we Kyle.

(04:11:28):
So, it was a good one.
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:11:32):
One of the things I've always loved about Focus
Right.
This is my first Europeanconference, as our listeners
have been hearing throughoutthese interviews, but I'm a big
fan of Focus Right, especiallythe US, and one of the things
that I've always loved aboutFocusrite for the last 10 years
is that they have reallyconnected with the startup
ecosystem and given startups theopportunity to come in present,
often on the first day, whichis when you're at, and then find

(04:11:52):
out on day two.
But a lot of people actuallymyself included would always
come to the conference to be apart of the startup pitches,
because you would see the latesttechnology and innovations and
figure out the companies topartner with.
So, whether you win two hoursfrom now, you've already won by
being here and getting on thatstage.
I want to bring Kyle into theconversation now, too, to

(04:12:12):
understand a bit more about yourbackground and how you decided
to create this company aftersome previous success, and I
know you're based in SanFrancisco.
So tell us a little bit aboutyour background, kyle, and how
you decided to create thiscompany after some previous
success, and I know you're basedin San Francisco, so tell us a
little bit about your background, kyle, and how you created this
company.

Speaker 17 (04:12:25):
Yeah, as the reformed tech bro.
Actually, I don't even know ifI'd be reformed, but coming from
a startup background, so doinga product at Yelp and Coupa and
Apartment List in San Francisco,I had the classic tech guy
hubris of looking at the travelspace and saying, oh, I'm going

(04:12:47):
to reinvent group travelplanning, which is the.
I think Eric Blackford said itbest when he's like I've seen so
many pics broken on the rock ofgroup travel planning.
So that's where we started in2012, the first time going to a
Focus ride, and it's built.
You know, use that product tostart talking to our customers

(04:13:10):
and understanding what peopleare looking for.
And we found that they werelooking for suites.
And then Las Vegas was ourbiggest market.
So we went around Las Vegas andsaid, hey, can we get your
suites?
And then Las Vegas was ourbiggest market.
So we went around Las Vegas andsaid, hey, can we get your
suites?
And they were like, absolutelynot slammed our doors in their
faces, but one hotel did let usin.
And then eventually we met Blairwhen she was over at Caesars

(04:13:33):
and then later on, when she wasat the Venetian, she opened up
the whole concept of like, hey,connecting rooms are.
You know we have every suitehere connects.
We need to sell these and like.
So that became our business.
And then so we started doingconnecting rooms.
We powered it for Hilton and sothat was the last decade was

(04:13:53):
doing connecting rooms, which isa very odd passion, but it is
something.
As you know somebody whotravels with kids, it's
important to me.
But then Blair and I, survivinga global pandemic together,
decided to start building this,where it's the traversing AI as
a result of all the differentthings that we've built, all the
technology, but being used in away that directly benefits our

(04:14:17):
hotel partners.
We're not a brand that anyoneis ever going partners we're not
looking to.
You know we're not a brand thatanyone is ever going to hear.
Unless you work at a hotel.
You know we will be quietly inthe background just making sure
that when you call the hotel,they answer and everything works
.

Speaker 2 (04:14:31):
I'm going to go back to Blair because I want to make
sure that all of our listenersknow, when you think about
hospitality, what type ofclients would fit the profile
for utilizing Traversing.

Speaker 12 (04:14:43):
That's a great question.
Anyone that has a contactcenter, anyone that has a need
for innovation, that isstruggling with, maybe
abandonment rate, with retentionin their call center today,
with answering the phone, thatstruggles with bookings directly
.
If any of that resonates, thoseare the people that need to
pick up the phone and call, sendus an email, go to our website.

(04:15:04):
It's a very easy thing to say Iwant to learn more and it's an
easy thing to adopt to say let'stry it and see if it works.

Speaker 2 (04:15:12):
One more question for each of you, given that you are
running a leading tech companyin this travel space.
What do you think is one of thebig trends you're paying
attention to, and it wouldalmost be a prediction over the
next year, when we see eachother again, maybe in San Diego
later this year or back again inEurope next year?
Obviously, ai is a big theme,but within that, if there's one

(04:15:32):
specific application or area,what excites you most?
What are, kind of, one of yourbig trends you're paying
attention to in 2025?

Speaker 12 (04:15:40):
Yes, it's so funny.
I just asked the same exactquestion to somebody else
earlier.
I love this.
I love it.
You know, I think AI is such abig box, right.
If we were to look back fiveyears ago, covid is the big
trend and now, five years later,it's AI, right?
And how do you define that?
I think what we're looking atright now and the big thing

(04:16:07):
that's transitioned, has beenthe launch of an open AI, chat,
gpt, the cloud or the agenticmodels right, and so, as we're
entering into this MCP space, Ithink that's really going to
change the idea of Google andsaying, oh, I'm going to Google
it.
Well, I think that's going away.
And I actually heard it on thistrip.
I took a gondola ride over toManjute earlier this weekend and
a daughter said to her fatherwhen he was asking about an

(04:16:30):
architect builder oh, just askChatGPT.
It's not Google any longer,right, that's not the norm, and
I think that's probably one ofthe biggest trends.
How do we apply that intotravel?
That's something that we've beentrying to ingest and I think
that we've seen some of thebigger box players, like your
Expedia's, your bookings, thatare already getting into this
space, but it's the hotelpartners that need to really pay

(04:16:52):
attention to how do we get inthere, and I think that's
something that we can also helpwith too.

Speaker 2 (04:17:03):
Yeah, I think that's a really insightful observation,
and I think one of the thingsthat certainly we all need to be
paying more attention to isthese real world applications of
AI, which is one of the reasonsI was keen to have you guys on
this podcast and understandexactly how you're applying that
technology, what market sectoryou're focused on and where you
see the opportunity, because thereality is there's no shortage
of opportunities forproductivity gains, and we're so
at the early stages.
When we did our AI summit lastyear, in February of 2024, we

(04:17:24):
didn't realize at the time, butwe were definitely ahead of the
curve because even after we ranthat first AI summit dedicated
to travel, the number of peoplesaid to us afterwards like, oh,
let's bring more marketing, theywanted to expand it.
And this year, all everyone'stalking about is AI and it's
like, all of a sudden, theinterest we're seeing.
And it's like because peopleare actually starting to see the
benefits and they want to seemore examples of those benefits,

(04:17:46):
not just the talk about what itcould do, but what is it
actually doing to transformindustry now, how does it work
right, how do I make it tangibleto me and how do I make it
apply?

Speaker 12 (04:17:55):
And I think that's the real win.
It's not just.
I've been to so manyconferences in the last few
weeks.
It's been a whirlwind, I swear.
And I hear a lot of talk aboutwhat it can do.
But how do I apply it to mybusiness and what does that make
?
And I think for a lot of hotelsspecifically where I always
felt the pain in the hospitalityspaces, this is great

(04:18:15):
information, now what?
And it's taking that now whatinto real action.

Speaker 2 (04:18:19):
For sure that's exciting.
And then, Kyle, let's bring youback in for that exact same
question what are you payingattention to?
What excites you most aboutthis next year?
What are the big trends intravel that you're focused on?

Speaker 17 (04:18:31):
Yeah, everything does change so fast.
Like last, like November iswhen MCP even became a protocol.
Like when Anthropic's like yeah, let's give tools to AI agents
so they can operate in the realworld.
And Voice AI a year ago wasnowhere near where it is today,
where it's as good as any.
It turns every call centeragent into a podcaster in terms

(04:18:56):
of like, that's been a bigimprovement to a podcaster.
In terms of like it's, it's theso it's it's the.
That's been a big improvementand it's the so yeah, I
definitely see like, givingtools to agents being the most
important thing, because yougive the opportunity for
surprise and delight, becauseit's in the hospitality space or
in any space.
Right now, everyone's using AIon the backend to make their
jobs a little bit easier, butwhat it should do is make the

(04:19:18):
customers stay even better,where I can have instantaneous
response and help and somethingthat really takes care of me.
And because of that, I'd say, ayear from now, that windowless
room in the back of hotels thatcurrently houses their call
center, it's not going to havepeople in it anymore.
Those people are going to beout on the floor talking to the

(04:19:38):
guests and actually interacting.
I don't think there's going tohave people in it anymore.
Those people are going to beout on the floor talking to the
guests and actually interacting.
I don't think there's going tobe a human-operated call center
in a year at hotels.
There's just no reason andthose people can now be
delighting the guests and givingthem in-person experiences,
Because hotels just don't haveenough people and there's
certainly not enough people onthe floor.
Get them out of that window,that very dark, windowless room.

Speaker 2 (04:20:03):
That is a huge shift, a massive shift for so many
travel companies that haverelied on contact centers.
So let's make sure all of ourlisteners can find out more
information about Traversing.
Obviously, the main website istraversingai, but what would be
the best ways to connect withyou, kyle?

Speaker 17 (04:20:20):
and also to follow up with you, Blair, Speaking of
windowless rooms.
That's where I belong and Ishould just be making things.
So contact Blair for sure.
She is the hospitality part ofthe whole thing.
I will go happily back to myhole after this and just make
stuff for hotels, which is whatI enjoy, but yeah, blair's out
there at all these events.
So if you're coming to thesehospitality events, look for her

(04:20:43):
, she's there.
Sometimes I'm there reluctantly, but it is actually enjoyable
to come to Focus right and someof these events that are great.
But yeah, look for Blair, she'sout.

Speaker 2 (04:20:55):
That's great.
Thank you, kyle, and it's BlairMcCoy, m-c-c-o-y, which, for
those of you typing it intoLinkedIn right now and looking
to connect with you, that'sprobably one of the best ways,
and Blair B-L-A-I-R-E Any otherways that you'd like to
highlight for people to followup and connect with you, or
social channels, newsletters.

Speaker 12 (04:21:14):
What else you guys got going on.
They else you guys got going on.
They can email me directly.
If you're hearing this podcast.
Please email me directly atblaire B-L-A-I-R-E at
traversingai.
I would love to hear from youand help.

Speaker 2 (04:21:26):
Awesome.
Well, it's great to meet youboth.
I'm glad we finally connectedin person, blair, and I look
forward to seeing your successand hopefully having you guys
back as part of our AI Summitlater this year.
I now have the opportunity tospeak to Alex Farmer, who is the
chief commercial officer atNazaza, and he is actually on
his way to Toronto later tonight, but before he heads off, we're
having a chance to sit downhere in Barcelona at Focusrite.

(04:21:49):
Welcome, alex, great to haveyou on Travel Trends.
It's a pleasure to be here, myfriend, first-time caller,
long-time listener.
I appreciate that Alex wastelling me how he's been
enjoying the episodes and Icertainly appreciate that it's
nice to meet people thatobviously enjoy travel trends
and have some context cominginto these conversations.
So let's start off by tellingeveryone a bit about Nazaza, the
company that you are workingwith, and your background in the

(04:22:11):
travel space.

Speaker 23 (04:22:12):
Certainly so.
My background in the travelspace starts at Nazaza actually.
So I've been with the company,as you say, for two and a half
years.
I joined as our chief customerofficer, now also responsible
for sales and marketing, andcome from the tech space.
So I'm one of those kind ofwhat am I?
Somebody that is bringing adifferent, maybe, mindset to
folks that have been in thetravel sector for a very long

(04:22:33):
time.
So I'm kind of a non-invitedguest in some forums.
Let's say Well, an industrythat's in need of disruption in
so many different ways?
Yes, yes indeed, and maybe weget into that today.
But yeah, my background's tech.
I grew up in San Francisco andhave been in London for 12 years
.
Nazaza we are a packagingplatform, so that means we help
tour operators, otas andairlines do packaging better and

(04:22:55):
almost exclusively dynamically.
So they're taking individualcontent sources and putting them
in simple cash flight plushotel offerings, or all the way
to your most complex tailor madeB2B, you know, agent driven
1721 day tours.
So anything from simple tocomplex B2B, b2c if it's two
travel products in the samebasket or more, nazaza can help
power that.

Speaker 2 (04:23:15):
Cool and just for our listeners who are multitasking
Nazaza is N-E-Z-A-S-A andobviously you have the nazazacom
, if people want to check thatout.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe reasons you came to
Focusrite this year, because Iknow it's your very first
Focusrite let alone, not in theUS.
This is the very first Focusriteever for you and obviously

(04:23:36):
we're here in Europe together.
It makes sense.
You're based in London, butwe've seen a lot of Americans
that are coming across for thisconference.
Tell us a little bit whatbrought you to the conference
this year.

Speaker 23 (04:23:44):
Yeah, I mean, I think now is an unprecedented
I'm sure other guests are sayingthe same thing, but now is a
really unprecedented time forchange.
I don't need to break any newsthat AI is really transforming
the travel sector.
So I think it's more importantthan ever to especially get a
lot of technology playerstogether to talk about how we
can help travel brands weatherthat storm, and a lot of the
talks today and yesterday havebeen about exactly that topic

(04:24:06):
and I feel you know, coming fromthe software industry, it feels
now that there's more consensusin travel.
Finally, if I may, that we needto partner and bring in really
good technology to keep pacewith other industries and
consumer demands, and I thinkthat consensus is growing.
And now the next question.
Obviously that's the easy parthow the hell you do?

(04:24:26):
It is the complicated part, andI think learning from others,
and here especially with somereally good speakers, has been
particularly impactful.

Speaker 2 (04:24:35):
Yeah, I've heard a lot of great feedback from a
number of the sessions.
I know there's quite a few onAI.
What have been some of thestandouts for you so far?
Obviously, we're having thisconversation kind of midway
through day two, so there'sstill lots of great content
today and tomorrow.
But yeah, what have been someof the standouts from today and
what else are you lookingforward to to supply?

Speaker 23 (04:24:50):
right.
So I don't want to get too inthe weeds here, but as a
packaging platform, you know,you can think of us.
I'll share my non-travelbackground by really kind of
making a strange analogy.
Now, you know, if you think ofa Shopify example, where you're
an e-commerce layer, Shopifysells stuff and you know

(04:25:13):
consumers used to doing onlineshopping because they can buy a
shirt, they can buy shoes, theycan buy a pair of trousers all
in the same basket.
That doesn't really exist, witha lot of OTAs, tour operators
they're just trying to figure itout.
But, uniquely, if you're anonline e-commerce company, you
have access to your ownwarehouse, right.
So you know where all theproducts are at the certain time
and you own them.
So it's easy to put threethings in a box and send it to

(04:25:35):
somebody's house.
But with our supply problem,you have, you know, a boat tour
that's completely disconnectedand off the internet, but it's
special and wants to be accessed.
And then you have hotel APIstandards that are completely
disparate, and the way they mapthe fact that you have a
microwave in the room isdifferent for every hotel across
the world, right?
So it's such a an interestingproblem that we've been talking
for a really long time aboutsolving with better API

(04:25:56):
standardization.
What excites me now is theconversation actually is can we
just skip that step and can wetake a quantum leap forward by
using AI to parse plain textdata in whatever structure, to
get a much more standard view ofthe quote?
Let's call it package supplychain.
So there were some interestingtalks about how we can kind of
you know, there was a way todigitalize as an industry where

(04:26:18):
we kind of go through it as inthe long hard work that other
industries have already figuredout.
But now I think there's areally unique opportunity that
we're hearing about at the eventto take a quantum leap and skip
all that stuff that would takeus three, five years to get past
.
So it gives me a lot ofinspiration and positivity about
the future of travel and traveltechnology as well.

Speaker 2 (04:26:38):
Yeah, and it's one of the things that FocusRite's
always done particularly well,at least from my view.
This is the first time in Europeand I've been to the US
conference a number of years.
Technology has always been abig strength distribution,
certainly, partnerships, andspecifically the large OTAs, you
know, airlines, hotels and carrentals even even though there's
not been a lot of car rentalshere this year, but nevertheless
those are kind of the bigsectors that USA typically focus

(04:27:01):
on.
There's a lot more nicheplayers, interestingly, here in
Europe.
But I want to get into a bitmore about Nazaza and exactly
what you guys do and how itrelates to you being here,
because, having had a look atyour website and understanding
the Trip Builder solution andsome of these, like you have AI,
co-pilots and the whole dynamicpackaging these are certainly
all the things that touroperators, otas, dmcs they're

(04:27:26):
very much in need of, because somany of these travel companies
are not technology companies.
It's not been their strength.
So tell us a little bit moreabout the types of clients you
work with and the types ofservices that you offer?

Speaker 23 (04:27:39):
Certainly so.
We work with some of thelargest OTAs, tour operators and
airlines in the world.
We're very much anenterprise-focused, mid-sized
and enterprise-focusedorganization.
Our biggest customers areprobably TUI Explorer, which is
owned by Schoensland Dare Tour.
We also work outside of Europewith other large organizations
as well, but those are probablyour largest customers and really

(04:28:02):
the name of the game for themwas about digitalizing how they
sell complex itineraries.
You're right, these companiesaren't tech companies and I also
think that there is an elementof I think there's a growing
self-awareness of thosecompanies that they're not tech
companies, which didn't alwaysexist, to be clear, and that's

(04:28:25):
been so.
They want to partner withcompanies like Nazaza to help
them digitalize how they sellcomplex tours.
Digitalization used to begetting a PDF from a DMC and
downloading the pictures andloading it onto an online
contact us form, but we canobviously do a lot more than
that.
So what we're doing for theseorganizations?
Maybe I'll take the TUI example.
Tui, of course, they sell inmany different markets in Europe
, but they also have their ownDMCs through TUI amusement.
So digitalizing individualcontracts for us.

(04:28:45):
Excuse the example there's ahotel in Peru.
They have a contract with thathotel in Peru, the DMC that's
based there.
Somebody sat in an office inGermany wants to buy a trip that
happens to take a stop in Lima,right, and being able to
dynamically build out thatitinerary from all these
individual content sources,swapping in and out dynamic live
supply with static rates fromthe DMC, is really helping them

(04:29:06):
optimize margin, increasingbasket size and ultimately
increasing conversion, Becauseone of the other trends that I
didn't talk about in yourprevious question is the desire
for consumer personalization.
I can go to ChatGPT and I canget an amazing itinerary, but I
can't book it.
So one of the other things thatour product helps customers do
is take the output of AIgenerated itineraries with our

(04:29:26):
AI planner co-pilot and turnthat into a live, bookable
basket pulled from all of theseindividual supply sources
dynamically.
So you know just to conclude onthe TUI example, there's a lot
of you know digitalization oftheir full supply chain.
But, most importantly, they'veoptimized their margin
significantly because they'renot just selling a static fixed
tour, they're being able to swapin components based on price,
they're able to mark upappropriately and they're able

(04:29:51):
to drive conversion because theycan personalize the itinerary
to the consumer's need or desire.

Speaker 2 (04:29:53):
The interesting example you shared with Tui I
found fascinating becausethey're a large global player
and they actually have put a lotof effort into becoming more of
a technology company.
I know they're putting a lot ofeffort in the AI I've met some
of the team members there butthis is where you can't do
everything, and so you also,even if you're actually
developing some of yourstrengths.
Around technology, there'salways this question of like buy
or build, and the difficulty isalways in the build, because,

(04:30:15):
like, the cost can increase, thetime scales get pushed back and
then you may not have a productthat is fit for purpose.

Speaker 23 (04:30:22):
It's a bit of a false choice as well, because
you can build a lot of stuffthat makes sense for your
specific organization, but youcan also then bring in great
partners to buy and build.
I think that's an important stepthat the travel industry needs
to take.
If I can use maybe anoversimplified example I've
worked in tech my entire careerthe debate about do I buy a CRM

(04:30:44):
or build one, it doesn't exist,because I'm not in the CRM
business.
I'm in the business of, in thisexample, selling travel
technology.
I think it's about time and Ithink we're getting there that
we kind of get beyond thatparadigm, because it's a
paradigm that's plagued othervertical software, other
software verticals a long timeago and they moved past it.
Yeah Right, and, and travel isspecial, but I don't think it

(04:31:06):
has to be different.
So so I I'm I'm bullish on that, continuing that trend,
continuing where there's bettertechnology that serves more
needs of these companies.
So there's a more naturaldecision to bring in tech as
opposed to go and build tech,because, at the end of the day,
delivering memories fortravelers versus building

(04:31:28):
complex technology they're verydifferent things.

Speaker 2 (04:31:31):
Well, another thing just to add to that too.
When you're talking about buyand build, obviously, one of the
key things that, unfortunately,has been the case for a lot of
travel companies is that there'snothing to buy that's off the
shelf that actually solves theunique needs of your business,
and so, although they canrationalize the fact that they
get stuck building things thatthey probably shouldn't be,
because there isn't a solutionChicken and egg supply and

(04:31:52):
demand.

Speaker 23 (04:31:52):
So I warned you earlier, if I can break the
fourth wall for a second, dan,that I can be long-winded.
So I thought I was going to getinto that point.
I thought you know what, stop,because you're going to go into
it.
So you brought me back there.
I'm glad you did.
I was talking about this withsomebody last night at a dinner.
You're so spot on.
I talk about sometimes in thetravel sector.
It's challenging to even.

(04:32:16):
But there's other organizationsthat will happen to sell you
single components and do someflavor of simple packaging,
whereas, nazaza, we say we dosimple to complex combining
products.
We're a packaging platform, butthat's not a category that
exists like CRM, right.
So it's in some ways becausetechnology is still relatively
early, and I would argue thereverse is true of what you said
as well, which is that becauseso many organizations were still

(04:32:36):
building their own tech, theindustry didn't then have a
product market fit to go galloptoward to say this is actually a
category that's now established.
So you have this veryFrankenstein, complex Venn
diagram with a million circles,right?
So my platform overlaps withsomebody else's this much and
there's something over here andsomething over here.
And then how is a travel companythat's just deciding fine, we

(04:32:59):
should actually buy stuff, notbuild it navigate that landscape
right?
So I think you know there'sthese iterative cycles of
improvement and stabilization inthe market.
I think we're getting there,but you're absolutely right,
that's one of the big blockersto saying, yes, I know, I need a
packaging platform.
A lot of these people don'tknow it exists, right, exists.
So there's a market educationpiece, which is, of course, then
slows down innovation as well.

Speaker 2 (04:33:24):
Well, and there's so many different the scale of
different organizations.
Tui is obviously a great casestudy and an example, but
they're also a large enterpriseorganization and a lot of the
travel industry is stillfragmented and there's still a
lot of small to medium-sizedbusinesses.
So the other thing I'd like toask you too, just on this topic
of understanding Nazaza and whatbrings you here and sort of the
path that you're on, is thatwhat is an ideal customer

(04:33:45):
profile for your organization?
What would be your guidance tolisteners?
When would they actually be ata point to be able to engage in
an organization like this?

Speaker 23 (04:33:54):
So it's a really important question and I think,
if I can maybe be verytransparent about our journey we
had a bad answer to that two,three years ago and that was
partly because the industryhadn't kind of wasn't in a place
of maturity where it becameclear there's different cycles
of innovation in all techverticals.
You have software and then youhave the kind of some people go

(04:34:15):
upmarket, some people godownmarket, right, and I think
we're now in the upmarket,downmarket phase, which is a
good sign for industrialmaturity, where Nizaza is an
upmarket business.
We have a powerful capabilitythat requires a system
administrator and it works fororganizations.
It's very API-centric, so wecan solve the needs of the
enterprise.
Those needs are very differentthan the needs of a very small

(04:34:37):
travel agency or tour operator.
It's a small specialist that'sdoing $2 million in revenue per
year.
So to directly and back to, whatwe were doing poorly three
years ago is we were saying yesto everybody and then the system
was great, it did some nicethings for these companies, but
then the roadmap went like thisand do I serve you or do I serve
you and actually I serve no one?
So making a very consciousdecision to say look, we have
the functional strength to powerlarge organizations.

(04:34:58):
That's where we've gone.
There's other players that arekind of close to our Venn
diagram, to use the analogy,that have gone the other way,
and they have great solutions aswell, which is a good sign for
the industry.
To answer your question, ifyou're a tour operator, airline
or OCA that's doing 20 millionor more in revenue from a
packaging point of view, that'swhere Nazaza becomes very
relevant.
You can work with smallerorganizations.

(04:35:19):
I think you'll find that it'sprobably too much functional,
it's too much kit for thesolution, the problem you're
trying to solve.

Speaker 2 (04:35:24):
Right, got it.
And then, just in terms of theverticals that you're focused on
, just give us an overview.
I know I've mentioned DMCs andtour operators.

Speaker 23 (04:35:42):
Is that kind of your unique niche.
But so two to three years agowe were almost exclusively
working with kind of offlineitinerary sellers trying to
digitalize.
That would be your traditionaltravel agency, your DMC, your
tour operator that were sellingcomplex packages offline.
We were helping them bring thatonline for either agents or B2C
consumers to directly transactis.
We've seen a shift now whereairlines and OTAs are trying to
move from selling singlecomponents to selling the next
best thing, the bigger basket,which is at some point a simple

(04:36:04):
flight plus hotel.
But a lot of OTAs, for example,can do that now.
So then it's a race to thebottom on price.
You're selling the same seat onthe plane and the same hotel
room.
So how do you differentiate?
And the next frontier we see isactually trying to sell
multi-destination, multi-center,all digitally, all online.
So really we kind of straddleboth business types.
Now we call it online first,tour operating, and that's

(04:36:25):
really where the packagingplatform that we deliver can
play and that's a real shiftwe've seen in industry and we've
tried to kind of keep pace withthat change.

Speaker 2 (04:36:33):
It's great.
And one other question I wantedto ask you too, is that when
you think about the organizationyou're a part of and you look
at the travel industry and we'rehere at this Focusrite
conference in Europe, where doyou think the industry is headed
in the next year and like oneprediction or one of the big
trends you're focusing on, maybeas it relates to the company in
your role, but what are some ofthe things that you're paying
attention to that might be ofinterest to our audience?

Speaker 23 (04:36:54):
So yeah, ai is the obvious answer, but let's be a
little bit more specific.
I think the interesting thingthat we're seeing and we're
actually developing something tosolve is the AI-generated
itinerary space.
Let me explain what that means.
There's a lot of great startupsout there and, of course, the

(04:37:14):
big players like ChatGPT andPerplexity are doing something
similar, where they're sellingtravel products using AI.
Right, but right now, if you goto ChatGPT, it'll give you a
good itinerary, right?
Okay, that's great, but thatremoved my 25 browser tab
experience and it made it onebrowser tab, but when it comes
to transacting and checking out,I still have to open up 25
browser tabs to buy singlecomponents, which kind of ends

(04:37:38):
the convenience of thatAI-generated commerce journey.
So what we're working on, inpartnership with some of our
customers, is the ability totake the output of whichever AI
you use.
It could be our AI plannerco-pilot or it could be OpenAI,
whatever you get an itineraryand then it will read the output
of that the plain Englishoutput or any language output of
the itinerary that's generatedand then it will dynamically

(04:38:00):
build a basket from all of theconnected single components.
So it will allow our OTA andtour operating customers to play
in this AI-centric space.
Right, because instead of youknow, chatgpt or I think
Perplexity was the one that nowsells hotel rooms.
I think it is Instead of buyinga hotel room, then buying a
flight and then buying anactivity, there's a place now
for tour operators or packagetravel sellers to say let's make

(04:38:21):
it even more convenient.
You can transact with onebrowser tab through a trusted
brand, which actually will makepackaging even more relevant and
maybe bridge that generationalgap we talk about between DIY,
build it myself, versus adigital agency or tour operator
package experience that can betransacted in a single basket.
So that's something we'rereally focused on.
Take that one step further.

(04:38:42):
I'm also interested to see how,you know, agentic AI changes
packaging.
We talk a lot at Zaza about theconnected trip, which is
essentially taking individualcomponents and putting them in a
single basket instead of yourmore traditional fixed package.
And you know, agentic AI couldgo and buy individual components
automatically in a year or two.
So that whole pitch I just gaveyou about doing single basket

(04:39:03):
checkout might become irrelevantin a year, but I still want the
you know, the trust of workingwith the tour operator.
If something goes wrong withone of my baskets.
They're going to fix it.
So actually does tour operatinghave an even more relevant
place to play in this agentic AIfuture?
Who knows?
I'll see you in two years onthis podcast so we can look at
how wrong I was.
Dan, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (04:39:22):
We'll be at AGI by that point.

Speaker 23 (04:39:23):
Yeah, exactly yeah.
We won't even exist, matt, orwe'll be at the bar.
This podcast will be producingitself.

Speaker 4 (04:39:29):
What a dream.

Speaker 2 (04:39:29):
Yeah, it's a real pleasure to meet you, and I also
just especially when you get toconnect with someone that
listens to the podcast.
That's obviously means a lot tome, as you know, but I also
want to make sure that all ofour listeners can find out more
about you and connect withNazaza, so tell everyone what
the best ways are for people toreach out, so I'm highly

(04:39:49):
obnoxious on LinkedIn.

Speaker 23 (04:39:50):
So you know we can connect on LinkedIn if you want.
Be careful what you wish for.
I got a lot of opinions none ofthem very intelligent, as I'm
sure you had learned from thisepisode.
But also you know our website.
That's the simple answer.
We're pretty active there aswell, so look forward to
continuing the conversation.

Speaker 2 (04:40:06):
That's awesome, alex, great to meet you.

Speaker 23 (04:40:07):
I look forward to keeping in touch, yes indeed.

Speaker 2 (04:40:14):
Thanks for the opportunity.
I now have the chance to speakto one of the startup
entrepreneurs, the co-founder ofVidario, adrian Villabruna.
He presented yesterday, andhe's one of this new crop of
startups that are leveragingvideo content, and so I was keen
to have him on the podcast toexplain a bit more about who he
is and what he does.
And I was also keen because hisother co-founder is Tony Karn,

(04:40:36):
who's a friend of mine, workedat Intrepid for many years and
he runs the Everything in AIwebsite podcast, and he'll be
part of our AI Summit later thisyear.
So, adrian, tell us aboutVidario, tell us about this
company that you started withTony and what it is you guys do.

Speaker 15 (04:40:50):
Sure, Well, maybe start a little bit earlier than
that.
I'm pretty fresh at travel, soI started two years ago actually
, when Gen AI came out.
I was one of the first thatbuilt Chennai Eye products in
travel, but it was more of ahobby.
So I don't know if any one ofyou remember, but I was at a
pitch with Christian Watts onhis show and I pitched AI

(04:41:13):
Adventures.
It was an AI trip planner backtwo years ago, but ever since,
what disturbed me was thateverything was very static, it
was all image-based and it wasnot so immersive that I wanted
it to be.
And I was looking for, you know,options to source video and I
couldn't find any.
And this is really how Vidariostarted.
The first idea it was it was anAPI-based video content library

(04:41:40):
, but pretty much we figured outit's hard to monetize.
I didn't have the creators, butTony got very interested as
well.
We have been talking since dayone pretty much when I built AI
Adventures and yeah, so ithappens that he had a couple of
ideas and we said let's do thisventure together and we iterated
since then.

(04:42:00):
It was a year ago.

Speaker 2 (04:42:01):
That's exciting, and tell us how the name came about
and what does it represent ormean.

Speaker 15 (04:42:06):
Okay, that's a good one, Because many people spell
it differently or pronounce itdifferently, but it's born in
ChatGPT, so I looked for a shortname that the domain is still
available.
Yeah, I looked for a short namethat the domain is still
available.
Yeah, and something has.
Yeah, no, I asked JetGPT andVidere is Latin for to see and

(04:42:26):
we just put the O in the end forvideo and so we got to see
video, right.

Speaker 2 (04:42:30):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 15 (04:42:31):
Nobody really knows.

Speaker 2 (04:42:32):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 15 (04:42:36):
And then tell us a little bit about the journey
ahead for Videreo?
Yeah, I just want to.
I mean, it's a three-sidedmarketplace, really, right, so
it's.
We have the brands on one side,we have the creator.
That's our main customer andthen the end customer.
It's B2B2C, it's the one whomakes the purchasing decision,
which is the traveler.
I think we have proven interestfrom brands.

(04:42:56):
That's covered.
We have a lot of interest fromcreators.
We know their pain points Rightnow.
For the next three to sixmonths, it's really to work with
the creators together in ourcore group to iterate the
product to make it even moreshareable, even more immersive,
even more cool, so that we canup the conversion rate and that
more people are buying and thecreators can make more money.
That's really that.

Speaker 2 (04:43:18):
And then tell us a little bit about video content
and how it's driving travelbooking, Because I think
obviously this is a major trend.
You kindly attended my WorldTravel Market Talk last November
and one of the five trends thatI'd highlighted there which was
an amalgamation of our audience, so I just want to highlight
it's not these were notnecessarily my top five, these
were kind of the list of topfive that came from all the

(04:43:38):
interviews I had on the podcast,and one of the recurring themes
, of course, is short-form videoand just how powerful and how
important that is.
So obviously you know thatmajor trend.
But when we actually look atVidario the state of the
industry at the moment, what doyou think is?
How important is video contenttoday to travel brands and what

(04:43:59):
do you think the future of thatlooks like, especially obviously
with how you, I guess, prefercompanies to start working with
you?

Speaker 15 (04:44:05):
Yeah, so we are video only, right, so we use it
as a conversion enabler oraccelerator, so we don't even
have images on our platform.
It's really video only.
But our main use case is notselling me the content or
licensing it.
We could do that, but wehaven't really gone down this
path and we got some interestfrom some brands who want that.

(04:44:26):
But, yeah, for this I think weneed more density, we need more
volume.
But, yeah, what I'm seeing inthe future is probably I think
Christian Watts also mentionedthis that you have on one side
your video content where you seethe experience.
On the other, you have thechatbot where you talk through

(04:44:47):
the experience and get all yourquestions and answers before you
make a booking.

Speaker 2 (04:44:48):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, given your background notbeing in travel but also being
in technology I know you'refocused with Vidario, on video,
but what are some of the otheraspects or elements of AI that
you think the travel industrycan really benefit from?

Speaker 15 (04:45:02):
So my background I worked at Amazon, I led a data
team and, funnily enough, it wasin an organization called
product classification.
So what it meant is making sureevery transaction worldwide is
taxed correctly, and what thisreally is is classifying a
product, and this is what we aredoing with Vidario.
Again, we use AI to detect thelocation from a video, we use

(04:45:26):
meta tags.
Our core is really finding thebest product that matches to a
video, making it a very low liftfor a creator to get started
and to start selling.
So that's kind of thetranslation.

Speaker 2 (04:45:37):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough.
Well, I want to make sure allof our listeners can connect
with you.
Find out more information aboutVidario.
Of course, I've got the websitehere, which many of our
listeners might have alreadybeen familiar with, and you
mentioned it at the verybeginning.
So, since you've got the brandand you've got the com, so
V-I-D-E-R-E-O vedariocom, whatare some of the other ways that

(04:45:59):
people can connect with you,with Tony, learn more and
partner with you?

Speaker 15 (04:46:05):
Yeah, I think the best thing is really to send us
an email or connect on LinkedIn.
So my LinkedIn is AdrianVillabruna.
I think I'm probably the onlyone with this combination.
Or hello at vedariocom, andyeah, happy to chat.

Speaker 2 (04:46:17):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, thanks a lot for joiningus in this special highlight
episode from Focusrite, and Ihope the rest of the conference
goes well for you, and we'lllook forward to having you guys
back as part of our AI Summitlater this year.

Speaker 15 (04:46:28):
Awesome.
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (04:46:32):
I now have the pleasure to speak to Alex Tremes
, who's the CEO and founder ofWelcome Pickups.
I've heard a lot about him.
Over the last couple of days, anumber of my colleagues have
been meeting with you.
I finally have the opportunityto sit down and speak to you now
directly.
Alex, welcome to Travel Trends.

Speaker 11 (04:46:44):
Yeah, thank you for having me, Dan, and it's great
to be here.

Speaker 2 (04:46:48):
Of course, and I know you're from Athens, you're
Greek, and it's actually one ofthe most beautiful parts of the
world.
You clearly don't have totravel too far to get here to
Barcelona.

Speaker 11 (04:46:56):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:46:57):
But tell us about Welcome Pickups and what you
guys do.

Speaker 11 (04:46:59):
Yeah, yeah.
So Welcome Pickups.
We're taking this very boringcomponent of travel, but
necessary, which is transfers sopoint A to point B, from
airports to hotels, from point Ato point B, whatever that might
be, and we're trying to make ita travel experience right.
So we want to make it seamless,personalized, friendly,

(04:47:24):
stress-free.
All that, and the way we do itis we work with individual
drivers.
We work with very few driversand we're serving millions of
travelers, so the idea is thatthe moment you land somewhere,
your trip starts there and thenso you have a very easy

(04:47:45):
experience you meet someone atthe gate.
He speaks English, he will tellyou about where you arrived,
what you can do.
He has all the data about you,because we collect a lot of data
.
He has the airplane data, thehotel's data we collect our own
set of data and then during thatfirst hour, he will guide you
on what you should avoid, whatyou should do and all that and

(04:48:08):
he becomes like your friend onthe ground, in a sense.
And then you can book him forsightseeing so you can see the
highlights of the city or gooutside the city.

Speaker 2 (04:48:16):
Interesting.
Okay, so it's more than justthe transfer.

Speaker 11 (04:48:19):
It's more, it's taking that transfer and putting
a lot of quality in it withoutincreasing the price.
So it's a fair price service,so it's a value for money
service.
And we're in 120 countries now.
Wow, 400 destinations, almostserving 3.5 million travelers.

(04:48:45):
Yeah, and yeah, we have a modelwhere we bring travelers either
through B2C, direct or throughpartnerships right.
So on the partnerships level,we work a lot with travel agents
, with hotels, with vacationrentals, with airlines, with big
partners like bookingcom,tripcom.

Speaker 2 (04:48:58):
Fascinating and I was on your website and for our
listeners who are multitaskingat home, it's WelcomePickupscom
and when I was preparing for ourinterview, I was looking at the
transfers, sightseeing and theguides.
But specifically thesightseeing rides is what really
intrigued me because, havingworked in the multi-day tour
space for many years with coachtravel, you've always had a
driver and a guide, yeah, butclearly when you have a smaller

(04:49:19):
vehicle, you need someone thatcan do both.

Speaker 11 (04:49:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:49:22):
So tell us a little bit about actually how you
recruit and hire for someone.
Because I get the transfer sideof the business the sightseeing
part just really intrigued mebecause I would love nothing
more, with my family, to be ableto actually not just have the
transfer but actually havesomeone that can actually point
out the give us a sense of thecity as we arrive in the
destination.
So tell us a little bit how yourecruit and hire for those

(04:49:43):
roles.

Speaker 11 (04:49:44):
Yeah.
So we again, like we work withindividual drivers, we control a
lot the experience, we are thebiggest part of their revenue,
or their sole part of theirrevenue, and there is a very
difficult, let's say,application process where you
have to go through and then,once you're in, we control and
monitor a lot of things aboutyou and if you're good, you're

(04:50:08):
getting more rides, you'regetting a better program and all
that.
So you're incentivized to dogood and we have the optionality
to kick you out if you're notdoing what you have to do.
And the reason is we need fewdrivers for a million of
travelers.
So for 3.5 million travelersserved this year, we'll have

(04:50:28):
about 10,000 drivers.
So each driver is highlyutilized and that works.

Speaker 2 (04:50:34):
When I was looking at some of the bios on your
website, you've got Raul, who is100% Catalan.
Of course we're here inBarcelona and his whole thing is
his love of showing Barcelona'shidden gems to travelers.
So tapas places, and this iswhere you want a friend in
destination.
That's why I was very curiousabout how do you bring these
people on board, because that'sa really unique part of your

(04:50:55):
business and I think, what hasthe most value.

Speaker 11 (04:50:58):
Yeah, part of your business and I think what has
the most value yeah, like again,welcome thing is as a friend on
the ground, right.
So you're traveling somewhere.
You might not have a friend oryou might, and whenever you have
a friend, like, it's muchbetter because you see, you get
more, you know at ease, you getmore information, more
authenticity, all of that andthat's what we're trying to plug
.
So, wherever you go eitherthat's a random place, you're

(04:51:19):
traveling from the US or UK toBuenos Aires or Bangkok or Bali
or Athens or Cairo you have thatservice, you have that peace of
mind that you have a friendwaiting.
So, that's the idea, and the waywe recruit is like once we
onboard like this small pool ofdrivers, then these drivers
bring us a lot of other drivers.

(04:51:39):
We have a lot of referralsbecause it's a very good
business for them too.
They're mini entrepreneurs,they're growing their business,
they're making a lot of money.
So they want more drivers tocome in, and we're very
selective.
Less than 4-3% of drivers whoapply get into the system.

Speaker 2 (04:51:58):
It's a really fascinating business.
I'm really intrigued by welcomepickups and what you guys do,
so clearly there's a lot ofbenefits of being at Focusrite
Europe.
Tell us a little bit of whatbrought you here this year.

Speaker 11 (04:52:08):
Yeah, I mean Focusrite for us is a great
conference because you meet theright people, the executives,
and because 50% of our businessis through partnerships and you
can actually plug welcome, picktickets in whatever business
that is.
You know you might be a travelagent or travel advisor or like
a hotel or vacation or whatnot,or a big OTA or you know.

(04:52:30):
So here you meet the rightpeople and then you can push
some partnerships down the line,you know, in the following
months.
And yeah, focusrite Europe,focusrite US, is a great place
to do that.

Speaker 2 (04:52:43):
Well, another thing I'm interested to ask you too is
some of the highlights ofactually being here.
Since we are having thisconversation on day three
towards the end of theconference.
What have been some of the mostvaluable sessions or some of
the insights you've had over thelast couple of days?

Speaker 11 (04:52:55):
Yeah, I'm that type of person that, uh, never goes
into the room, uh, to hear thesession.
I'm always outside meetingpeople like you know, um, you
know doing my list, like goingthrough my list and all that.
So, um, again, this year waswas amazing.
You know 40, 50, 60 meetings ofof very good, um, you know,

(04:53:16):
quality meetings that a lot ofthings might come out of this.
Nice dinners after Focusritewith selected people this is the
part that I like aboutFocusrite networking versus the
content.

Speaker 2 (04:53:30):
One of the things I'm keen to ask you is some of the
trends that you're seeing andthat you're paying attention to,
whether to grow your businessor what's happening in the
travel industry this year.
So take us through some of thethings that you are focusing on
as you continue to grow yourbusiness, or what's happening in
the travel industry this year.
So take us through some of thethings that you are focusing on
as you continue to grow yourbusiness.

Speaker 11 (04:53:41):
Yeah, I think the trends in our side is anything
that happens with AI anddriverless.
Like you have the robotaxisgetting bigger in the US and
then you have a lot of AIapplications that you can be
doing.
So from our side, we see thedriver as an advantage because
that person is becoming thatfriend on the ground, but we

(04:54:04):
need to empower that person tohave as many data that he can
have about you.
When you arrive, right and usas a business and ground
transportation is in that uniqueplace where you have the
airline data, the hotel data,you can collect your own set of
data.
In that unique place where youhave the airline data, the hotel
data, you can collect your ownset of data in that first hour
and, based on this data, you canguide the traveler through his

(04:54:28):
trip.
Right, you are the first andlast hour of the trip.
You have the data.
So you can do a lot of thingswith AI now collecting the data,
personalizing experience a lotthat you couldn't be doing.
It would be too manual sometime ago.

Speaker 2 (04:54:43):
Yeah, and then AI.
I just want to ask you one morequestion on that, because
clearly it has been such a bigtopic here.
We've got our AI Summithappening later this year and
certainly a big focus for us ishighlighting actual real-world
use cases of AI.
So when you mention how youleverage AI in that scenario,
give us a bit more detail sothat our listeners can
understand how companies likeyours are leveraging that

(04:55:05):
technology.

Speaker 11 (04:55:06):
Yeah, I mean think of you arrive in Barcelona.
Let's say you're coming fromNew York.
What we collect is like is ityour first time in Barcelona?
Have you been here before?
How many days are you staying?
What are you time in Barcelona,is it, you know?
Have you been here before?
How many days are you staying?
You know what are youinterested in doing.
All these things are very uniqueto then, you know, suggest the
right things for you to be doingin Barcelona.

(04:55:27):
And once you build thisconnection with the driver in
the beginning, you're more, youknow, prone to listen to that
advice and you know AI ishelping a lot on then, you know,
pulling the right supply tosuggest the right things to you
on the other side.
So, apart from the practicaluses of AI and customer support

(04:55:49):
and revenue optimization and allthat, there's a lot of things
that could be doing in actuallypersonalizing experience and
making a much better experiencefor everyone and tweaking it.
Because the way we see it islike if you are traveling for a
conference, you have a differentneed as a traveler versus if

(04:56:10):
you're traveling for a musicfestival, if you're traveling
with your family, if you'retraveling, and you have
different needs, different likethings you want to do, maybe
different free time to do that.
So it's very important now thatwe get more and more into that
personalization of Trip For sure.

Speaker 2 (04:56:28):
No, it's very exciting and obviously your
business is just clearly goingfrom strength to strength and
I'm sure many of those meetingsyou've had are going to turn
into exciting partnershipopportunities.
I know a few of my colleagueswere in those meetings with you
and keen to meet you here andpartner with you, and I want to
make sure all of our listenershave the same opportunity.
So, alex, I've mentioned thewebsite, but tell all of our
listeners how best to connectwith you and for partnership

(04:56:49):
opportunities.

Speaker 11 (04:56:51):
Yeah, you can reach out on LinkedIn or through the
website, like on our commercialteam.
It's very easy to reach us.
We're very nice people, veryfriendly people, clearly.

Speaker 2 (04:57:02):
You got that Greek hospitality man.
Yeah, very welcoming, yeah,hence the name.

Speaker 16 (04:57:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:57:08):
That's awesome.
Great to meet you here, alex.
I look forward to connectingwith you again in San Diego and
have a great summer and lookforward to hearing your
continued success, thank you,dan, and I look forward to
hearing your continued success.

Speaker 11 (04:57:18):
Thank you, dan, thank you, and we're waiting for
you in Greece for summer.

Speaker 2 (04:57:22):
I now have a chance to speak to one of the startup
competition winners, and this isthe CEO and founder of
Impersonality, which is ShlomiBeer.
Shlomi, sounds like it wasworth coming to Focusrite.

Speaker 13 (04:57:33):
Yeah, definitely yeah.
So we were approached byFocusrite to be part of the
startup competition andpre-selected on the finals to
come here.
So they invited us.
So that was great.
And we pitched here on thefirst day and, yeah, we won

(04:57:55):
yesterday on our category, sothat was great.

Speaker 2 (04:57:59):
Fantastic Congratulations.
Yeah, great to have you herefor that reason and also learn
more about your business.

Speaker 13 (04:58:04):
Yeah, I know I mean what we help, right.
For example, a lot of times youwill see an ad in companies
pretending to be other companiesand then trying to defraud
either users or the brandsthemselves or employees of the
brand, and so there aredifferent angles of this problem
, of course, like especially thecompanies one and the user ones

(04:58:28):
, but we tackled the companyones and, yeah, all kind of
examples.
Like you can search in Googlefor, let's say, british Airways,
you see a phone number youthink it's the phone number of
the brand, right, and then youcall but you're getting
defrauded because it's a fakephone number, right, that
someone pretended to put thereas if it were the brand.

Speaker 2 (04:58:50):
No, it's a fantastic concept.
I mean, obviously you have abackground, I assume, in
technology and travel.
Tell us a little bit about yourbackground before founding this
company.

Speaker 13 (04:58:57):
Yeah, sure, yeah.
So I'm the geeky, the tech guy,right, phd in computer science.
But previously, yeah, I've beenin many startups, so it's my
third startup.
Basically, we sold the startupto Agoda 12 years back, then

(04:59:17):
spent a few years running thedata business and later on, yeah
, founding another companycalled Search Machines and
exited that one.
And, yeah, a year and a halfback starting in Personali.

Speaker 2 (04:59:31):
That's great, so you've already been in the
travel industry.

Speaker 13 (04:59:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, plenty of time, yeah, and
flights and hotels especially.

Speaker 2 (04:59:38):
Yeah, very cool and obviously you know the benefit
of importance and of being atfocus right, and so are you
planning to be in San Diegolater this year.

Speaker 13 (04:59:45):
Yeah, hopefully.
Yes, definitely, we are going.
So part of what we won thiscompetition we were invited to
present in the WIT in Singapore,so we'll be there.

Speaker 2 (04:59:55):
Fantastic.

Speaker 13 (04:59:56):
Showing our solution and meeting more amazing people
.
And then the next one that willbe in October, and then the
next one will be in San Diego inNovember.
Right, yeah.
Hopefully we'll be there yeah,that's exciting.

Speaker 2 (05:00:10):
Tell us a little bit about the journey ahead for
Impersonate Ally.
What are some of the majordevelopments you're still
focused on in 2025?
I realize that you're a startup, so there's so much growth
potential, but tell us whereyou're going to be focusing your
efforts and and uh, what someof the you know big
announcements you're going to beuh sharing over the course of
the year.

Speaker 13 (05:00:28):
Yeah, um, yeah.
So we we launched last year.
As I said, we've been extremelyfortunate to see work with
amazing brands already, likebooking viator, um, pandora,
like, not only in travel, but uh, flixbus and uh, and we are, we
are growing like massively anduh in ahead.
So we currently only covercertain types of platforms where

(05:00:51):
the fraud is done, especiallyon ads.
So we cover google and bing,and, and we are going to launch
very soon Meta and Instagram and, of course, we are developing,
as we speak, all our LLMcapabilities.
Right.
A lot of the same fraud that isdone today with search ads and

(05:01:12):
social ads it's being done.
It's starting to being donealso with ChatGPT and the likes,
and there's still early days,right, but these fraudsters,
they leverage all the platforms.
So we're developing oursolution also there and in our
roadmap it's to be an increasingour channel solution to more

(05:01:33):
channels.

Speaker 2 (05:01:34):
That's exciting.
That's awesome.
Well, I want to make sure ourlisteners can connect with you
and find out more information.
So what would be the best waysfor people to learn more about
Impersonally and connect withyou too, Shlomi?

Speaker 13 (05:01:45):
Yeah, so of course, we have our website
impersonallyio, right.
That's a great source.
Everyone that wants to check.
We have a free checker online.
We have a free checker onlineso if you put your domain, you
can, yeah, real-time checkwhether your domain is being
hijacked by fraudsters throughads.

(05:02:05):
So that's a cool way and youcan get instant, like in minutes
, some initial results and, ofcourse, yeah, keeping up later
up and, yeah, finding us throughemail or through the forums in
the website will be, will be thebest.

Speaker 2 (05:02:20):
yes, very cool.
I'm going to use that today.
Actually, I've got a few otherand I know some uh clients of
ours that will certainly benefitfrom that as well, so it's
exciting to meet you.
I'm so glad you're here.
Congratulations,congratulations again on your
startup victory.
So wish you every success inthe year ahead and I look
forward to seeing you again insan diego.
Slomy, thanks for joining us.

Speaker 13 (05:02:37):
Amazing.
Thank you very much and thankyou for having me and good luck,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:02:43):
Thanks so much for joining us on this special event
spotlight of Focusrite Europe,recorded all live in Barcelona.
I hope you enjoyed all theseinspiring conversations.
That got many valuable insightsand benefits.
I also just wanted to highlightthat you can feel free to reach
out to any of the speakers.
I know they appreciate hearingfrom our listeners and you can
find them all on LinkedIn.
And don't forget, we are goingto be at Focusrite in San Diego

(05:03:06):
November 18th to 20th and wewant you to join us.
We have a special $250 discountfor all of our listeners that
you can access with the promocode Travel Trends Special 25.
That's Travel TrendssSpecial25.
You can go right to theFocusrite website to get your
ticket or come toTravelTrendsPodcastcom for the
information and the link to beable to go and get your ticket.

(05:03:28):
As soon as you have that, sendme an email
danattraveltrendspodcastcom andwe will schedule you in for an
interview, because the full teamwill be there with me.
You in for an interview becausethe full team will be there
with me.
We'll have melanie andkatherine at the event, so we
look forward to meeting many ofyou in person, some of you for
the first time.
That's always a thrill for mewhen our listeners come up and
actually have a niceconversation just to say hello

(05:03:50):
and give us some feedback aboutthe show.
I certainly welcome that byemail anytime and hopefully see
many of you in person.
Now, over the few weeks, we'regoing to be releasing a series
of spotlight episodes forexecutives company spotlights as
we prepare for season six ofTravel Trends, which launches
early September with ourCaptains of Industry theme.

(05:04:10):
These are the executives thatare really shaping the future of
travel and we're also going tohave five themes that are going
to be the most important topicsin the travel industry.
So a lot to look forward to inseason six and, of course, our
AI Summit at the end of October.
Focusrite is a media partner.
You can get our tickets throughthem or you can come direct to
Travel Trends podcast.

(05:04:31):
Either way, get your advancedtickets for the Travel Trends AI
Summit.
Virtually, you can attend fromanywhere in the world.
Even if you attend one session,it will have been worth it when
you look at the lineup ofspeakers and the agenda and what
we're going to cover to helpeveryone understand how AI is
impacting the travel industryand what it means for your role
and for your company.
So join us for the AI Summit,get ready for season six, and

(05:04:54):
thank you again to all of ourguests for being a part of this
special event spotlight fromFocusrite Europe in Barcelona.
Thanks again to the Focusriteteam.
We look forward to seeing youall soon in San Diego.
And until our next episode,safe travels.

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