The Rise of Agentic AI Part 2

Filters, dropdowns, and endless tabs are starting to feel like the old internet, and travel is right at the center of that shift. In the second episode of our Agentic AI Series, Dan speaks with Ben Manzi, Co-founder and COO of Maya, Michelle Denogean, CMO of Mindtrip, and Brianna MacNeil, Director of AI Products and Personalization, TravelAI, to unpack what “agentic AI” really means for both travel companies and travelers, especially now that AI agents can do far more than chat. They can pull real-time pricing, generate quotes, draft emails, build itineraries, and increasingly help solve the hardest part of travel, making decisions.

We get concrete on where the value shows up first, eliminating repetitive, low judgment work across email and messaging, accelerating internal workflows, and helping smaller travel brands punch above their weight. We also dig into what needs to go right for trust, including grounding agents in real data, cleaning up outdated content, and selecting the right models so costs and latency stay under control. For destinations and marketers, we explore the emergence of a new “listening layer” within conversational planning, and why AI SEO and generative engine optimization now depend on answering real traveler questions, not just publishing evergreen content.

Looking ahead, we discuss persistent travel memory and why the long term winners may be the brands that truly understand the traveler across contexts, not those that simply layer on a chatbot. We close with what must remain human, taste, community validation, and the on the ground moments that make travel meaningful.

Thanks to Maya for sponsoring this series!

👉 Listen to The Rise of Agentic AI Part 2 Now

🔥 Special Thanks to our Season 7 Title Sponsors for their Support: Bokun, Civitatis, Intrepid, Kaptio, Propellic and Protect Group

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast. And this is the most exciting theme I think we have planned for season seven. You just heard episode one on agentic AI with an incredible lineup of guests. And we have another all-star roster for you here in today's episode. This is your host, of course, Dan Christian. And I just wanted to acknowledge as we start this episode that Maya has kindly agreed to sponsor this series. And we actually have Ben joining from Maya on today's episode, which I'm thrilled about. And Ben would have been a guest on this series no matter what, but obviously we always thrilled and give an extra special recognition when we do have one of our partners and sponsors join. And for those of you who are not familiar with Maya, they are the AI agent for travel companies, helping brands automate conversations, support internal teams, personalize engagement at scale, and convert more travelers across channels. You can learn more at Maya travel.ai. That's M-A-Y-A-Travel.ai. And I'm sure you will definitely be interested in checking that out after today's conversation and when you get a chance to actually meet Benjamin Manzi, who is the chief customer officer and co-founder at Maya. But we also have another great friend and colleague of mine joining us. We have Michelle Denogen, who is the chief marketing officer. Michelle, I always mix it up. Michelle Denogin, the chief marketing officer from Mindtrip, who many of you know we did a great series together with Mindtrip, which if you haven't listened to yet, we did a fascinating three-part series on the impact that AI is having on destination management, destination marketing organizations. And we also today have a new guest to our podcast. We have Brianna McNeil, who is the director of AI Products and Personalization at Travel AI, a company that has been on our podcast. The uh founder, John Liotier, I definitely encourage our listeners to check out that podcast as well. And so today we have three extraordinary individuals that know a lot about how travel is being changed in the face of agencai AI. And I wanted to bring them all to this conversation today so that we can share as many interesting learnings and benefits from them to help you in your career and with your business. So on that note, welcome Ben, welcome, Michelle, welcome, Brianna, to Travel Trends. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

Thank you. And thanks for having us.

What Maya’s AI Agent Does

SPEAKER_02 2:26

And I'm actually going to start with Ben because he was one of the inspirations for us to create this series. And for those of you who are not familiar with Maya, I've certainly learned a lot in the last year getting to know Ben and the team. So, Ben, let's start with you. Give us a little bit of an overview of Agentic AI from your vantage point. Tell us a bit about Maya. And then also, if you wouldn't mind, some of the things that you are now capable of that weren't possible with a, you know, having a full team with the technological resources that were available to them just a couple of years ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yes, but uh indeed the technology is moving very fast. Uh, and that's I think one of the main reasons why we're here. Uh, but to give you a concrete example uh on what uh we can do now that we couldn't uh years ago. Uh for example, concrete example, most employees uh what we see as our travel operator clients, uh, they were spending a lot of time and uh a lot of time on repetitive tasks, right? So low judgment work like a general question, uh proposal requests, uh answering the same question uh on WhatsApp Metset for uh 100 times. Uh it was very time consuming for the companies. Uh and today that's eliminated completely uh with all the the clients that we have. Uh, we see that it's not existing anymore. And on uh Maya setup, one Maya setup, it covers more than 100 languages. Uh it pulls, sorry, from the from the operator own knowledge base, and um is the real unlocked app, if you want, uh, on the on the real-time pricing and availability uh from the book the booking system because we take all the information from uh the client's data. So the agent doesn't just answer questions, actually, it quotes it, and that's uh the big differentiator, I guess. The human team didn't shrink, so they move up market to closing, advisory and long-term client relationship that uh uh drive repeats uh on the business, thanks to AI.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

And just so everyone understands, too, the capabilities of Maya. Obviously, you work with OTAs, online travel agencies, and you work with travel agencies themselves, tour operators, DMCs. And I know there's a number of different use cases for your technology, but just for our listeners who are not familiar with the company and what you guys offer, just give everyone a bit more of an overview.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, so actually we build uh, as you as you said at the very beginning, we build the AI agent for for travel companies, but uh it starts uh simply on the on the on the customer website through uh chatbots, uh, but not only, right? So we also understand that uh the it need we need to streamline the communication flow and we need to make sure that um uh everything is uh uh working properly uh through AI. So what we do for to move to give you more concrete examples, so we have those uh internal agents that are able to uh generating quotes, uh invoices, uh generating itineraries also, but also create those uh uh internal communications flow as we link directly with the email so we help answering faster and to make the team more productive in a nutshell.

Mindtrip’s Conversation-Led Trip Planning

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Awesome, thank you. And we're gonna get to much more detail because each of you have a unique platform and a different way of approaching not only this technology and how it applies into travel. And so on that note, I'm gonna bring Michelle into the conversation with Mindtrip. And obviously, Michelle and I have known each other for uh a few years and we and we uh we get on extremely well. We have regular catch-ups. One of the things that she helped me with as I was preparing for a keynote at the Virtuoso conference, I'd actually spoken to Michelle the day before I went on stage to get a few examples of how Mindtrip is utilizing agentic AI. And it was literally a few days before they were launching some of their agenc booking tools for hotels and for flights. So it was ideal timing. But I want to make sure, Michelle, that people actually know what Mind Trip does. And because your background, obviously, you know, is trip planning focused on DMOs. You've expanded into hotels. There's so many different utilizations of your platform. So tell everyone a little bit about Mind Trip, the journey you've been on, and then how people are starting to use your technology today.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Yeah. Um, well, thank you for that. Um, yeah, so Mind Trip is a um kind of full end-to-end uh travel platform, mostly focused on consumer. So we have a consumer-facing side of our business, and we also have, as you mentioned, um, products for destination marketing organizations and hotels, uh, but it's all based on the core consumer experience. So what we have really uh built and come to market with is a full conversation-led experience for people to plan every aspect of their trip from discovery to the planning to the booking to the on-trip experience. And so when it comes to, you know, this topic and agentic, what we really are uh focused on, to your point before, is all of these experiences that are complex for most people, right? They there's a lot of trade-offs involved when you're trying to figure out what flight option uh is best for you or what hotel is gonna fit, you know, especially with complexities like uh picky eaters, which is always my uh favorite uh topic with my daughter. Um but we are just about right now to launch what we call mind trip flights. It's our very first consumer-facing agentic experience where people will be able to chat their way, you know, with prompts, uh, giving us all the complexity, all the trade-offs, all their preferences. Um, and then we will actually send our agent out to come back with the best options that meet all of that criteria. Um, and we announced our partnership with Sabre and PayPal in order to bring that experience to life.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Well, I'm keen to dive into that in more detail for sure, because you know, seeing how many people have been embracing Mind Trip for trip planning, working with all of those DMOs, and then this big question now of how many people are actually trusting agenc AI to make bookings. We've certainly seen some research from the team over at Focus Right that, you know, the last three quarters, agentic AI or at least generative AI use for travel planning has gone from 30% to 40% to 56%. Michael Coletta has done some great research on this front and shared that. So I encourage you to have a look at some of those focus right reports. But what I was gonna say too is that one of the things that he's called out and I've seen consistently through other reporting is that when it comes to booking, there's not a full comfort level yet. And obviously that will change. But one of the things I did learn from John Liotier at Travel AI was that when people have used generative AI for their planning purposes, when they arrive at a travel website, they are ready to book. They're literally five times more likely to make a booking because they've done all their research, they have all the information, and now they're ready to pull out their credit card. And so, although they may not be booking through an agentic platform, they've done their homework. And so that's where I wanted to bring Brianna into the conversation. And one last bit of context as I do is that this is my first opportunity to meet Brianna, but she comes not only from this world of travel AI that I, you know, is one of the most progressive companies in this space. And I'm gonna ask her to share a bit more detail about Travel AI. And what's interesting here is Travel AI is based in Vancouver, uh, the Mindtrip team is based in California, San Francisco and LA, and Ben and the team is based in Belgium and throughout Europe. All of these companies are global, though, of course. And Travel AI builds platforms using these tools. And I know you guys have uh uh a global team, but tell us a little bit about Travel AI, the platforms you build, because you are at this interesting intersection of understanding infrastructure, how AI systems work, and then also the personalization layer. And when I spoke to Josh when I was recently out in Vancouver, he's like, you have to meet Brianna. She's doing all these remarkable things across our platforms. She's amazing. So no pressure, Brianna, but you came very highly recommended, and I'm delighted you've joined us. So yeah, tell us about Travel AI, your role, and what you've been working on.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Thank you so much. Uh, big shoes to fill in John's place today. Um, but thank you for having me. So with Travel AI, I'm the director of AI Products and Personalization. So I have been with the team for the past three years and really got to see the transformation of how we've implemented different AI tooling for all different aspects of the business to really accelerate our growth from the early Chat GPT days to now when agentic tooling is much, much easier to use. Um, initially, we first started to use agentic and kind of like LLM different tooling for our internal processes to really help make content and brands that really resonated with people at the right point in their travel booking or depending on their persona. So we've tried to make a lot of really high-quality targeted content use leveraging these kind of tools. Um, and then in order to enable that, we've built different agentic workflows that use different business Intel, um, different kinds of processes that we've defined in order to do that in a really scalable way. And so today we have over 470 accommodation booking sites, all for different kinds of niches, uh, from really broad to really micro niches. So we have friends by owner.com all the way down to uh Sunski, uh, to some that are for like particular islands. And so we have this really broad portfolio that's really been enabled by these toolings. Um and the really interesting part that we're excited about is when it comes to agent, memory is an extremely um important aspect, like making sure whether it's for a personal agent that you have or um an agent who's trying to help book through like a whole connected trip kind of like workflow. The memory piece and it being able to contain like context about you in a nuanced way, cross-site, cross-brand, that's something that we're really excited about. And that's one of the projects that I'm heading now, is what that travel memory system works looks like across the industry.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

That's fascinating. And tell everyone just a little bit too about travel AI. For those people who aren't as familiar with the number of sites that you manage, I know you have a development team in Bangladesh that is a growing team that supports you you guys are going from like managing 600 websites to about 6,000 websites in a year. Like the scale of growth of your business utilizing these tools is immense. Even to the point where I think John and the team have decided we prefer to be the best kept secret. We're not gonna tell the world what we're doing, but you guys get brought into company conferences like booking.com because you you drive so many bookings through to their platform, through all of these sites that you manage, that they actually bring you in to tell them what is it you're doing? How is the user experience changing? So explain a little bit more about that to our listeners because I think that'll be fascinating for them to understand.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

Yeah, um, so we're um upstream partners, uh, the two main OTAs, uh, as well as others, but um primarily uh booking and the Expedia group. And we um are able to drive a lot of traffic through all of these different niche brands that we have built. They're very uh highly targeted, very um uh rich for those personas that we are um targeting, and I think it's a really great um funnel for for our partners. And um, we've really been able to accelerate the growth of those through different unique proprietary um agentics workflows that we've built. So I think um one advice that I can have is uh for companies is if you have um processes that you can clearly define, clearly mark down whether that's um it could be as simple as like creating slide decks to uh creating an entire brand. If you're able to document that all the skills that are taken into account in order that like an agent would need this particular piece of information to complete the last task and so on, if you can document that, explain exactly how you want it to be done. There's really cool um workflows that you can create with tooling now to both automate a lot of like the manual elements, but then accelerate um your growth as well.

How Traveler Behavior Is Shifting

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Fantastic. Well, I'm gonna come back to you for some of those examples and also for our listeners to some practical use cases for how you can start leveraging agentic tools uh in whatever industry of travel you're in you're in. So I know that the team is keen to share some of those. So uh we'll we'll come back to that as well. But one of the things I want to move on to next, now that everyone has a bit more of an understanding of who you are, what you do, and the companies that you're involved in, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the traveler experience and how traveler behavior is changing. For me, and I think most of our listeners know this, you know, I've always sat at the intersection of technology and marketing. And Michelle and I actually, I think part of the reason that uh we get on so well and often catch up with each other on these things is because I've, as I've said to her and on this podcast before, she's an incredibly strong marketer. And and really strong marketers are actually more rare than you realize. I think most people run companies that try and hire marketing leaders and marketing departments realize actually how challenging that is. So finding someone who's a really strong marketer is difficult enough on its own. Someone that actually understands technology as well is even more rare. And one of the things that I always find is that you need to combine those two because if you get too ahead of the customer experience, the customer journey, thinking that technology is going to solve something, you'll end up disconnected from the consumer. So, how do you make sure you're meeting them where they are today? And so on that note, Michelle, I wanted to bring you back into the discussion to tell us a little bit more about how you're seeing traveler behavior changing with these AI planning tools. And now obviously with agenc booking as an option. But tell us a little bit more about the traveler behavior, what you're seeing changing. And, you know, although it feels so much more effortless to use these tools, some people you definitely hear people saying, you know, they're concerned about using AI because it's not really it's going to be personalized. I still would prefer to use a travel advisor. And obviously, travel advisors still have an important role in our industry today and going forward. But yeah, tell us a little bit about how you're saying consumer behavior changing and how you're factoring that into your messaging.

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Yeah. I think, you know, the biggest thing that um we see is just how comfortable people are in this conversational interface, uh, way more and way faster than I think anybody thought. Uh, and I'll and I'll give you a couple of examples. Like very early on at Mind Trip, we um we knew that people would ask great questions. What we didn't anticipate out the gate was that they were actually gonna ask the bot to make changes for them within the interface itself. So uh as an example, uh, you know, right at the beginning, this is I'm talking about, this is not years ago, not even recently. People would be like, hey, change the time of that restaurant reservation in my itinerary from, you know, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. instead of just dragging it or moving it in the interface. And so I think what we're seeing in traveler behavior is this just adoption where now it's it's almost like infathomable to go back to the way that we used to search and peck and hunt and use filters and because the conversation is so natural. Um, I actually recently felt this myself because we uh internally, like I said, we're about to launch our Mind Trip Flights product. I know you were in our gente playground where we had like hotels and flights as well. So you saw a little bit of it. But I was chatting my way through a complex flight situation. And after I did that, I went to Google Flights just to like check everything. Cause again, this is in testing, right? And all of a sudden it felt old. Like it felt like drop downs and filters. Like I was like, it was weird. It was a very weird experience to see that side by side. So I think some of like what we're seeing with travelers is the comfort level, the amount of information people are sharing. You know, I was looking at um some of our recent chats, and one of them, um, somebody gave us like the ages of everybody traveling and their budget parameters. And like you're seeing people give not just a couple keywords, but like sentences of information so that the information that comes back to them is very personalized. And so I think that's the behavior we're seeing. And now with new technology, there's this opportunity. Brianna talked about this to really dive into the memory side, right? Like, how does how do tools become your personal assistance for everything? How do we get to know you as a traveler better than anybody else? Becomes a big focus point. So for us, it's been fascinating because it's all evolving as a marketer, which was your original question. It's all about how do you position this and make sure that it's very tangible about what the experience is that they can have right now and not get too far ahead of the skis, but at the same time keep up, right? So that's that's always the tricky part, but but it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

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Generative Versus Agentic AI

SPEAKER_02 20:54

And now back to the show. Michelle, one of the things I find really interesting given the stage that we're at as we're having this conversation about agentic AI, many people in the industry are still trying to wrap their head around generative AI and what that's meant for their business. And the simple explanation I always give is that generative AI is great for creating content and agenc is all about taking action on your behalf. And so making that shift between what is essentially a query and just pulling back results to be able to help actually plan your ship, it's a whole other thing for agentic AI to take over and start making decisions on your behalf. And so that's where I wanted to bring Brianna back into the conversation and to help our listeners kind of wrap their head around the difference between generative AI and specifically agentic AI. Not that people have to get overly concerned with that terminology, but when you look at where we are in 2026, a lot of people have discovered agentic AI by virtue of Claude Cowork and the rapid advancements they were making. And now all of a sudden, open AI is quickly catching up again as well. But the race is on for agentic and to create uh agents that will act on your behalf. So tell us a little bit more, Brianna, about how you see that at Travel AI and the projects you're working on and where you see people crossing over from content, generative AI, to agentic AI and how you actually factor in that now the technology is going to make decisions for you. What does that look like? How does that work?

Trust Risks And Grounded Data

SPEAKER_04 22:18

Yeah, I think um I love thinking about this question and especially from a philosophical standpoint as well. I'll start with a simple explanation of how I I recently heard about how someone defined agentic AI. And essentially like an LLM but with hands who can do things autonomously for you, right? So it's you've given an LLM access to tools, whether that's browsing the web or being able to spend money on your behalf or book a flight or send an email. So it has tools and then it can do these things autonomously for you. So it can cycle through loops and then complete a task for you. So that's the crux of it. And that can be done on a schedule can be triggered in different ways but that's the basics. And so um I think for this for agentic ecosystems and tooling and and services to move from where like the travel planning to actually booking will require a great great deal of trust. And that's gonna have to be built incrementally. Recently Karpathi uh talked about this kind of like split between people who tried Chat GPT three years ago in like 2023 and at that point it hallucinated a ton. It was kind of like a Google that made up stuff in a in a way. And so a lot of people lost trust at that point. And so um some of those people don't really see the hype or the capabilities that it has evolved to have now. And a lot of people on the other edge like who are using claud code to build things to making their own like open claw agent workforce that kind of stuff um are on the other end of the spectrum of like seeing what's possible. And so I think like getting the trust of people who are using like the free versions or who aren't seeing the full power of it will be like very critical to get it to like move to that point. So um I think that ideally people like learn to trust it more and more, starting with like the initial planning phase and then being able to hand off more and more hopefully especially of the very like frustrating aspects of travel to it. So that you keep the fun of it and then the agents are able to deal a bit of the logistical issues for you.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

And one of the things I'd like to address up front in our conversation too is some of the risks associated with utilizing agentic AI so that we actually dispel some of the myths or lack of understanding that are holding people back that are still holding people back with generative AI when they're concerned about hallucinations. Actually Christian Watts mentioned in the first episode that so many companies are still reticent to use chatbots because of the one Air Canada example where it quoted pricing wrong and the company had to honor it. But and we've we've evolved so much since then the technology's gotten so much better but people stick to these especially the Luddites out there and I'm yes I'm calling out calling out those people that are going to otherwise hold us back by uh by uh unfortunately bearing their head in the sand in many cases and thinking that this will pass the pat this change will pass them by. And the reality is um they're the one if it it came one of the lines from our first AI summit is that it's not AI that's going to take your job it's the people who know AI are going to take your job. And now that's a pretty well-worn line but the reality is now with agentic AI, people are concerned about what it means for them. And so when you're concerned about what it means for your job, for your livelihood, sometimes you're less likely to embrace it in your workplace. And I've heard examples of that there was a insurance company that came up to me after I was speaking at a conference and I won't name the insurance company but it's a large global insurance company that many of you be familiar with and she was uh uh telling me a lady in the sales side that their marketing team will not use AI at all and they just because they're concerned about losing their jobs and what it's gonna mean for their department. And that was kind of shocking to hear that but it just shows you how people are being held back. So Brianna Michelle I'd love for you to speak to this at first and Brianna since you were obviously making a point along these lines finish off on that. So what are some of the risks that people should be aware of because people say things like it's gonna take my data and learn off my data. And even Christian Watts mentioned the last episode is like it doesn't care about your specific contacts. Like there's not your the the fear that you have about you're gonna give it things and it's gonna take these things away from you it just it gets hyped up. So tell us what are some real legitimate concerns just to be aware of when using agentic AI.

SPEAKER_04 26:20

Yeah yeah I think um yeah that's a good point that you just said there which is uh that like it still needs to be driven. It's a car that needs to be driven, right? So um even if it has all of your information uh I don't think it's autonomously gonna go off and just use it and come up with its own idea. But um I do think some of the risks are um I think that it needs to be grounded in real data. That's like the key is that um if you're a business that has uh availability, um, flight data, real-time data, whatever it might be, providing or making pathways like MCP access to that kind of data so that the agents can use it will allow them to be able to provide factual helpful information. So if they have that then then they'll be able to provide excellent experiences to people. And the more context that agents have, the better they can perform the better more instructions they have, the better that they can perform. I think one of the big risks is uh knowing how to what models to use possibly for an a company that's starting off with this. There's quite a range of models that go from reasoning that can do like more basic things. And so being able to identify which of those is best for the right use case in order to minimize costs as well as to maximize the latency at like to make sure that they're as fast as possible and as helpful as possible in minimizing the cost for for the task at hand. So I think and not letting that run away too quickly. But I think that um trying out different ones for different use cases is is a a good tip. And I think personally some a phrase that I really love when it comes to AI and if you're worried about it with your your team or your business is to sit at the front of the class. This stuff is not going to go away. So if you lean in and you try everything, it's you'll be in a far better position to um leverage it for your job, to help your business, to show your value in a more like accelerated way. And the only way to do that is by playing with these things and understanding like what they can actually do because it's quite a lot now.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah that's great and very empowering and I appreciate you sharing that. Michelle please weigh in on that because I'm sure you have some valuable perspectives to share on overcoming the fear of AI because I'm sure you hear it at every conference and even from some of your partners.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Yeah, I do. I think uh what Brianna said in the beginning about data, it is only as good as the data that you provide it. And you know a lot of the conversations actually right now that I'm having with tourism boards is around just that because for years as marketing professionals we were told like hey if you have a piece of content on your website and it's getting ranked really high in SEO, by all means leave it there. Like that's that's driving traffic and trust. And I think right now, you know, a lot of what people need to be looking at is kind of their own house to make sure that they're not providing their own misinformation because that is a legitimate concern and risk. And so we've actually built some tools for our destination partners where we go through and we index their whole website and we find all the outdated you know references so that they can clean that up. But I do think that that is probably one of the bigger risks. And then the other thing is just not understanding. And to you know again echo Brianna I think you have to get in and use it. And when you start using the tools you can really understand just like the the value. I think until you do lean in it's very, very hard to understand everything that is possible with these tools.

Starter Tools And Practical Setups

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Well and just on this note I think it's probably actually a helpful time for our listeners to share some examples. There's obviously a number of things I want to discuss about how it's impacting the travel industry, where we are and where we're headed. But before we get into that, let's just share a few tools because you mentioned obviously Brianna talking about an LLM with hands with agentic AI. Obviously I mentioned Claude Cowork as a good example only because when I get off stage the number of people that come up to me afterwards and say, my God, I just discovered this a month ago and I hear all these use cases for how people are building board reports or how people are managing all their meetings now and they're all of a sudden they've discovered agentic AI and they actually have an agent working on their behalf that can make them more efficient. And it is truly empowering to the point you were sharing earlier. So what would be putting those risks that you've addressed aside now in terms of embracing agentic AI, what platforms you'd recommend what are the first steps for anyone listening to this that is trying to figure out how do I utilize these tools for myself or my company?

SPEAKER_04 30:51

So um there's such a wide range depending on how comfortable you feel and how much patience you have. So um what's a really good way to start is something like Claude. So using Cloud cohort um is definitely a good example Dan uh you can set up scheduled tasks which is really nice. So you can uh connect it to whatever data sources you have like let's say Slack, your Outlook, your um Jira, whatever it might be, wherever there's information that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, you connect that in there. I would recommend having a a separate one for your business and separate one for your personal so that the the data you're providing doesn't conflict. And then so let's say you've set up your personal one, you've set up all your connections that you need you can set up scheduled tests. So you pretty much say uh I would like you to send me a morning report uh look through my Slack look through my emails flag anything for me that um uh I need to pay attention to I need to do's um and it can do a beautiful job of like summarizing that for you every day so that's a really easy way to start is like have it help you a little bit with your own productivity. And then you can create more complicated things after that. So let's say you want to um have it monitor Slack so that if somebody gives like a product feature request, it can then just automatically create a ticket in Jira or GitHub or whatever it might be for that. That can be automated as well and you can just say tag Claud and Slack and say hey go ahead fix this. So there's a lot of really cool automatic like um optimizations you can do for yourself there. I know OpenAI just came out with their agents like yesterday or the day before so that might also be a really easy way to start you might be able to create like a marketing agent who can help you with PDFs and like pitch decks and stuff like that just from a little like description. And if you want to go on like the more extreme edge um then there's the open source ones or extreme in a a technical way which would be like open claw or Hermes or paperclip. They're all more like open source ones where you can set up agents who um you give a soul, you give uh their identity, you tell them like what tasks you want them to do on what schedule, also giving them access to different things. And those ones can really act like different personalities who can help you in different ways. So there's lots of cool options for your own personal productivity that you can try that way.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Thanks for sharing those very practical tips. And I do want to get into some of those advanced recommendations on the podcast as well because what I found from speaking on this topic at events most people in the audience are high intermediate or low high beginner or low intermediate. They're like the people that have been you know everyone's using these tools but they're not necessarily using them in the best way for prompting and there very few people are you know doing building out custom GPTs there's like it there's a kind of a narrow window where most people are today. And unfortunately as we all know the media is only complicating things by virtue of putting the fear of into people's stock portfolios when they hear this latest version of Claude has been released and all of a sudden it's going to replace law firms and every software as a service model is all of a sudden at risk and you can build an app yourself over a weekend by vibe coding what is vibe coding it's like actually you don't need to be technical anymore to be able to code. You can work with these tools. So these things and that's why I wanted to get some of those practical points and I want to bring you in on this topic Ben which is when we look at some of the practical recommendations that each of you have for how listeners should be embracing agentic AI beyond what Brianna just shared with us. What would be some of your recommendations from your experience at Maya for the platform people should use and how they should get started on this journey?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

Yeah what we uh usually use very often at Maya to to to build some quick app it's lovable. Actually we we it's very uh it's very user friendly and very uh easy to use right so you just have to log in on the platform and by a simple prompt you can already have a really good start uh to have like a cool feature or something you want to test on the market. And it's very easy to link right to your own website and your own business. It's quite straightforward.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

So for example to give you a concrete example we we create an ARI calculator but we use lovable right uh because it's uh it's something very uh straightforward and uh easy to build uh but what I suggest also my I mean it's more for the uh notion uh user so there is notion ai uh which is uh which is connected with uh actually all your uh different uh communication channel uh might be your email might be your Slack uh but other two and that's very also powerful because I mean uh for us for example we store lots of uh data in Notion so it has access to uh um a lot of different uh data entry so it can give you like very uh nice uh summary of what you have uh talked for example with a client or whatever uh so it's very uh it's very um it's very yeah it's very strong it's very useful because you can um as Brianna said also you can send uh notification through Slack or directly link it to your email it can draft you uh different uh different uh emails so it's very useful and we use it a lot so I highly recommend it uh to use those two tools fantastic notion and lovable just to underscore that for all of our listeners I couldn't I couldn't agree more notion AI yes awesome thank you Ben Michelle jump in here I yeah I think it's interesting so yes to everything actually every tool and everything that Brianna and Ben said I'm like yep we do that yep we do that um uh we have in the on the UF side we've moved from doing uh just mock-ups and Figma to actually building out full prototypes of the experience and then handing that over to the engineers and those are being built in lovable so everything that Ben is saying but it has shifted like from a product or user experience standpoint everybody into these moments where now we can actually build and show instead of just mock up and and write requirements, right? So it's just streamlined that whole process. But I think the thing I would point out as a real world example is something I literally just saw this morning. We built uh into Slack a customer support agent. And so now anybody in the company who has a question, it's plugged into all sorts of things like our amplitude for all of our analytics and HubSpot, you know, for information about our our partners and basically you can ask any question to our CS agent and it will pull back everything that it knows. And so it's just made it so easy to access information quickly like health score of a particular partner or you know data points or like this morning I was actually asking for which partners would be a good case study and it pulled back not only which ones but why and here are the data points. And so it's just an incredible efficiency gain.

Real Travel Use Cases And API Speed

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think now with our listeners as we bring it back to travel and these use cases because as you've outlined now everyone having a better understanding of the technology that's available to them and looking at those systems, clearly there's going to be benefit to them just in their own personal lives because they're going to realize all the ways they can utilize these tools. But when it comes to actually applying it to travel, I want to get a better gauge of where we are and where we're headed by virtue of having access to this technology. And one thing I'll just share and then I'm keen to get each of your take on where you're seeing it have the most benefit and where you think we're headed. One of the challenges has been building out APIs between travel brands, application interfaces to allow partners to talk to each other. And I would find myself in my role as the chief digital officer for a large global travel company being on the back of a six month waiting list for online travel agencies to integrate our product because they had too many other APIs ahead of us that and they couldn't prioritize it. And now all of a sudden APIs can be built instantaneously using these tools and it's no longer of who's going to do the work. Are you going to do are we going to write to your API or are you going to write to our API and like and the testing and everything that goes involved in that this is one example of just a massive breakthrough and what it means for our industry to speed things up. And the so Brianna with travel AI and what you guys have been building what have you seen as like the immediate most beneficial use cases of applying this technology to the travel industry and the and the consumer journey.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

I think that um one thing that we're spending a lot of time on at the moment is is the memory, like persistent memory. So we've been exploring different ways to try and see how we can best be able to allow for that personal context and like nuance of the person's trip between brands. So um we have a couple different uh different projects that we're working on related to this which are both very exciting. One is more of a vector based system. So how do you share a vector about a user between sites or brands and allow for that personalization to carry through so that um it's not a frustrating experience for the user and that they're having to re-enter all of the the um the different like filters that they have going through between sites and that they're not starting from that cold start uh point every time that they're starting more from like a warm start. And that's just an initial like first step towards it. The the ideal state is that the whole person's nuanced travel memory can be passed between all of the different participants in the ecosystem so that an airline can know that um this person prefers business class when they travel for business when they and they prefer this airline when they're traveling from the United States to Europe. And it can contain like this very rich profile about a person and that's what we're really focused on. We think that there's like a huge opportunity there from the infrastructure perspective to help power that's great.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

And um Ben, on the same topic, you know, when we went through the pandemic and people were shopping on Amazon, that was a big change in terms of people embracing technology and companies like Shopify really took off because they were essentially offering the same functionality and a consistent user experience for all of these stores that people had become familiar with by purchasing on Amazon. And now like to Brianna's example, as travel brands are embracing this technology, it becomes table stakes that people now go to travel brands and they expect to either have a chat bot or they expect them to utilize these tools to make their experience better. What are some of those examples and the one thing I'd love for you to call out too Ben in this is because what I see as a big advantage with the Gentec AI is a lot of smaller businesses can all of a sudden punch above their weight. You know, they don't have a marketing team or they have one person in their marketing team now that it feels like they can have a full-fledged marketing team. They can, you know, they might have one or two developers that get empowered by this. The entire business can really compete at a higher level and I know you work with some companies like Kingfisher Tours and some of these smaller travel brands that all of a sudden you're gonna give them access to tools that can really help them scale. So what would be some of the examples from your point of view of how this technology is being implemented?

SPEAKER_00 41:56

But we have concrete examples with the existing client I cannot say the client when we started working with them it's been two years now so they were a team of 10 people and they were having having around five million revenue but since they start uh implementing AI so with concrete things like uh a bot on their website helping having someone 24-7 answering questions in multiple languages internal flow automate with the the full communication flow uh automate with email also internal communication automate like in between the uh the the travel agents um they see uh so they increase actually their revenue by four but the team size stays the same right uh because they understood that uh using this technology and automating uh those processes are key today and they did uh before I would say their their competition so they they have a competitive advantage also already now uh which is I mean which is crazy when you see because when you think about it uh two three years ago uh if you have taught some someone I think even you uh that it was possible you are saying oh you're crazy that's impossible uh that's not something we can do so and when you see the technology evolving and moving so fast today with the current tool that we have I think that's uh that's very important I think for all the travel brands to to to to adapt this technology and to make sure that uh it's uh it's live on their business because the impact is real and I mean uh everybody speaks about shift uh there is a shift happened but the shift to me the shift already happened uh and it's it's now that we have to move right so and that's now that you see that the the big difference between the company using those tools and the company that are not yeah I know you're absolutely right and Ben the one shift that we have definitely seen and it has been it we have shifted to how people search for travel we've seen over the last few years but it's really accelerated in the last six months is that there was no question about are people using these tools are overwhelmingly using AI tools for their travel planning, despite what some people may want to believe or think, overwhelmingly they're using it.

SPEAKER_02 43:59

But we have Haven't seen yet quite the impact on, say, Google's results because people are still also using search engines and they're still clicking through those ads because they're doing their research, but then they're still using some of those traditional tools. I think that is going to change in the next six months, let's say, through 2026 going into 2027. And Michelle, on that note, one of the things I wanted to ask you specifically on this conversation is that given you built out Mind Trip as a travel planning tool, then started working with all of these DMOs and have had great success in that category, you've been obviously empowering them to have this as a AI planning tool on their DMO websites that then obviously increases the likelihood that people are going to visit, they're going to plan out custom trips. And uh, but one of the things that's changed as we've been to Ben's point about the shift that's happened is that the consumer journey has now changed by virtue of having access to those tools. And so one of the things that a lot of travel brands are trying to figure out is that they've lost this search traffic that they used to rely on, and now they're wondering how they get into this generative engine optimization space or AI SEO. I mean, there's a few different ways to phrase this, but so many companies are panicking that they've lost SEO traffic and they're trying to figure out how they get optimized to be a part of these LLMs. And it's one of the things I know you and I have spoken about because any DMO that's worked successfully with uh Mindtrip to implement their platform has gone on an incredible learning journey at the same time to figure out how do they optimize all of their content. Like visit California with like 30 million pieces of content. How do we make sure that that's indexable by LLMs? And so that's a huge competitive advantage for companies that are actually on that journey or have been on that journey working with a company like Mindtrip. So tell us a bit more about how you see that impact, uh, where we are today and where you think that's headed.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

Yeah, happy to. So I, you know, first of all, I think what has been such a shift for tourism boards and dust station marketing organizations that have put this generative AI kind of planning tool on their website is they now have this listening layer. So for the first time, you know, typically marketers have to do like surveys or big market research rewards in order to understand what people actually are looking for from them. And we've now shifted into this world where we actually have access in real time to exactly what they're asking from us, right? So now the, you know, any business actually that has this type of capability has all this rich information about what people are asking for, that really if they're asking it with you, they're asking it everywhere else. And so I think we're shifting into a space where uh it's about mining those conversations. And we're actually working on some products for that part of our business that will help them go take it a step further. So beyond mining the conversations, how do we prep content? Because that's what they really need, right? Instead of evergreen content, they actually need the content that is answering the questions that are coming in. Uh, and so it's how do you get that information so those answers are readily available for those large language models? So that's that's where we are now. Um, but what I did want to add on, and it affects um both what we're doing with our destination partners and also on the consumer side, is I think what we are now all exploring and talking about with Agentica AI is moving into this world where we're going from just the conversations and recommendations to how do we help travelers make decisions? And so we actually are really invested in becoming that decision layer because I think that is what things like mind trip flights and mind trip hotels, like this is where things will get really interesting for the traveler, wherever they are, whoever we are partnered with, kind of like what Brianna said, like how do you power the ecosystem in this way? Uh, because that's the hard part. The hard part and the complex part is is making the decision. It isn't getting inspired and seeing, you know, millions of different content. And it's also really at the end of the day, not the booking. The booking piece is sort of the last leg and yes, we have to, you know, go and and and do that, but the decision I have to make, which flight, which hotel, which experiences am I going to book, that's really where I think the rubber meets the road. And so I think you'll see, you know, everybody really focusing on how do we get from inspiration to actual decision so that I can make that booking. So I think that that decision layer uh also combined with, you know, this idea of having a trip brain or personal assistant that knows you, that can be compounding over time so you don't have to start again. Those are things that we're exploring in our consumer side, but everything we do on the consumer side flows to our ecosystem.

Sponsor Break

SPEAKER_01 48:45

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What Breaks Through Next In Travel

SPEAKER_02 51:16

And now back to the show. One of the things I want to shift our conversation to is where we're headed from here. So I think we've hopefully given our listeners a really good idea of where we are in terms of agentic AI and some of the experiences that are uh being impacted by virtue of this technology. But in terms of where we're headed, I gave the one example with APIs. All of a sudden, that's a great breakthrough. And Ben, you know, companies like Tor Radar and Travis, who runs Tor Radar, you know, they're trying to re-envision their entire business in the face of agentic AI and they're running hackathons with their teams. They're encouraging everyone in their business to re-evaluate their role in virtue of this technology. And, you know, that isn't unique to Tor Radar themselves. Any progressive organization today is kind of ends up many ways putting hiring on hold and figuring out what does this mean for all of our roles and how do we change our roles with uh this technology in mind. So one of the things I wanted to ask you, Ben, is when we think about what's going to be cracked next in travel, what are the things that have been so challenging to date that you think we're going to see all of a sudden breakthroughs in? And also, too, if you wouldn't mind sharing where you think we won't. Like I'll give a quick example there, too. You know, I saw a great example at ITB where you could use an agentic tool to use voice to be able to book a flight in 30 seconds. And I was wowed by it, but my mind was like, how far, how long is it actually going to take until most people are doing that? It's a cool feature and it's a great demo and it has wow factor. But the reality is a lot of people are still going to Expedia and looking and going through this pretty antiquated process that is very time consuming to be able to book a flight. Some of those things, we may have the technology there, but the customer's not ready for it. So, where do you think the breakthroughs are going to happen and what do you think is going to have the most commercial success?

SPEAKER_00 52:56

But one thing uh I think is not gonna break at uh to to start, it's uh the people on the ground, right? So because we we in the travel industry we still need this human touch. I think it's important to still have uh those humans uh taking part of the journey in travel because at the end of the day it's people traveling and uh the travel is I mean, people want to meet people, they don't want to meet AI, right? But where uh AI is uh it's uh it's it's it's gonna be very helpful indeed. It's on the full journey, which we have been said saying at the uh since the beginning of this podcast. I think it's the that's where the the the the the change is happening, it's gonna it's it's it's it's cracking, right? Um but the experience uh shared by the human you meet during the trip, it's not gonna change, right? Uh the passionate guy that you mean who share uh I don't know this mom recipe or whatever, I mean that's something that uh that that can break through, right? Uh that cannot change, but uh I AI will never replace that. So I think the company that wins today, that the ones I double down on that also. But AI and the and the people that use AI actually to free their time uh from uh repetitive admin task that's uh um that is needed by the human uh uh in order to uh to free up some time and to take care of uh their their own traveler. I think that's the key, right? Because I mean everybody, I think AI is a game changer, right? I mean, that's what we said since uh since day one, since since uh we everybody discovered AI. But I think at the end of the day, also the human part is uh is important too. Uh and the company needs to keep focusing on that because we see lots of uh change, uh AI, etc. etc. But indeed uh the use of A, the way you use AI uh is gonna be a game changer because uh you can uh you can of course have multiple things uh done by AI, but at the end that doesn't have an impact on your business, right? So I think using it the right way is the most important.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

And one more thing uh to ask you along these lines that I'm keen to get Brianna and Michelle's take on this as well, is that you know when we think about all these use cases, and I'll give our listeners one other example. I was speaking to Christian Walters who runs Intrepid, and he was telling me he had just come back from a trip, and we were talking about the destinations, what's selling and what's not. And he was highlighting some of the challenges with seasonality. And uh the exact example we were talking about is if you've got some last-minute tours that you want to sell, currently your system will notify you or you'll be aware of a report. You'll then need to tell your digital marketing team that you're keen to sell these trips. They'll need to go into their AdWords campaigns and rework. And so it just shows you this is how most companies still operate today and have. And so now in the face of this technology, you all of a sudden have the ability to use systems that are can be much better integrated. You know, Brianna using the example of OpenClaw. Some people are not comfortable giving these tools access to their email, access to their files. But the reality is once you do that, all of a sudden you're gonna untap opportunities so that that issue, you wouldn't even need it to have been alerted yourself, talk to someone, have someone change systems. You could have had the integration set up. So as soon as you have product that you know you want to promote and sell and you've trained the system that way, it would automatically shift marketing resources and spend to fill up those trips. That could be something that's totally automated. So, Ben, on that note, given where Maya's headed, are there any examples along those lines to share with the tools you're implementing? Because I'm sure it's the case with Travel AI and uh, you know, Michelle was just mentioning a development from earlier today. Like every week and every month, your platforms are changing, have the opportunity to advance considerably by solving all these new problems that you crack and then you can offer to your clients. So, is there anything else you'd like to share with us from that vantage point?

SPEAKER_00 56:35

Uh yes, of course. I mean, you we see the technology evolve a lot. Uh, and it's interesting that you raised this point because we see it with the the client who started with us uh three years ago, for example, they had some specific needs. Uh and we were saying them, oh, it's not possible. Uh but now we, as the technology evolves uh and as the the new technology arrive, we just come back to our clients and say, Okay, you remember we talk about this. Uh now it's possible, now we can do it. Um and it's going so fast that it's getting crazy. But uh, I mean it's passion, it's passionating to see that and to see that that that kind of revolution uh made by AI, right? And um I think also that uh the company that now that are moving just um uh by for example just implementing a chatbot on their website, uh they see an impact, but moving with the technology and moving faster with what's coming to us will also allow them to uh to to to to to increase and to and to be a better, I would say, travel company thanks to AI. Uh we see it, for example, on reading the the the PDF, for example, that's a concrete example. The way we see the the the AI is capable of reading a PDF today six months ago. I mean it's crazy, right? Uh six months ago that was a bit more complicated with the technology, but now we see that all those new tools, all those new features include, etc. etc. open cloud. I mean, that's uh that's insane. And I think we're in a in a in a in a in a in a way of of of the of the humanity, I can say that's of we see things moving very fast uh that none other generation seen with AI today. Uh so that's something also we need to to be aware of and to uh and to adapt also the way we work and to and do business uh overall, but in the travel industry too.

SPEAKER_02 58:27

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Six months ago, AI couldn't draw a hand, and people were doing very basic versions of creating images, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden you can take a screenshot of a website and it can create a mock-up of a whole new business for you and build a lovable website, but but even solve the problem rather than rather than prompting in the question, you can take a screenshot and ask your preferred platform to help you understand what's going on and how to fix it, because it can actually read images. Like it's yeah, so so Brianna, on that note of big breakthroughs, I know you're also very focused on this at Travel AI. What would be some of those examples that you might like to share of as far as where we're headed in some of those things that were difficult to crack that you're now able to, and where you see some of this real potential being unleashed?

SPEAKER_04 59:07

Um I think uh to the points we've been talking about now is that the interconnectivity and making sure that data is available across um different platforms, across different providers, across different interfaces is like critical. So um we've been playing with different voice options, with different chat interfaces, making a lot of proof of concepts around how we want to surface information and build traveler profiles. So I think there's been a lot of experimentation on the price side. But um, what I think is really interesting is that um making sure that your data is like very interconnected so that regardless of what the future holds, nobody knows exactly what the interfaces that are gonna be dominant in the future are gonna be. Right now, there's like kind of this transition towards the LLM like chat interfaces, but in the future maybe there's audio like her interfaces that are dominant. Or there could be like um some glasses-based interfaces. Um it could even be that people are spinning up their own like personal travel apps on the go, like using Level or Replet. You're walking around, you're like, Oh, I want a little like uh walking tour app for Japan. I like this, this, this, and then it spins one up for you in like a couple minutes. So I think what you can do, which will be really important, is to just make sure that no matter what that interface looks like, your data is accessible and power, like able to power these experiences. Um, I think that that's really uh something that we're we're focused on as well.

Data, Intelligence, And Hidden Knowledge

SPEAKER_02 1:00:38

I'm so you I'm so glad you brought up data and intelligence, because that's actually one of the other questions I wanted to ask you. And I just have a couple more. I know we've covered a lot, but I I do want to make sure we touch on data and intelligence. And Michelle, to get your take on this, because you know, from our conversations about, you know, are websites going to be relevant in the future? It's one of the things that has come up on these conversations. And if all of and if websites are no longer for humans and they're all of a sudden designed for uh LLMs to gather information for on a consumer's behalf, uh, all of a sudden now we're now designing websites for AI agents. And that's a whole other journey that we need to be mindful and aware of. So a lot of that's based on data. And so you can now actually see if it's a consumer or if understanding how much LLM traffic you're getting. So tell us a little bit more about data and intelligence in this world of agentic AI, how you're seeing that at Mind Trip, how that's benefiting some of your clients. And when Ben talks about chat, you know, using keyword chat on a website before, you used to be able to see what people couldn't find, like insurance. Couldn't you know everyone was using you know site-wide search to figure out where insurance was on the website? It was one of the most t common typed-in phrases. And then you had to decide, okay, now we need to put it in the top navigation or make sure it's in all of our process flows. But what but now we're seeing something much more powerful. So tell us a little bit about the data side of this and how that's being uh how that's being applied by your customers once they have that knowledge.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:54

Yeah. I I think what we really are seeing is that all of the learnings that we're having, not only are you getting this rich information and context as to what people are searching, what people are asking, uh, but you can now really index all of that information uh and use that to personalize the experience for them. And I think that's where everything is headed. So it's not just a one and done, you know, I had a conversation and I'm out, but uh every conversation builds on itself and you can hook it up to all sorts of systems. You could hook it up to your Google Calendar, you could hook it up, right? So they can see all your past trips. Um, and I think really in the end, all of that data about who you are as an individual traveler is going to be useful regardless of where you are. So if we, you know, over time can, as you know, different companies gather as much of this information as possible to help the traveler really have that very personalized experience wherever they are, then I think that's really, when I think about like who's gonna, you know, win in the end of this, it's gonna be the person that knows the traveler the best. So when it comes to data, it's got to be that we're ingesting this information, that the traveler trusts us to ingest this information so that we can personalize everything in their experience just to make it easy for them to make that decision in the end, whether it is on, you know, a website or, you know, whatever, like Brianna said, wherever it ends up, right? Whatever platform they're on, they can leverage this. And honestly, I think there's constantly a conversation about who's gonna own that. And, you know, we believe at Mind Trip that travel is such a unique experience. There's so many unique components that the person's gonna collect that is going to be in this in this industry because of all of the different details you need to know: loyalty, who they travel with, right? Where where they booked before, how where they like to fly, what airport they like to fly out of. Like all of these things are data points on the traveler that are just gonna make the recommendations that come back for them to make good decisions better and better over time.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

And I if if if I just may add something on data, yeah, sorry, uh, because it's very interesting what you said, Michelle. And I just want to uh also bring this uh operator operator's view because on our on our hands, so what we see when we start working with uh operators is that they sit on data and they just don't know it. Because uh to give a concrete example, we we we managed to to take data from a client since 2000, right? So I mean it's it's it's it's crazy the amount of data they have, but they don't even know it. And when you make it available using AI, right, they said usually, oh yes, I remember I have this, but I forgot. And so I'm not selling this trip, for example. And it's very useful also internally for uh the the travel agent that can reuse this data and that they thought that it was lost, but at the end it they just sat on it, and as they don't have they didn't have the possibility to to uh to see it. Uh I mean now they're reusing it and we see an impact uh with with the data. So I think it's uh this is uh this is also key and this is very interesting to see uh on multiple operator just at least.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:18

A thousand percent. By the way, it it applies to hotels and other businesses as well. Uh fun fact, I heard that uh most hotels have an internal document for their employees called random hotel information. And it's like a PDF or a Google document, or I don't know what it sits in various forms. But it's what I'm saying is it's not digitized. It's not anywhere on the internet for anybody to grab, but it's where the most important information sits. Like things like for me, does the gym in this hotel have a Peloton? Like it doesn't sit on their website unless it's in a picture, it sits in this other document. And so ingesting all that stuff that is in people's heads, like you said, Ben, and being able to upload those. PDFs and access that. I think that is another way that data, not consumer data, but like the business data gets applied in this new environment. So they that has to happen.

What Stays Human In The Journey

SPEAKER_02 1:06:11

Yep. I agree. That's great. No. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, Michelle. That's exactly the topic I wanted to uh discuss, which was how they any of these operators can use data that they already have that they may not even realize. So, Michelle, obviously your point is valid there. That there are there's all these examples of use cases where that are still untapped. And so there's there's two final questions I want to ask each of you, though. Um, because I've I've I'm so so thoroughly enjoying this conversation. I now has given me further validation why we need to do this series and continue this important topic. And you know, this is episode two of a three-part series that we you know we will be continuing for sure. And then obviously we're gonna have our summit later this year. But one of the things I'm keen to get each of your take on, and I'm gonna go to Michelle first because I know Michelle, you have to drop off, and I want to make sure everyone has time to answer both of these questions. There's as much details you'd like to provide because I think they're both very important to leave our listeners with. So, Michelle, the first part is what excites you most about agentic AI and where we're headed. Like what are the use cases in particular that you think as a traveler that you see the most benefit and value from? So that and then this the flip side of that is what part of the traveler journey do you strongly feel needs to remain human? I have my views on this, but I'm really keen to get your but your each of your take on this. So, yeah, Michelle, I'd love for you to answer those questions for our listeners.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

Yeah, I think the first, like, where is uh what am I most excited about and where are things headed? I think this idea that uh I can give a lot of deep details on something that's very complex, right, as to what my requirements are for my travels and have the agents help me make good decisions on that. Uh, you know, give me back the off almost like an executive assistant would if anybody's done that, right? Where they're like, I know you better than anybody. So even though you didn't say that you want to make sure you never take a red eye, I already know that. So here are the three best options for you. Uh, that is where I'm most excited because I don't think it's going to be an immediate, like, I'm gonna give you recommendations and book it without you ever being involved. I think what we really are talking about is how do we help the consumer, the traveler, at the end of the day, make the best decision for them with uh weighing through instead of hundreds of options, like the select few that really meet their criteria. So I'm excited about that. Uh, I'm very excited about this idea of building out a compounding travel identity that feeds that decision layer, right? So, how do we know you better than anybody else when it comes to travel? So that uh what is coming back is, like I said, that executive assistant who knows, you know, that uh you want to make sure before you leave that you have enough time in the morning to be with your kids, right? So those types of like nuanced details that really matter. Um, that's kind of the first piece. And then you asked about human connection. Uh, and I actually do think this is super important because uh, and and even how I travel and what I look for, I think taste making is very human. In addition to just the human connection while you're on your trip, I think we do still need that element of whether it's social proof or something in the mix. Like it can't just be like here are the three best options. And now I'm stuck with like, I still don't know which one. Like they all sound good, right? I I do need that, whether it is from, you know, a friend or family member or somebody that I feel uh very deeply connected to that has traveled there before. So I do think it is how do we combine human and the AI. I think uh, as you know, Dan, we we have a uh community of travelers on our platform. And we have about 40,000 human-curated travel guides. And so we're constantly figuring out how do we infuse that human knowledge about a destination or a place with the AI. So that I think is a really big deal. But all of this is intended to make us more efficient, have it be more seamless, more personalized, more intentional so that we are freed up to spend time with other humans in the end. So I think that's something we don't want to lose context around.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:24

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for making the time for this conversation today, Michelle. It was great to have you join us. Uh I look forward to catching up again soon. And I'm gonna get everyone's else take, but I'll we'll let you sign off and we'll look forward to keeping in touch. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:36

Okay, thank you. Thank you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

And next, I would like to go to Brianna, and I'm gonna give Ben the last word on this one before we sign off. But Brianna, given those two highlights that Michelle has shared, and clearly there's been a lot of commonality between the two of you on our discussion today, I'm really keen to get your take on this as far as where you're most excited about the tools you're working on. And I'm saying that as a traveler, to know that this is now gonna be available to you. Um, and then what you think is the the human touch, you know, can't replace.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:06

Yeah. I think that um very similar to Michelle, like I'm excited about the creation of this kind of very nuanced travel memory profile of me or any person, which contains just this really rich profile about you, all of your preferences, all of the different personas you can have. Because as you know, like um there are many different ways that you might want to travel. If you're traveling by yourself for business, there might be certain preferences you have. If you're traveling with your husband, wife partner, then you may have other preferences on a romantic trip. If you're traveling with uh a group of kids for like a basketball tournament, you might have different preferences. And so ideally that profile uh contains all of that nuance about who you are and how you like things to be. And then because there's it's so early to know who the winners of what the platforms are gonna be, which LLM you're gonna like the best, and there's many different uh operators that people use to book. They might like book directly on the airline, they might book uh their hotel on booking or Expedia. Um, there's many different touch points, and ideally that profile that you've built this one time where you don't have to repeat yourself and it contains really rich information about you can be used by all these parties to give you the best possible experience. I think that that creating that like memory and then a very um intelligent agent who can leverage it to the best of their ability what on no matter what site they're on. I think that that uh is something that I'm really, really excited for. And I think the other part is that eventually I would love that the agentic systems take away all the stress and the um unenjoyable parts of planning travel. So let's say that there's a cancellation. Ideally, your agent can uh get notified about this um rather than spending three hours in the queue at the airport uh to figure out what hotel you've been assigned to and what bus you're gonna be taking to the other side of London, that that is all handled for you. You get a message on WhatsApp, it's like you've been booked here, we've notified your hotel in Paris that you're gonna be a day late, XYZ, and then all of the kind of like logistical parts are taken off of your hands. Um, so that the human part, the side that you get to keep is uh the enjoyment of the travel, that the discovery, the anticipation, the uh all of the kind of like time leading up to it, the actual enjoyment of being on the trip, um, and then the social and the senses and all of that. So I think that hopefully the enjoyment stays with the humans and the stressors go to the agents.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:42

Yeah, that's a great way to summarize it. And I yeah, I I I I I do, and I clearly Ben feels the same way. I sincerely hope that's exactly the way it plays out. Yeah. Awesome, Brianna. Well, I I I just want to say a special thanks to you for joining us today. You certainly brought many valuable insights, and I really appreciate making time for this. And I certainly look forward to continuing to have collaborations, obviously, with Travel AI and keeping you part of the conversation. Obviously, it would be great to have you at our event later this year because I'm sure you can add a lot more to and and we'll see what the world looks like in October of 2026 with some of these relationships you've shared. Yeah, yeah. But thank you again for joining us and I look forward to keeping in touch.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:21

Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:23

Awesome. And Bob keen to bring this home with you because obviously, you know, you're such a key part of this industry and also the the conversations we're having here. And so I'm keen to get your take on those two questions. Well, where do you think you know the biggest benefit is going to be, and where do you think the human touch is still?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:39

Yeah. Yeah, most of all to be honest, uh I love your answer. It made me uh it made me smile. So I align with you. But uh I mean, right now we we talk about uh AI as a f as a feature, I think, but in five years we won't talk about it at all, I think. Uh the same way uh nobody talks about uh having a website anymore, right? Today you don't say I have a I mean you say I have a website, but yeah, you don't you win for me you won't say uh with AI uh uh uh I have an AI, I have Asian, it's will it will become very common, so I think the companies um I think the winning companies won't be the one uh with the best AI either. I'm not sure about that. I think the one will the the one in in travel uh will be the best uh uh with human, right? Uh with the human touch, feed by AI. Uh, because I think today uh I mean that's part of the discussion we have, but everyone is racing to automate the trip, automate everything. But the real race I think is automatic uh everything around the trip so the human can focus on what's uh actually make the traveler come back, right? So the repeat, and that's that's the key part of the business, I think. So I think that that's that's a bit the vision we have uh at Maya.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:52

That's exciting. And I guess that one. Yeah, by all means, Brianna, yeah, please.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:56

Yeah, no, what I what I love to just to extend on what you said, Ben, is let's say that there is this like personalization layer that can go all the way from like your initial booking all the way to the end hotel. They can add like a little bit of like magic for you if they know like very nuanced, like I you know that this person is on their honeymoon without them telling you, and that you can give them like their favorite wine or their favorite glass of wine on arrival. So there's if you have like this personalization that's the whole way through, then it can really give like really wonderful experiences and like help elevate the end human enjoyment.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:29

It's key. Yes, I agree.

Final Thanks And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_02 1:16:30

Yes. That's a great example for all of our hospitality listeners to pick up on. And this is where you know it opens up so many different opportunities. And so like that's why this conversation definitely has to be continued. And uh, but I just wanted to say thank you again, Brianna, for joining, and thank you, Ben, for being an important part of this. Obviously, I was so looking forward to this conversation. And I just want to also acknowledge all of our listeners for joining us. So thank you for joining episode two of our three-part series as we look at agentic AI and its impact on travel. Special thanks, of course, to Ben as well for joining us and sponsoring this series. Maya, for those of you who uh still need a little bit more detail, I want to make sure that you do know that it is the AI agent for travel companies. That's the most important thing to know. Automating conversations, supporting internal teams, personalizing engagement at scale, and helping you convert more travelers. So to learn more, definitely check out MayaTravel.ai, M-A-Y-A-Travel.ai. And we are going to continue this conversation next week with three AI startups that I'm really keen to introduce you to. So make sure you are subscribed on the streaming platform of your choice to be notified when new episodes go live. And don't forget, we do post clips and highlights on all our social channels, which you can find on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Travel Trends Podcast. Until next week, safe travels.