Travolution

📶 Virgin Atlantic partners with Kolet to enhance travel connectivity through an embedded eSIM service. Customers receive 1GB of free data for 48 hours via the airline's digital platforms. Kolet, founded in 2024, aims to boost eSIM use across their 190+ destinations, having attracted over 500,000 users in under two years. The initiative aligns with Virgin Atlantic's digital investments and upcoming Starlink Wi-Fi rollout, catering to rising demand for seamless in-flight connectivity.

📈 Actabl secured a patent for a method to standardize data from over 400 integrations like property management and point-of-sale systems. This AI-driven system normalizes metrics, ensuring reliable analytics across 14,000+ hotels globally. The patent includes a machine learning module for faster integration of new systems, optimizing business intelligence and hotel operations with a team of 300+ led by Pritesh Patel.

🛫 Navan is revolutionizing travel with Ava, their AI support agent, by making travel assistance scalable and always available. In March 2026, Navan announced Edge, enhancing its suite of services: Travel, Expense, and Payment. With TravelClaw, Navan anticipates travel disruptions by monitoring various factors, enabling proactive solutions. The ultimate vision is an invisible interface that seamlessly manages bookings and payments, aiming to eliminate travel hassles and orchestrate background operations effortlessly.

💻 HBX Group acquires 100% of Bridgify, aiming to enhance AI-driven experiences distribution. The acquisition involves €3 million upfront, with most deferred based on future performance. Bridgify provides access to over one million curated experiences, optimized by AI for personalized travel. This acquisition will simplify integration, boost automation, and increase distribution capabilities. CEO Nicolas Huss emphasizes aligning technology and data to innovate in AI, automation, and personalization across the travel industry.

💻 Choice Hotels has introduced AI tools, CHARLIE and RAISE, to assist hotel teams and simplify management tasks. With over 7,500 hotels and 650,000 rooms across 51 countries, the company aims to integrate AI into travel search, comparison, and booking. AgentCore and AgentForce frameworks enable scalable AI agent deployment across various operations. The objective is to enhance business by automating processes and maintaining visibility in travel discovery. Patrick Pacious and Anna Scozzafava highlight the strategic shift toward agentic commerce.

🛳 Direct Ferries, with a 25-year history, integrates 4,000 ferry routes from over 300 operators into ChatGPT, enhancing global reach. This initiative, launched in 2023, addresses the fragmented ferry market using a new standardised API and MCP Server interface. The service enables travellers to search ferry options in natural language, promoting unified digital access. Ferry travel, accounting for 4.3 billion passengers pre-COVID, remains crucial for island and coastal connectivity.