AI transforms influencers into marketing AND sales.
For many years now brands have been doing paid collaborations with travel influencers to boost their visibility in the market.
If done through organic posting only then this is essentially a 3-9 day campaign of brand building before the post disappears from being shown in the feeds of social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok.
The things you can measure from this are “reach” or how many people saw the post (which is far from guaranteed and a source of much consternation between brands and creators. Ultimately the platforms control how much anything gets seen and the creators have no control over this. Remember the platform’s business model is get you to pay for advertising!); and “engagement” or how many people interacted with the post.
The ultimate goal is to lift overall brand search further down the line and see more people typing your brand name into Google or coming directly to your URL over time. In short you know whether it worked effectively by doing YoY comparison.
Now however it possible to extend the life of these campaigns indefinitely and measure them through sales.
This is what Videreo has been built to solve. Now you run your campaign exactly as written above except you also make one of the deliverables of the paid collaboration that the influencer puts the campaign video into their Videreo store for their followers to find when searching right here on the social media platform.
Videreo attaches the brand product to the video and positions it on a searchable map. To keep earning more money beyond the paid collaboration, the influencer points their audience to search here as core call-to-action in their posts.
And all of this is measurable in terms of hard sales. Your Return on Influencer Spend (ROIS) now has a hard metric to show its effectiveness. In your next campaign you can then choose those who have provided the payback on your investment and avoid those who didn’t, making the system self-sustainable.
Check out more here to join brands already being sold his way like Contiki, G Adventures & Globus.
This content is provided by the newsletter sponsor Videreo.com
Kayak predicts AI agents by 2030 whilst OpenAI drops agents today with its AI Operator?
Sometimes it is best to under promise and overdeliver.
Not sure if that was what Kayak had in mind with their latest prediction from their WTF (What the Future – not that other word you smutty people) report but that is what they’ve delivered up.
“By 2030, virtual AI Assistants will handle a variety of travel arrangements, offering tailored trips and securing the best deals effortlessly,” Kayak said
That seems a long way off in this fast-moving world of AI.
As we reported here previously, OpenAI are aiming for post AGI Super Intelligence by then. In fact they dropped this video this morning of AI agents making bookings in travel… (H/T to Jason Norhona who alerted the Slack group – the best way to know what is happening, as it is happening in travel + AI – see more below). In the demo, they use the Kayak owned OpenTable to make a booking at a restaurant…..
“The next big step forward will be automated bookings, and we’re already making Kayak AI agent-friendly,” said Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak. This comment suggests they are waiting on others to deliver the underlying capabilities and perhaps they just don’t trust in others to deliver….
Actually the whole reporting seems confused. Surely Hafner knew this demo was coming out?
Operator is now live to OpenAI Pro users in the US. Tell us in the comments what you think if you give it a go.
Grindr gets in on AI & Travel
Maybe the folks at Grindr are trying to muscle in on some the SEO firepower of other brands that are winning the keyword war of “AI & Travel” but whatever the reason, this was what they announced this week.
On the travel front Grindr is now showing users a view of highest concentrations of use of the app within city neighborhoods to help the community find each other when travelling or choose the best neighborhood to stay in.
On the AI front they have introduced an “AI wingman” to “create summaries of conversations so users can quickly access the history of their chats with the most relevant information and pick up where they left off.”
Travellers will also have a “Visitor” badge on their profile when travelling and translation support to keep the conversation going.
In the hotel industry, 2025 is the year of AI. Or maybe 2026…
Hotel News Resource this week released numbers of its study into AI adoption this week.
“61% believe the technology’s impact on the sector will be this year, while 39% are more hesitant and believe it will not make an impact for two years or more.”
Presumably that 61% has already allocated budget for 2025, which makes this a pretty exciting year for those selling AI tools into the industry. Top use cases identified in the article were “automating manual tasks, predicting guest preferences, and providing personalized experiences, AI can significantly enhance hotel customer service and operational efficiency.”
If that is you and you want to reach them, check out the Everything AI in Travel marketplace for your product.
Using AI to help with your SEO
If you are not in the camp that “SEO is Dead!” then a great practical article this week in Tahnee Perry’s LinkedIn could be very helpful to you.
Perry identifies a few key ways that AI can help save you time and improve our thoroughness in technical SEO tasks.
1️⃣ Choose the Right Source Material Start with high-quality, human-written content to maintain your brand voice and credibility. 2️⃣ Optimize with AI—but Review Manually AI handles the drafts; you handle the finishing touches (like visuals and internal links). 3️⃣ Refine the Details Let AI tackle slugs, meta descriptions, and alt text, freeing up your time for big-picture strategy. The result: Higher visibility without sacrificing authenticity.
If you want to know more about SEO, AI and the Travel industry then you need to hear the absolute masterclass that Kevin Indig dropped on the podcast this week. Christian Watts gave it this ringing endorsement: “Normally I get irritated with people talking about agents – but this conversation was great.” And no-one talks more about AI agents in travel than Christian!
Apple scraps AI summaries after BBC complaint
This seemed very lightly reported this week given the potential gravity of the outcome but it seems Apple has dropped its AI summary service because “it produces too many brand-damaging (both Apple’s and the services they summarise, like the BBC who complained) failures.”
Hmmm. Now you’d think Apple would be using pretty good AI. This seems like a problem that most others figured out mid 2023.
Or we are all just blindly believing the summarised material we are thrown up without question……
Gmail has just released the ability to hit a button to summarise every email. So if there is a general problem with summaries expect mass confusion to reign everywhere. The productivity gained from not reading the whole email might be outweighed by the productivity lost by not doing half the things the email said you needed to do?
Under-reported AI horror story number two this week was that apparently Microsoft is training its models off EVERYTHING YOU TYPE INTO A WORD DOC.
I just can’t fathom how this could possibly be the case given its potential to destroy every single enterprise relationship Microsoft has – but Hugh Stephens lays out the evidence in his blog and it is probably worth just double checking with your Microsoft rep?
If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:
Marketplace Spotlight: Yonder
Yonder is an industry leading AI chatbot for tourism businesses, built on the latest in AI.
“Yonder is one of the most powerful tools for saving time, increasing the efficiency of your business, customer intelligence, and turning that into new customers.” -Trent Yeo, Ziptrek Ecotours
The AI ChatBot is built for tourism operators and uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to act as your best customer support agent – running 24/7/365 to answer customer FAQs. They also integrate with key reservation systems, allowing customers to book directly from the bot and increasing your direct bookings.
The Yonder platform also includes an Intelligent Review and Recommendation Quiz Builder features, guaranteeing you’ll see business growth from day 1.
If you have a B2B business underpinned by AI and looking for people to notice you, you can sign up to the marketplace for peanuts (top right corner, 5 mins, bring your logo).
I’ve priced for bootstrapped startups but also accepting larger companies too.
Got a tip or seen a story I’ve missed? Let me know by simply replying to this newsletter.
Sarawak taps AI to measure events impact
A cool story coming out far flung Borneo this week that Sarawak is using a global first tool to measure the impact of their business events industry.
The AI.LEGACY system uses advanced artificial intelligence to address four key objectives:
- Tracking real-time impacts of business events.
- Empowering event planners with data-driven insights for informed decision-making.
- Collecting, analyzing, and managing event data through automation.
- Positioning Sarawak as the legacy capital for business events in Malaysia and Borneo.
“The system also plays a crucial role in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals by ensuring a broader focus on the social, cultural, and environmental impacts of events, beyond traditional economic metrics.”
If this type of thing excites you about AI then don’t miss this weeks’ upcoming podcast with Ed Morris from Equator AI who is likewise building affordable tools for everyone in travel to be able to get across their business impact and find easy practical solutions to get started on reducing it. It drops Tuesday (Australia time) for those who subscribe.
Slack Group!
The Slack group is full of the brightest minds in ai in travel.
The OpenAI Operator drop was notified into the group within in seconds of it happening 🔥
Shoot me a message if you’d like an invite.
Podcasts and Sponsors
Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:
New podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure!
All the old episodes are also there, so if you missed Andy Moss or Anna Jaffe or Jeff Kischuk – well now you can catch up on these digitally remastered REWIND editions.
Don’t miss the new ones either – there is cracker coming with Ed Morris from Equator AI.
Sponsorship Opportunity:
Want to be known as the leading business in AI + Travel?
There is a unique opportunity right now for YOUR BUSINESS to come and take pole position in the AI + Travel world. We are currently fielding expressions of interest from suitable companies to take an owned media strategy like no other for 2025.
Available is blanket naming rights and coverage across both the Everything AI in Travel newsletter & podcast, with all the research, writing, scheduling, recording and publishing to an established and growing audience of decision makers in travel done in turnkey fashion. I’ll dig out each week what moves your company is making and make sure everyone knows about it.
Brands like Encora and Lufthansa use this owned/borrowed media tactic to huge effect and now you can too for about half the cost of a marketing coordinator. Shoot me a message if interested.
Most clicked last week was the link to the Trip Advisor + Perplexity story!
That’s it – you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focusing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all – you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think