Exciting times continue in the realm of Agency, Advisor, & Hotel Tech

The most attended Deep Dive session at our 3rd annual Virtuoso Travel Tech Summit was the Agency, Advisor, and Hotel Tech Startup Showcase. This focus has of course been with us since the creation of our Summit. This session has been a launching pad for some incredible Startups and innovators including?TripSuite,?Lucia,?Tern,?Sion, and so many others. I have no doubt that many from this year's crop of Startups will soon join these innovators as leaders within the sector.

Like with the other 2 Deep Dive Sessions, this year we kicked things off with a Q&A with one of our Main Stage presenters, in this session was returning favorite Shane O'Flaherty of Microsoft. Shane is a serious thought leader in our space and received many questions about the Connected Trip and Decentralized ID, two of the key topics from his Main Stage presentation. Shane reminded us that the only force strong enough to force progress toward the Connected Trip that he and I have so often spoken about is the traveler, which is why I love his Traveler centric approach to identity and data ownership.

Shane was also asked about the future of search in travel. This is an area that many of us feel strongly about as we can all agree that the search experience leaves a lot to be desired. For many years I have championed and spoken about Experiential Search and Contextual Search in place of feature or attribute-based searching. And it seems we may finally be making some progress.

After Shane's Q&A we dove straight into our Startup Showcase. Up first was Andy Moss the founder of Mindtrip, Inc. one of the most exciting and most covered GenAI trip planning startups of the moment. There are many reasons to be excited about Mindtrip. As a leader in what I think of as the second generation of GenAI startups, Mindtrip has learned many of the lessons from the first few thousand GenAI startups and seems to be making some smart product and model decisions.

One, in particular, is a lesson I have spoken about since the very beginning, which is the fact that further training of AI is a prerequisite for large-scale commercial success. This wisdom has been a driving factor for the Mindtrip team which is likely one of the reasons their AI outputs better and offers more contextual recommendations than many previous attempts. Additionally, this focus on further training and personalizing the AI made them the perfect innovation to highlight at our Summit as it not only demonstrated the state-of-the-art GenAI capabilities but also highlighted, for both sides, how this technology can be perfectly suited to support both Travel Advisors and Agencies.

Next we heard from The Trip Boutique AI's founder Fernanda Barrence Mutz. I was excited by this products vision the first time I met Fernanda and soon after we met we both happened to be at ILTM where I was able to introduce her to several Virtuoso Members (agency owners). Through that I saw their intrigue and excitement first hand which, made the Trip Boutique a great addition to our Summit.

Specifically, this is a great example of an AI platform purpose-built for travel agencies. Agencies accumulate knowledge and data on four different levels, but historically, like with far too much of our industry, these levels of data were not able to mix together in a helpful way. This is one of the core problems the Trip Boutique is working to solve. Their tech, which has some similarities with the single-traveler-multi-cohort capabilities we built at Utrip, has the ability to personalize and make recommendations based on Traveler level preferences, Advisor level knowledge and style, Agency level knowledge and insights, and from Virtuoso or Consortia level insights.

This is not only unique in that it enables the AI to use much more specific data sources but more importantly the Trip Boutique is building an AI system that knows about the fundamental decision/recommendation process and data hierarchy of an agency. If successful, this type of platform could serve as the framework for a true future Agency AI Brain.

Up next was Jessie Fischer from GuestOS. Jesse is a force. Before becoming an AI Hospitality entrepreneur, Jessie managed a community of entrepreneurs who very much like the Virtuoso Network and community deeply believe in co-creation, collaboration, and innovation. That, coupled with the fact that she is working on ways to use voice and audio AI to elevate the human connection and experience made her a perfect guest for our Summit.

GuestOS is using AI voices to help answer questions faster and with more context. Providing elevated levels of automated customer service powered by human knowledge and touch in order to enable the team on property to focus on meaningful connection and engagement with their guests. There are many things to learn from GuestOS but they have clearly found a way to train an AI to be able to answer highly specific questions about the on-property experience and there is a lot to learn.

After Jessie, we heard from a returning guest the CEO of TravelWits Arman Bimatov. TravelWits is another exciting success story from our Summit but the key reason I wanted them back is their AI packaging engine. Not only is this a great example of using AI and Data to create a win-win outcome but Travelwits is also a great way to highlight yet another different use case and integration of AI to add to the depth and breadth of the AI's we showcased at the Summit. I also love the way Arman has evolved the way he communicates their vision. He told us that Travelwits is an AI-powered bridge between your content and your clients and advisors; a fascinating concept.

One other lesson I wanted us to gain from TravelWits is the way they are working to overcome adoption hurdles that exist for any organization working to get their team to adopt new tools and AI. Instead of forcing a new workflow or master system to benefit from their Itinerary Generation technology, TravelWits enables their users to email their request to TravelWits' AI and keep the entire interaction in the Advisor's preferred workflow. Changing habits is a very difficult proposition and this is a great strategy we can all learn from.

Lastly, we heard from Feeel VR and their CEO Akiva Reich. Feeel uses Virtual Reality, along with 2D technology, to help a travel advisor or their client get a real ‘feel’ for the property they will soon visit. It is still early days in the world of VR and Feeel is on the vanguard; I was thrilled we could see and try out their technology at the Summit. In addition to its touring and engagement capabilities, I was very excited by Feeels ability to help us deal with overtourism and other unsustainable elements of our industry through better storytelling.

I have long discussed the fact that one root cause of overtourism is that we all tell the same stories and thus dream the same travel dream; and Social Media has made this so much worse. I often use Venice as an example. One reason far too many people flock to Venice each year chasing the same photo-ops and experiences is that we are all telling ourselves the same story about a beautiful sunny day getting lost on the bridges of Venice and a perfect romantic sunset on the gondola followed by the perfect glass of red wine. But guess what, there are a nearly endless number of places on Earth with romantic sunsets and decadent wine. Feeel enables travel brands to tell different stories, new stories, about undiscovered destinations, shoulder seasons, and other adventures that can enthrall travelers and alleviate some of our industry's negative externalities.

I am so grateful to all of these innovators for sharing their wisdom with us and helping push our industry forward!