Travel Trends with Dan Christian
#1 B2B Travel Podcast. If you are looking to stay ahead in the travel industry, this new podcast hits all the highlights! The Travel Trends Podcast is where industry leaders converge to share & shape the future. Whether you're an emerging entrepreneur, a seasoned industry executive, or a dedicated travel professional, you’ll be able to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
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Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Season 5 Finale: The Visionary Behind Viator
The travel industry was forever changed when Rod Cuthbert founded Viator in 1995, revolutionizing how travelers discover and book experiences worldwide. In this season finale of Travel Trends, the visionary founder shares his extraordinary journey from Tasmania to Silicon Valley and beyond.
Rod recounts how a serendipitous twist of fate - developing an e-commerce solution for Sabre that went unused - sparked the creation of what would become the world’s leading experiences marketplace. At a time when guided tours were dismissed as outdated, Rod identified a shift in consumer priorities: experiences were beginning to outweigh possessions. By creating a platform for innovative tour operators to quickly reach consumers, Viator helped elevate the entire category from afterthought to the very reason people travel.
After selling Viator to TripAdvisor for $200 million in 2014, Rod continued to drive travel innovation with ventures like Rome2Rio (a transportation search engine) and Veltra (Japan’s leading tour booking platform). Renowned for his candid advice to startups—earning him the nickname "the Simon Cowell of judges" - Rod offers invaluable insights into the future of the industry. His bold prediction? Artificial intelligence will disrupt travel distribution, empowering suppliers to reclaim direct customer relationships and challenging the OTA model that has dominated for decades.
This conversation delivers rare insights from a pioneer who didn’t just observe the industry’s transformation - he led it.
Over the course of 27 episodes, we were honored to feature more than 30 extraordinary guests, each bringing unique perspectives and valuable expertise to the table. From groundbreaking innovations to strategies redefining the future, this season showcased the very best of what the travel industry has to offer. We couldn’t be more thankful for your support in making it all possible. And the excitement doesn’t end here! Subscribe now and join us for season six this September, as we continue to explore how industry leaders are shaping the future of travel for 2026 and beyond.
👉 Listen to Season 5 Finale: The Visionary Behind Viator Now
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The #1 B2B Travel Podcast Globally. Over 100 Episodes. Listeners in 125 countries. New Episodes Every Weds. Season 6 launches in September.
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People saw sightseeing tours as being it just wasn't a desirable category. It was old-fashioned the way it operated. So a couple of things happened, though, that were really good for us. One was that, beginning in around 2000, there was this societal shift, a sort of a shift in the zeitgeist, away from material possessions, and people began to realize that experiences are actually more important than possessions.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to the season five finale of Travel Trends. This is your host, Dan Christian, and on this final episode we're going to be speaking to Rod Cuthbert, the founder of Viator. I'm so excited to bring this conversation to you, especially as we just finished the In Destination series. But also, rod lives in Melbourne, australia, where I had the privilege to live for a few years when I was working with Lonely Planet. Certainly some of the happiest times of my life were spent in Australia working at Lonely Planet and getting to know the team there. Interestingly, at the end of the conversation I had with Rod, it turns out he literally hangs out with the same crew that I absolutely adore John Ryan, katie, faulkner and Gavin and the team there. They still go to pub quiz nights together and I look forward to hopefully joining you guys at some point again in the near future. But I really wanted to finish off with Rod because he is such a visionary founder in this industry. He's also, as I tease him in our conversation, the Simon Cowell of judges when it comes to the startup. So I'm sure a lot of startups listen to this. As soon as they hear Rod Cuthbert's voice, they shiver in fear because he speaks the honest, open truth, which sometimes is hard to hear but oftentimes makes these startups better. And I've actually had people that have commented that I really didn't like Rod because of what he said, but I actually implemented it and it actually worked out for my business. So this is where I wanted to bring Rod into the conversation, and I do get into that with him, but you'll also see someone that really set the stage for the industry as we know it today. He's gone on to success with a number of other ventures and we'll talk a bit about that as well.
Speaker 2:But before we bring Rod on to the final show of season five, I just wanted to say a few quick thank yous. First, all of our listeners, for your enthusiasm, engagement, reviews and feedback over the course of this season. I love when I get emails, dan at traveltrendspodcastcom, about episodes or plans that we have for future guests or topics you want to see us cover, especially as we are currently in production for season six. So feel free to keep those coming. And I also just wanted to acknowledge our amazing sponsors and partners that have made this team and entire podcast possible. We certainly have been very fortunate in the past two seasons to have a growing list of sponsors, and this season we had Propellec, of course, coming back, who's been with us since season three. We had Travel AI come back this season as well, and State 22 was three of our returning sponsors, but we also had Travel Tech Flywire, colette Flight Center and Protect Group, and we also had our theme sponsors as well. So I just wanted to say a special thank you to all of those sponsors.
Speaker 2:I, of course, want to thank all of the amazing guests. We've had 27 episodes. We did nearly 31 when we launched season four. We are always planning to do 20 episodes per season, but we end up over-indexing because we have so many amazing conversations to bring you each week and sometimes we end up putting out two or three episodes, and we've actually came up with the idea of the spotlight episodes as the best way to handle the fact that we've been over indexing on our production. And so, over the course of the next couple of months until we launch season six in September, we're actually going to be launching several spotlight episodes. There's going to be a destination spotlight on Columbia, there's going to be the focus right event spotlight from Europe, and there's going to be a number of executive and company spotlights as well, so be sure to stay tuned for those over the next couple of months. And lastly, I just want to acknowledge the amazing team I have the privilege to work with to produce travel trends. You've got Zach, our producer. Catherine, who does all of our guesting. Eugene, our new marketing assistant that recently joined us. Melanie, who's been with us now for over a year, that does all of our sponsorships and partnerships. Melissa, who happens to also double as my sister. She does all of our social media activity. We're actually having a team offsite coming up to celebrate season five and prepare for season six. If you have any other suggestions for us as we go into next season and, of course, our AI summit in October, which hopefully you've registered for as well, We'd love to hear from you. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 1:Hey Dan, thank you so much for being here. Hey Dan, thank you so much for inviting me. It turns out that I'm in Tokyo, but Tokyo is a couple of hours, you know, sort of, is it ahead or behind of Melbourne? It's behind Melbourne. So I'm waking up here at 6.30 in the morning and it's kind of perfect, I've got time to talk to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. I appreciate making it work while you're traveling. Of course, the last time we saw each other was at Focusrite in Phoenix and you were awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, and I've seen you there over the years. I'm incredibly impressed with what you've built in this industry. Obviously, you're known for Viator, where everyone got a good sense of your introduction. For the few people out there that may not know who you are, they certainly do now. But I would love to start with the whole Rod Cuthbert backstory, because that's what I don't know. I mean, we don't know each other that well, certainly on a personal level. I know everything you've accomplished professionally, but tell us how you got into travel and tourism in the first place, and then we'll get into Viator.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I didn't take what many people would consider to be a traditional path into business. I dropped out of high school. I'm a native of Tasmania, the island state in Australia. I moved to what islanders always have a mainland I guess in Hawaii it's California, et cetera, in Tasmania it's Melbourne, sydney, et cetera. So I moved to the mainland.
Speaker 1:I was a table tennis coach for a while, for the better part of a year, made some money doing that and then, just by virtue of some connections that I had and this is back in the age of mainframe computers I got a job as a computer operator. And this is back in the age of mainframe computers. I got a job as a computer operator, so you know big air-conditioned room with a raised floor and huge sort of mainframe machines changing disks and paper and line printer and all that sort of stuff. That was a lot of fun, paid really well, worked night shifts. Eventually ended up at a company that I guess went out of business because they didn't pick the PC trend and that was Digital Equipment Corporation or DEC, who were just a major player in the sale of mini computers. People probably heard of the PDP-11 or the VAX. So I sort of got into a big US corporation, got some training here in the US, got into sales and was really having a great career.
Speaker 1:And then the PC came along in the mid-'80s the IBM PC and the Macintosh in the mid 80s the ibm pc and the macintosh. And uh, my job was to find uh retail dealers who could sell decks range of pcs. And I couldn't find any. Uh, there just wasn't. You know, the the industry was just getting started at that time. So a colleague and I said let's leave and start our own. We'll become retailers, we'll open a store on the high street, st Kilda Road in Melbourne. And we did that. And it was Dan, I've got to tell you. All we had to do was turn up, turn the lights on and answer the phone and we were off to the races. It was just so easy. Everybody wanted a PC. There was this thing called Lotus 1-2-3.
Speaker 2:Yep, I remember that.
Speaker 1:Multi-plan Microsoft Word, the Mac with the mouse I mean people, you know. Just, it was exciting and it was really easy to make money.
Speaker 2:So this is now coming from the guy that founded Viator in 1995. And so clearly you had a passion, interest in technology. You saw this emerging opportunity. Now, how did you make that leap from the world of being into computers and hardware? And I know Melbourne very well, I lived in Melbourne for a number of years.
Speaker 2:I worked at Lonely Planet, I know St Kilda Road and I know I've got a good friend in common, ian Cumming, who's based in Tasmania, and I love Tasmania, the place that so few people traveling to Australia actually get to. The Lonely Planet stat was about 3% of people get to Tasmania and when I interviewed another common friend of ours who runs Tourism Tasmania, she was telling me that it's still the same stat, like it's like literally a small percentage. So I think people listening to this should go to Tasmania, they should go to Australia, they should obviously experience Melbourne and this is the world that you know so well. But tell us, how did you make this leap into the world of essentially these day tours and, like you, created a whole new category in this industry? But yeah, so what was the leap into tourism from a computer shop on St Kilda Road?
Speaker 1:Right, there's a bit of serendipity involved there. After the computer store we sold, we made a little bit of money. I started a software company, eventually sold that to a company here in Japan and ended up starting a company with a friend of mine in Sydney to build websites. But we didn't have any particular idea of what sort of websites we would build or what sort of industry we would go after. We certainly didn't have a view on travel and tourism. But our first client was uh contiki travel, uh and we. We built a site for them and and they contacted their, their sister company, trafalgar, who then contacted their sister company, insight, part of all part of the travel corporation out of bermuda, uh, really big, you know international, and they just loved the work we were doing for them. And so the word spread throughout the industry in Australia and eventually overseas that here was a company that was building websites for people and that was a very new thing at that time. But we were building websites with a pretty good knowledge of how to do things for travel companies. We had developed a database that was really good at displaying travel product and we sort of spoke the same language after a year or so as the people we were working with. So we got to specialize really quickly. The people we were working with. So we got to specialize really quickly. And it happened that we had hired a woman who used to work at Sabre, the global GDS.
Speaker 1:At that time, travel agents were still the core of the industry. 40,000 agency locations around the world used Sabre to make flight and hotel bookings and they had a really good idea, which is they wanted to ease their way onto the web off of what we call the green screen, if you remember that, dan. They wanted to introduce the web and they were going to do that with a marketplace of tour and activity products, with a marketplace of tour and activity products. This is the first time that we'd sort of been exposed to the experiences sector. But that was fine. You know, we had the technology sort of chops to do it. So we got a contract with them and we built an e-commerce solution to allow. Essentially, you know, you would go into a travel agency and you say I'm going to be in Rome, I'd like to book some tours, and the agent would go on the website, the Sable website, find the tours, make a booking, e-commerce happens, et cetera, et cetera. So that was fine.
Speaker 1:We built that and we had to have an official handover. And one of my colleagues and I went to Dallas to do the handover and it happened that when we arrived there, in a sort of surreal turn of events, that Sabre had decided to do a major layoff. So we get out of our car at like 8.45 in the morning, walk into the lobby and there are security guards everywhere and there are people with cardboard boxes and they're crying and they're leaving the building for the last time and we're in the middle of all this. We'd never seen this sort of American-style layoff, let alone been in the lobby of a building while it was happening. It was emotional and depressing, to be honest.
Speaker 1:And we discovered that the group that we were working with they'd been scattered to the winds, they hadn't been fired, they'd been moved to other divisions and, to cut a long story short, sabre just didn't have any need for the product we had built for them. They said to us look, great job, you keep it, do it yourselves. And we said fine. But by now we were talking to ourselves, because Sabre weren't in the conversation anymore. We didn't believe in the travel agency model going forward. We thought travel agents would be disintermediated, which is a word now that I think I haven't said that word for a long time. But I can tell you that in the late 90s and early 2000s the whole industry was talking about the fact that go-betweens, like travel agents, were not going to be going between for much longer. They were going to get disintermediated. And that is in fact what happened. We could see that coming, so we said let's roll this product out, let's sell tours and activities, but let's do it for consumers instead of travel agents. So that's how we got started.
Speaker 2:Well, what's really fascinating about that? I spent nearly a decade at the Travel Corporation and I oversaw Contiki as part of my role for a number of years, and so it's interesting how points of connectivity. The reason I actually only emphasize that is because Contiki, of course, started by a New Zealander. It was started in London, focused on Europe, and it was a a multi-day tour brand, and what I found fascinating about that rod is you were actually doing multi-day even today via tour. Uh, kluge, um, get your guy I mean get your guys just getting into multi-day in 2025. And, um, and this is pre launch.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I find that really fascinating that you actually were cutting your teeth on building websites and software for a multi-day tour brand way back then. So then tell us how you decided to create Viator. What was the origin story? Now, some of this I actually know because I've seen you and I know a bit of the backstory, but I want our listeners to know it from the beginning. So how did you actually come up with the concept and create this business and get the funding and really get it off the ground?
Speaker 1:Well, we already had a business and staff, software developers on our team, and we then had this product, this e-commerce product, to sell tours and activities that we built for Sabre, and they said we don't need it. So we decided to pivot from being a software development company specializing in web development to an e-commerce company, because there's no leverage in software development. You can only do as much as the number of software developers you have on the team. You can only do as much as the number of software developers you have on the team. You're not going to get rich doing that.
Speaker 1:Whereas, you know, we had begun to see Expedia, travelocity, et cetera, et cetera. There was, you know you could grow a vast business in the e-commerce space and we expected there would be strong demand for that product if we could get it out there. So we decided you know my colleague's name was Peter Fox, my co-founder, and the company was called Fox Interactive Media. We thought that's not a good name for an e-commerce brand, so we landed on the name Viator, which is the Latin name for traveler. We're all familiar with the word aviator. Take the A off and there you are. That's what that means.
Speaker 1:So that seemed like a good name. It was available for, I think, $20 from whoever it was that sold domains in those days. It was really an easy pivot. It was serendipity that Sabre paid for this development and then didn't need it, and it was an easy decision for us. We were able to quickly raise a couple of million dollars from venture capitalists in Australia who believed in the idea and liked the idea of launching a global e-commerce business. So it wasn't our idea, but we picked it up really quickly and ran with it.
Speaker 2:I still remember reading some of the articles as you were growing this business the Carlyle group, who obviously invested early and continued through a few rounds and I was reading those stories as your business was growing and developing because clearly a number of investors had conviction on the category and quite quickly, as they realized what you were onto, we'll be right back. Attention, travelers and travel advisors. Are you looking to elevate your travel experience beyond the ordinary? Then you have to say hello to our good friends at Colette, where guided travel gets a premium upgrade. For over 100 years, colette has been crafting expertly guided tours that go beyond the stereotypes. With over 170 tours across all seven continents, colette offers something for every type of traveler, from culturally immersive small group journeys to single city stays and even river cruises. And with their industry leading travel protection plan, you can cancel for any reason up to 24 hours before departure. Plus, when you book air with Colette, they even offer a private chauffeur service to and from the airport. Discover why travelers love Colette and why guided travel is thriving. Join the evolution of travel today at goColettecom. Your next adventure awaits. That's GoColettecom. Are you looking for ways to grow your travel business through paid media and optimized SEO, then you have to check out our friends at Propelliccom. They are the leading digital agency for growth in travel and tourism. Propellic offers bold digital marketing strategies to ensure your travel company's success. They have a remarkable methodology that has actually been implemented by TravelAIcom and they are a leading SEO agency globally and offer a range of resources a podcast of their own, a blog on their website, propeiccom. That's P-R-O-P-E-L-L-I-Ccom. And don't forget to mention Travel Trends for your free marketing audit. Attention travel operators, destination management companies and accommodation providers.
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Speaker 2:And now back to the show. So tell us a little bit about how it then it grew. That's flywirecom slash travel trends. Your take on how you see the world in 2025, because I value your viewpoint, and I said this to Rod just before we started recording One of my favorite times seeing Rod speak is when he does the judging for the Focusrite startups, because it was so refreshing his take. I know it was sometimes controversial, but I certainly found it really enjoyable in the crowd because, as I said to Rod, he was like the Simon Cowell of the judges. And that's where I want to get into some of your take on the industry today, because I think you've got a great sense of where the industry is and where it's headed. But let's finish off on the Viator story that clearly is such a big part of your career, your business journey. So tell us a little bit about how the business grew.
Speaker 1:And then, ultimately, you sold the business and trip advisor acquired it and but yeah, tell us how it grew and you got it to the point of uh, of acquisition so we, uh, we were able to attract uh investment from, uh, the, the carlisle group, which was a us venture firm, that or private equity firm with a venture arm, that really they did sort of big petrochemical deals and stuff like that. We didn't think that they were a logical investor. But they had a new uh, a new um partner in the san francisco office and he was interested in doing some e-commerce deals and, uh, he liked us and decided to back us. I think the most interesting thing about the Viator story is that and I'll be interested in your view on this as well multi-day tours were seen as you know, a really you know a valuable part of the industry. But tours and activities to be frank, you know the two-hour sightseeing tour you know in the late 90s, the early 2000s, was sort of viewed as déclassé, you know sort of bogan to use the Australian word a bit redneck. You know you're walking around Rome in a group of 15 people following a lady who's holding a flag on top of an umbrella. You sort of looked dumb and there was a whole. You know the majority of the marketplace didn't want to do that. People saw sightseeing tours as being kind of I don't know, it just wasn't a desirable category. It was old-fashioned the way it operated.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things happened, though, that were really good for us. One was that, beginning in around 2000, there was this societal shift, a sort of a shift in the zeitgeist away from material possessions, the sort of he who dies with the most toys wins sort of vibe that existed around Gordon, gekko and Wall Street and that whole type of thing. The shine started to go off that, and people began to realize that experiences are actually more important than possessions. Seeing things and experiencing them is more important than the t-shirt that says I went to x or whatever. Um, and that was really in our favor. The second thing was that we were the first online group that we gave a platform to tour operators, so somebody in Rome could say I want to start up, and this actually did happen in all the major European capitals. That's where it really got going going. Young historians and archaeologists and young business people would get together and say let's do a historical tour of Rome where we really focus in on certain aspects Maybe it's the art or the architecture or the role of the Catholic Church, or whatever it is and it'll be really highly valuable and we'll have a great guide and we'll price it in a certain way, so we're not going after the low end of the market. We would get those tours out there onto the market really quickly, like we'd sign them up at a conference and two weeks later they'd be on our site and we'd be taking bookings. That really it began this sort of snowball effect where sightseeing tours became more acceptable.
Speaker 1:All of a sudden people in the travel industry were doing sightseeing tours. They were saying you know, oh, I went to Rome and I did the Via Tours, skipped the line tour of the Vatican, I didn't have to wait in line for four hours outside, I paid extra and, wow, the Sistine Chapel is amazing. That's something that they wouldn't have done beforehand because they would have had to follow a lady with a flag on an umbrella or wait outside for four hours. We turned unwittingly we didn't know we were doing this at the time, but it was definitely the case looking back that we turned what was a category that was looked down on by the rest of the industry into actually the reason people were traveling. They weren't going to Rome because they wanted a cool hotel room. There are not a lot of cool hotel rooms in Rome. They're all really small. They're not going because they're looking forward to that flight on United. They were going to do things and that became clearer to the industry as more and more really interesting tours became available online through Viator.
Speaker 2:Well, what I find fascinating just in this whole journey and this is where you were so far ahead of the curve, rod I mean you sold the business in 2014 for $200 million to TripAdvisor and if we look at the numbers today and this is where something I actually did want to call out as well, because you've always been very vocal and opinionated and that's something I actually I really have respected about you, because there was quite a few years where, after TripAdvisor had acquired Viator, and opinionated and that's something I actually I really have respected about you, because there was quite a few years where, after TripAdvisor had acquired Viator, that they didn't report the revenue figures and it was sort of kind of hidden in the background and you had actually called out that there's so much more they could be doing with this brand. They bought this business and they could be growing it more aggressively globally, and I think and I want to hear your words on this but I certainly my sense there, rod, was that you were realizing that there was a big opportunity being missed for how aggressively they could have grown that business and that brand at the time. I do know, of course, there was that data breach issue that happened afterwards, and I remember speaking to Steve Koffer shortly after and he mentioned that. You mentioned that they were still digesting the acquisition, and so it almost seemed like as if things kind of slowed down. And then, all of a sudden, you had these competitors that crept up that get your guide and klook and Viator was started in Australia, as you mentioned, the Sydney and San Francisco office. The San Francisco office, of course, was where a lot of your executive team was, like Barry, and many of the colleagues that we have in common were based out of that San Francisco office, and so it really dominated the US market but had a great opportunity to dominate globally.
Speaker 2:And I just wanted to share one other stat with our listeners, and then I want to give you a full opportunity to weigh in on this. Is that you know, having sold the business at that time for 200 million, now here we are in 2025. And TripAdvisor is disclosing the numbers very intentionally about how much revenue Viator actually drives and because it's such a sizable portion of their revenue. So we're now talking about $840 million a year for Viator on its own, with TripAdvisor being about $1.8 billion. So literally all of a sudden, it's half of their business is coming from Viator, and so that has to be, to some extent, a great kind of comeuppance for you and now, but anyway.
Speaker 2:So, rod, I'd love to hear your view on everything I just shared in terms of selling the business, how things evolved after that point, and then we'll get into some of the other things you're working on, because, again, you've started, you've you've continued to innovate and work with really fascinating, uh, startups, uh, but, yeah, I'd love to hear your view on that, with whatever you'd like to share about, you know, selling the business, looking back, reflecting on it and where things stand today.
Speaker 1:Well, uh, well, to start at the very end, I'm incredibly proud of the fact that top-line revenue at Viator, I think in 2024, was around $4 billion. That's a lot of tours and activities. I guess I'm really proud of that. I think I've always been a believer that all the boats rise on the same tide. I love Get your Guide and Kluk. I just think they're both great companies and there is absolutely enough space in this marketplace for all three of those companies to prosper and continue to grow. Just as an aside, I think it's going to be really difficult for those two companies to find an exit, given how much money they've raised. But that's a challenge for another podcast, I guess.
Speaker 1:The sale to TripAdvisor I had left the company by then, so Barry Seidenberg was running the business, but I was happy with the sale. Our investors had been in for a long time and you know venture capital funds they have. You know the fund ends and their investors want to return, so it made complete sense that we would sell. It was, you know, life-changing for me and certainly Carlisle and our original investors in Australia all did really well. So everybody was happy and you know I guess we, you know, looking at the numbers now. It would have been nice to toss another $50 million in and keep all that for ourselves, but the fact is that Trip have such tremendous traffic that they could divert.
Speaker 1:They did get lost early on.
Speaker 1:I believe and I suspect most of the Viator insiders who were there at the time would share this view that Trip have this sort of view of the world, that they're pretty good at travel and we've bought your business and now we'll take over.
Speaker 1:We know what we're doing here. I'm not sure that experience and success in what is essentially a media business, which is what Trip is, translates into knowing how to grow an e-commerce business focused on selling tours and activities, and I think it did lose its way for a while and at one point they were seriously contemplating shuttering the Viator brand and moving all of the sales to TripAdvisor experiences, and that would have been really dumb. But they managed to think their way out of that situation and they began to invest again. Ben Drew took over as president and that was really a good time for the company. Ben realized that the Viator brand was really well-loved by suppliers worldwide and there was just so many consumers who had had great experiences and wanted to continue to buy from Viator. So the company began to really grow under Ben's leadership, and I think you know the writing's on the wall now. It's just a tremendous, tremendous business that we're all really proud of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you absolutely should be. And it's interesting because, as you mentioned, a number of those colleagues that worked closely with you closely with Barry left at that time and there was an exodus of really outstanding talent after the acquisition. And then, as you rightly point out, when Ben came into the business, there was this renaissance and there was this incredible runway for Viator. That's led to the success that the business is in today and I know they have new leadership now and things are continuing to evolve. But if there was one thing you could go back and do differently, or one thing that you look back on, is there anything that stands out to you? I mean, you mentioned something interesting there about chuck another 50 million in and run it for another 10 or 15 years. Obviously, that's one scenario, but is there anything else that you would have, I guess, done differently, rod, when you look back now? Or is it pretty clear in hindsight that all the right decisions were made at the right time, based on the information available?
Speaker 1:I think the best answer to that is I probably hung around for even a little bit too long. When we hired Barry Seidenberg, it was just so clear to me that, you know, she had a Stanford MBA and I'm a high school dropout, right. And she said to me, you know, I said, god, you've got so many more skills to be running this business. And she said, yeah, but I never would have started it. And that's a really interesting, interesting. That was a really interesting comment.
Speaker 1:You know, there are a lot of people who, uh, they, they're just fantastic at running and scaling and understanding all the levers that you've got to pull and the dials you've got to turn in an e-commerce business. These businesses are really, really complex and it was beyond me how to scale it by the time we got to about 2006, 2007,. I was out of my depth, to be honest, in terms of running the whole business. So Barry was there and that was great, but, generally speaking, only a small percentage of those people are also willing to be a founder and take risk at an early level, at an early stage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very insightful point and I think just uh uh to dive into that a bit more. With regards to the entrepreneurial initiatives you've taken on since then, which, uh uh, have been many, so I've I've seen you wearing a number of different hats, both as a chairman, but also working closely with a lot of founders. So, from your experience there, take us through what you decided to focus on next. Obviously, you had a bit of time off. You did well. The Rome to Rio was more like 2012. I know Veltra came a little bit later. You have J-Ride as well, but tell us what you decided to pursue after Viator. What was your thinking and your mentality then? That sort of led you to the number of initiatives you've taken on in the last 10 or 15 years.
Speaker 1:Well, I actually had a dramatic failure Not so dramatic, but I said to myself I should do something besides travel. This was a really dumb idea. It's like you know. I've since come to terms with the fact that I have a very narrow field of expertise and experience and I really should stick to that.
Speaker 1:But I was always really interested in media. I was a news junkie and I teamed up with a computer scientist who had developed some semantic analysis software and the idea was that we were going to ingest all the current news stories and sort of divide them up into what sort of political sentiment they were written from and then present them so that you could read about a story from sort of a left-leaning perspective, from a right-leaning perspective, and sort of see it all on the one page. And so many people told us this is just such a great idea. And at the time Obama was president and he actually said in a speech one day we should all take the opportunity to read what the other guys are saying about this topic. If you're a Wall Street Journal reader, read the New York Times on it. And if you're a Fox television watcher, you know. Et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Well, it turns out that people just want to read their own thing right. They just want to hear what's already in their mind. They want somebody else to echo that sentiment. Generally speaking, people don't want to hear what's already in their mind. They want somebody else to echo that sentiment. Generally speaking, people don't want to be challenged. And that business lasted for about six months and we did all of our dough, unfortunately, and after that I decided I should just do travel in future.
Speaker 2:That was a nice humbling experience after an epic success, right. So you get back into travel. You decide that that is going to be where you're going to continue to focus your time and your energy. How did Rome to Rio come about?
Speaker 2:Take us a little bit through that business, because I was so intrigued with this business when it launched because all of a sudden there was trip planning. We were joking just before we started to record about the cemetery of trip planning tools, and Rome to Rio, even in the face of a platform like Google Maps, really stood out in terms of the technology, the user interface, the functionality interface, the functionality. I still use Rome to Rio when I'm trying to figure out. I was just using it in Europe recently to try and figure out the different options of getting from. I was in Nice and I had to go to Berlin and I was just looking at the different options on Rome to Rio. But yeah, tell us a little bit about that business, if you wouldn't mind, Rod, and where that stands now.
Speaker 1:So I was living in California but I needed to go back to Australia and through a mutual friend I was introduced to two former Microsoft engineers who had been working in Redmond and had decided to launch a business and they were natives of Melbourne and they had just moved back to Melbourne. So I was introduced to them. We got on really well. Immediately I moved back there, I met with them in person. They had been trying to. They were literally still in the garage writing the code. They just got a beta out, I think the week before I arrived back. I loved what they were doing.
Speaker 1:It's very hard technology, the sort of journey planning technology. You know. It's complex computer science and they had nailed it. They were trying to raise money and not having any luck, and I was able to do that in, I think, six weeks or something like that. It's a different set of skills to sitting in front of a screen and writing code and they were failing at that, but they were wildly successful at their core competency. So it was a nice combination it was.
Speaker 1:You know, the Rome de Rio story has just been a terrific example of how very, very good technology plus a little bit of luck and I think the luck with Rome de Rio came in. They chose a really great brand name. They did a really good job of the UX design and people just loved it. And, interestingly, people inside the travel industry really loved it because they realized how difficult it is to do the sort of you know, to deliver the sort of results that ron de rio delivers in less than a second. Um, it's super fast and it tells you all of the different ways to get from literally any place on the planet to any other place. And it was just a nicer interface and not everybody wants to use Google all the time. It turns out People want their alternatives.
Speaker 1:The occurrence of sort of word-of-mouth marketing that Rome de Rio got was just out of this world. I saw a list the other day of the top traffic websites in the world. I'm not sure who puts it out. It's every month that comes out. Bookingcom is right up there with 550 million visits per month, but in number 19 spot with 50 million visits per month is rome to rio. It is. It is a wildly popular. It is a wildly popular website, which the really amazing thing on that journey with Rome de Rio it's a site that tells you how to get from A to B, how to get from Nice to Ancona, or from Milan to Berlin or whatever, which can be complex. You would think that we would make money out of selling transportation, selling tickets. It turns out that Rondorio makes most of its money out of selling hotels, like everybody else in the industry. That's where the money is.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so interesting. I guess that obviously was one of the startups you got involved in. And where is Rondorio today? Just so we can finish that one. And I want to talk about Veltra, because that's obviously why you're in in japan, because it's interesting, like when, when I look at your, you know, I guess your portfolio you have you know the journey planning, uh j ride, of course, is a marketplace for airport transfers. Veltra, which I'm sure many of our listeners know, but of course it's Japan's leading online seller of tours and activities and so you know you're very active in all of these kind of similar adjacent spaces, which clearly you know well and you understand it. You know the investors, you know the marketing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, tell us a little bit of, I guess, how the Rome to Rio story wraps up, if you will, as you're trying to do all these other things, um, as well well, um, you know it wraps up from my point of view uh, we sold the business to the german company omeo in 2019, 20, late 2018, early 2019, uh, and it's now, you know, a very important part of their portfolio of businesses. I mean, selling train tickets in Europe is sort of a red ocean. There are some big players doing that, and what Rome de Rio brings to the table there is high-volume traffic, so it's a really valuable part of the Omeo mix.
Speaker 1:Veltra is interesting because I've known the company since its earliest days. They had approached Viator around, I think, 2000 and said can we license your e-commerce tech so that we don't have to build it? I wasn't so keen on that, but I said let's stay friends, let's meet up at conferences and whatever. And we did. And then when I became independent of Viator and they didn't have any concerns about confidentiality and that type of thing, they invited me to join their board and I think that was quite courageous.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure how much you know about doing business in Japan, but you know, because of sort of culture and hierarchy, people don't say no a lot here. So if the CEO or somebody senior in a company says we should do this, probably everybody's going to go along with that, whereas I sit in board meetings at Veltra and somebody says we should do this and I say that's crazy, why would we do that? I laugh and they look at me and but if I say no, it gives them the license to say yes, I agree with rod, so they're still saying yes, which is what they want to do, but they're saying no really, uh, and it's worked out well, it's.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm sort of just by being here they're, they're sort of of in a better position to compete with the Klux and KK Days and other Asian companies who actually they are Asian companies but they operate like Western companies. You know, they're very startup methodology, they're very fast moving, they're prepared to do, you know, a-b testing all over the place experiment, you know, whereas Veltra has a very Japanese culture and mindset and we're slowly breaking that apart and that's been kind of fun.
Speaker 2:I can only imagine how those first few board meetings went, and given that, I've seen you in action at conferences. So, yes, entering that environment is probably a new experience for everyone in the room. But so when we think about Rod Cuthbert today, in 2025, obviously you're in Japan, you're working still with Veltro, you're on their board, you're the chairperson of J-Ride. Are those kind of your two primary focuses? What is Rod Cuthbert working on today? Is there anything else that I'm missing from your portfolio?
Speaker 1:Well, I've invested in a number of online travel companies. I'm an investor in Magpie because I really do know a bit about content management in the online travel space, and Viator created an extranet very early on so we didn't have to load all the all of the uh, all the content into our system. It was sort of a game changer for us. Uh, expedia saw that we'd done that and they created an extranet as well, and all of a sudden there was all these different extranets and the suppliers were actually really in a in a difficult situation that they had to. They have to load their content all over the place, all around the industry. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1:You know my friend christian watts. He said this makes no sense. There should be a single source of truth, and I really believed in that. Um, so I'm an investor over there and I think that's a you know it's. It's been tough through through COVID, but now people are really coalescing around the idea that you know a smart, single source of truth that's got a lot of AI functionality for the languages and rewriting and review management etc. It really makes sense. So I think that, think that's going to do really well. I'm on the board of Tourism Tasmania with our friend Sarah.
Speaker 2:Yep indeed.
Speaker 1:And I guess, coming back to something that you mentioned before not something I get paid for, but you know I did get a bit of a reputation. You know you mentioned Simon Cowell. I guess that's probably a good analogy. Um, I, I was a judge for a number of years at the innovation summit, at Focusrite, and I would get very frustrated, with my colleagues sitting next to me, that my fellow judges, you know somebody would get up and pitch a business, a travel planning business, for example, that we'd seen 20 times before and they've all gone out of business, and my fellow judges would ask a question about the business model or something else and say, yeah, that sounds really great.
Speaker 1:And I knew that this guy was going to be out of business. And so I would say, look, you're a smart guy, but this isn't going to work. You should do something else. You definitely shouldn't take any money from your friends and family because they're not going to be your friends afterwards. This is not going to work.
Speaker 1:And, surprisingly, people like that even the people that I said it to afterwards would come up to me and say you know, thank goodness, somebody you know got me to go back and do some more research. So, by being a bit of an asshole, to be frank, because it's not nice to be told that in public. But you know, I felt somebody's got to do it to be told that in public, but I felt somebody's got to do it. So now, once or twice a month, every month for the last 10 years, I get somebody like Tim Hughes or Sue Hoon or somebody will call up and say, look, I met with this guy last week and he's doing this startup and I think you should talk to him. Which really means what they're saying is I know this isn't going to work, but I don't want to tell him but you can tell him so um once or twice, uh, where?
Speaker 1:uh, I've said, you know, this is actually really a great idea. Usually, the great ideas don't make it to me. It's only the lousy ideas that I get to see.
Speaker 2:That's funny Well one, certainly a great idea. That has made it to you, and I know you've gotten involved as guest OS with Jesse Fisher, which is, I guess, one of your most recent investments, and I think that is definitely a winner. And I thought it was really interesting, though, that when you met Jesse and just full disclosure to our audience too I'm an advisor to GuestOS and a strong believer in Jesse, the travel technology he's been building, and it was just interesting that Rod had a similar feeling. And when Rod met with Jesse and I spoke to Jesse, it was like that I know how tough Rod can be on startups and how your analysis, given the number you've looked at obviously it's it's I respect your opinion is, I guess, what I'm coming to, and clearly others do as well. But I think it's funny that some people are looking for you to be the ax man and be the one to come in and just tell the honest truth, and I think that I genuinely think that's refreshing. I think it's needed. I think it's needed and I think the sooner someone gets on the right path, ultimately, the better for them. But I know you're probably very selective about startups you invest in, so I'm not trying to put it out there that you are actively investing, because otherwise you're going to get hit up after this with many other startups trying to pitch you. But I just did want to highlight that. I actually do think that's one of the great qualities you have is being able to analyze, give feedback, and I look forward to seeing you continuing in that capacity, because I always gravitated to watch you in those situations. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:And now back to the show.
Speaker 2:So the thing I also want to talk to you about, rod, given that you are in Japan at the moment and you've got this worldview and you've got this incredible background, a portfolio of companies you've been working with is that I want to get your view on where we are here in. What are some of the things that you are paying attention to, and obviously AI is one of them. I just say one last thing, too, because Christian is a common friend of ours, so obviously I'm a huge fan of Christian as well. We just had dinner in Berlin and, beyond just being the founder of Magpie, he is a major advocate for AI and a real thought leader, and he's very out there with his opinions on LinkedIn. I think a lot of people do follow Christian. He's been on our show.
Speaker 2:So for those of you who are listening to this that haven't listened to Christian Watts on the Travel Trends podcast, make sure that you do, because it was a fantastic conversation, one of the best guests we've definitely had on the show. So let's finish our discussion on looking forward and AI being one of those topics, rod. So what are the big trends that you're paying attention to and that would be of interest to our audience?
Speaker 1:Look, ai is just so important and is going to break our industry apart, or at least the distribution part of the industry. I mean, hotels are still going to be hotels and airlines are still going to do their thing. They're all going to become more efficient. They'll be able to do the things they do with less people and hopefully become more profitable. So I think there's that whole impact of AI. But for the distribution sector, the retailers, the wholesalers, the tech companies involved, it's just every day there's something else that's coming up that can be driven disrupted. I mean search, for example. We can already see the impact that search is having and how there are going to be really quickly. There's going to be winners and losers.
Speaker 1:Um, at tourism tasmania, for example, and and all dmos would be thinking the same thing, the way, the way search is beginning to operate. We better really quickly make sure that all of our official, the real content about our destination is ready for those ai bots, because if we don't, uh, if we don't make our content ready, somebody's going to step in there with something else that's going to divert people, lead them down the wrong path, give them the wrong information, etc. Etc. You know all of the work that we've done in the past to make sure that when people do a search on Google about things to do in Tasmania whatever that's not going to be at the top of the tree anymore. Something else is going to be there. If we don't move quickly to ensure that we're there, I don't think we can have this conversation today about anything.
Speaker 1:But ai uh, you know we've had in the past things like blockchain and dynamic packaging and just you know, the whole personalization thing's gone on for so many years, you know, and there were, there were advocates, for these technologies were going to change things, and none of them did. Vr, ar none of that's had any impact whatsoever. That's been noticeable. Ai is just so totally different. If you are not trying to figure out how it's going to impact your business, disrupt it, it's going to allow your competitors to leapfrog over your position if they figure it out before you do. So, get your best people onto it right away.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to ask you a very specific question on this topic, because when we think about AI and all the applications for it, it's going to change society, it's going to change many industries and obviously it's going to completely disrupt travel. I completely agree with you. We did our AI summit last year, we have our next one coming up in September in Toronto, and obviously I would love you to be there for it. Rod and we can try and figure that out another time, but I know Christian will be there, and really what we're going to be talking about is how AI is going to transform the travel industry.
Speaker 2:But the question I would like to ask you on this topic is what areas of the travel industry do you think it's going to have the most impact on first? So in 2025, so if we rewind to 2024, we saw chatbots and we saw the rise of customer service alternatives and efficiency gains, and so there's so many different ways this technology can be applied. Our conference was broken into marketing, customer service technology and leadership, and so what are the specific areas that you're paying attention to? Obviously, guestos is hospitality, AI, so what are the areas that you think are going to be the most likely to be disrupted first, like in 25 and 26, by this technology.
Speaker 1:I think that the potential we talked about disintermediation right at the start there Smart principles, and by principles I mean, like the hotel that I'm staying in, which I booked through bookingcom right, because I didn't know about this hotel or an airline or a tour or whatever you know most of those principles rely on third-party distribution. They rely on the channel. Ai is going to disrupt that to the point and one of the reasons you rely on the channel is you just don't have the infrastructure to do the customer service associated with a high volume of incoming inquiries and traffic, whereas the expediers and viators of the world are really good at that. That's their thing. High volume e-commerce. So you take you know, as a hotel or an airline or a tour company, you take a large percentage of your business from the channel who make it really easy and you've just got one point of contact and one bill to pay or whatever one e-commerce transaction there. And then you take a percentage and you say you know we love that direct business, but you know you can only do a certain percentage of business direct because there's just a whole lot more interaction with the customer when you're taking the business direct.
Speaker 1:Now you introduce a product like Jesse Fisher's GuestOS or products like that that can do the customer service, that can do the e-commerce at very high volume and all of the bits around it. And all of a sudden you're saying I actually want more of that stuff. That's through the channel that I'm giving away 25 of. I want more of that over here now because now that I'm ai enabled and I figured out the search thing and I'm at the top of the you know, somebody's searching for, uh, four star midtown hotel in neon bashi area or whatever, and if they can find me directly rather than through bookingcom and I don't have to pay bookingcom, okay, I want that because now I can do that. So I think that's. That's where we're headed. Um, typically the wholesale part of the industry theators, the resellers have figured out a way to maintain their position, but AI is a really powerful tool for suppliers, principals, to reassert their dominance.
Speaker 2:What do you think? Because, when you mentioned about the idea of essentially agentic AI and the opportunity where you have an AI as an assistant operating on your behalf, there is absolutely the potential for the dam to totally break for OTAs if you can have a assistant shopping on your behalf and no longer are we relying on users to go to websites to look at search and results. And I saw a great example of this, Rod, with being able to book an airline ticket one of the startups that works with Lufthansa using verbal, which is what GuestOS does with voice, in one minute. You can book any airline flight in one minute just using your voice, with three or four questions, and so this is going to be a complete transformation than searching for airlines and looking at different meta search platforms. And so, yeah, I think you're spot on and I'm keen to have you back to discuss this in more detail, Rod, because obviously you have so much knowledge and wisdom on the subject and I think you're you know, and it's prescient to to have this conversation about AI and where it's headed.
Speaker 2:So I need to be mindful, of course, of time. So I want to make sure that I'm respectful of that, because I know you have another meeting coming up, so I will bring our conversation to a close for now, but I certainly hope to have you back on travel trends in the very near future. There's certainly a lot of more questions I'd love to dive into and talk about the future with you a lot more, but I do want to make sure that any of our listeners that want to connect with you, Rod, or want to know more about some of the projects that you have underway where would you direct them?
Speaker 1:Oh, they can find me on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to hear from people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to spend 30 seconds more just exploring that, because it's a really interesting point that when people do a startup, you know they ask their partner or their mom or their best friend or whatever none of whom are in the travel industry, right, and none of whom have an opinion that's really of any value on that particular topic of you know, does this travel startup of mine look interesting to you?
Speaker 1:They ask all these people who I describe as being sort of under their umbrella, and naturally, the feedback they get is it's fantastic, I love it. You know this is going to be so, so great and it's just like it's. It's so not valuable that feedback. It leads them to believe, um, that what they're doing is is is great, when in fact, it may be a total waste of time. So I just really encourage people to not listen to your best friend or your partner, but go out to a conference like focus right or arrival or wherever, and talk to hard-nosed people like you and me before they invest a couple of years of their life on doing things.
Speaker 2:So true, Well, and so many people in that exact situation. They try and keep it close to their chest because they're so afraid of someone coming across their idea that they think is so special that no one's had it before. And they need to keep it so close to their chest that they're actually not test driving it, they're not getting it in front of the people that would actually help them shape it and actually figure out to make it work. Because, guess what? It starts with an idea but really no one's going to just take your idea. And this is not the Facebook story. The social network this is most of these neat. So that's a really good point, Rod. The social network.
Speaker 1:This is right. Most of these need, so that's a really good point, rod.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're so right about that, the whole stealth thing so amusing? Exactly, no, but thank you for this. I really enjoyed our time together. I certainly look forward to seeing you again in person in the near future and I'm excited to you know, certainly to keep in touch and and yeah, but I just I can't thank you enough, rod, for making the time for to be on Travel Trends on this episode. I've really, really enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 1:Me too. I've enjoyed it and look forward to seeing you in person Barcelona, los Angeles, wherever it is.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us on this season five finale episode with Rod Cuthbert. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as well as all the themes that we covered in season five. Thanks again to all of our amazing sponsors for partnering with us this season. I just wanted to say one more thank you also to the amazing guests that we had over the course of this season. Certainly, it just continued to elevate, and the episodes that we've just released, including the one with Joe Pine and Jake Halport, was certainly one of my favorite episodes we've ever done, and I'm so excited to bring you many more amazing conversations from captains of industry leading the future of travel.
Speaker 2:That is the theme for season six of captains of industry, since our focus is on having the conversations with the people that are shaping the future of the travel industry and we're really going to be focused on what the travel industry looks like in 2026.
Speaker 2:So make sure that you are subscribed to be notified when our new episodes go live in season six and our spotlight episodes over the next few weeks, and also make sure that you've registered to join us for our AI summit at the end of October. Thank you again to the team that has made this all possible, and thanks, ultimately, to all the amazing listeners that have engaged with Travel Trends over this past year and really got to know our show and reach out to me and the team. Thank you so much for your ongoing support. I love doing this and I can't wait to continue scaling our production, interviewing more guests, being at all these events, and so I look forward to that happening in the fall. And in the meantime, feel free to reach out, dan at travel trends podcastcom. But for those of you in the northern hemisphere, enjoy the summer, have a great break, and we'll look forward to seeing you and speaking to you all again in September.
