The Death of Travel Websites as We Know Them (Thanks to AI Search)

Posted on February 1, 2026 by admin

AI Search needs to evolve quickly, as it is currently a loss-making black hole: neither ChatGPT nor Perplexity is profitable, and Gemini is dramatically impacting Google’s PPC revenues, with a negative knock-on effect on profits.

The entire ethos of AI search is to guide customers to an answer more quickly, generating high-intent customers who are better suited to a “Cost per Acquisition” (CPA) or retail model like Amazon.

Anthropic signalled the first major move in this direction with the creation of its MCP (Model Context Protocol), which is simply a standardisation “Brick” that suppliers must connect their API’s too, so that “Large Language Models” (LLMs) can hoover them up to build super stores with.

However, last month, Google went a step further, launching its new UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol), a standardised way for retailers to connect to Gemini or other LLMs to enable agentic commerce, allowing AI agents to perform product discovery, manage carts, checkout, payments, order tracking, and post-purchase flows.

The key point is that UCP shifts the transaction point from the retailer’s website to within the AI search itself to optimise user intent and reduce booking friction caused by the current need to visit the retailer’s site. The retailer remains the merchant of record and receives the customer’s details; however, fewer human customers will visit the retailer’s site, as most traffic comes from APIs and machines.

So, how will this impact travel businesses?

Clearly, businesses must set up a “Merchant Centre” account with Google and deploy their own UCP servers, though this process is relatively simple. However, what businesses often need from consultants like my own “Neural River” is insight into the wider implications of this change and guidance on what they should prepare for next.

For example, AI Search engines are “conversational” and, unlike travel sites, don’t use “order form” searches to obtain the key search data such as departure date, airport, destination, etc. Instead, they will handle a word-based search, such as “Find me cheap all-inclusive deals to Alcudia in Majorca, for a family of 2 adults and two children, departing on the 12th of July from Manchester airport”.

Now, you may spot a usability issue straight away. That’s a lot of typing!

This is why all AI search engines are rapidly shifting to promote voice search, where users simply chat with the search engine about their needs, as demonstrated by last week’s Uber Eats new voice service.

Initially, there will be some resistance to this move among the “Betamax” generation of 20-30-year-olds, who have been trained only to interact via typing, but the convenience factor will quickly change user behaviour.

The shift to voice will also broaden the query string and introduce more holiday requirements that responses need to meet, such as reliable Wi-Fi, kids’ clubs, and quality restaurants and bars near the hotel.

However, the biggest change is that AI engines will demand “Recommendations” rather than thousands of options, as they want to guide customers to a decision and complete the transaction quickly. So less is more

Also, as “Digital Twins” develop on customers’ phones that know all their key preferences, tagging properties as suitable for XYZ and creating “lookalike” customer groups, where a “Customer like you enjoyed this holiday” will become a key conversion driver.

Therefore, exploring new methods to gather rich user content like Travel Voices’ “Digital Holiday Books” is important for both driving “Friend get Friend” referral sales and creating an extensive database of customer reviews, where new users can talk via AI to previous customers about their holidays.

Travel search is poised for a major evolution, with voice search and recommendations replacing the standard online search forms that are the core of every current travel website.

Are you ready for this shift?

Jet2’s Next Act: Lessons from Airtours’ Rise to Power

Posted on January 29, 2026 by admin

Jet2 Holidays has achieved sustained, profitable growth for its PLC shareholders since its founding in June 2007, with industry veteran Steve Heapy at the helm since 2009. But what’s its next major strategic move?

I think looking back at the history of Airtours rapid expansion in the 1990’s may give us a few clues.

Having left Mytravel in 2003 to establish the Dynamic Packaging specialist On Holiday Group (OHG), I knew it was likely that Mytravel would collapse or be taken over by a competitor like Thomas Cook (Happened June 2007), and I therefore pitched the idea of creating a replacement to Jet2’s Commercial director, Richard Bowden and CEO, Philip Meason, in 2006.

The pitch was straightforward. Integrate Jet2’s flight pricing engine with our packaging engine supplied by OHG’s bed bank, and generate millions of holiday options with no risk, as flights would either be sold as flight-only at an average £6 margin or upgraded to packages with an average £60 margin, delivering a tenfold increase in profits, an earlier booking profile, and more customer cash.

Sounds too good to be true? Philip Meason certainly thought so, but decided to give it a go since the risk was so low, and that’s how Jet2 Holidays was born.

First-year volumes exceeded all expectations, and the shrewd Meason decided to rip up OHG’s three-year contract, copy our technology, and take the strategically important project in-house, recruiting Steve Heapy and other Mytravel staff, as the merger with Thomas Cook destroyed its northern offices, freeing up many talented tour operators.

The rest is history, and Jet2 is now the UK’s largest tour operator, transporting 7 million passengers and preparing for further expansion with its new Gatwick base. Considering Gatwick Airport is one of the cheapest to operate from and provides access to the largest UK holiday market, opening this base seems somewhat late. However, with Easyjet’s dominance of Gatwick slots, its entry is likely to spark a price war as Jet2 establishes its routes.

When Airtours decided to go national from its northern routes, it added a further layer of Vertical Integration by buying both Pickford and Hogg Robinson Travel shops to form Going Places, which instantly gave Airtours distribution in the South to support its growth in flight operations from Gatwick.

Given the online nature of Jet2 Holidays’ business, acquiring retail shops seems unlikely, but it highlights how crucial access to the travel trade southern shop network will be for their Gatwick expansion. Therefore, Southern agents should anticipate some significant volume override targets in the coming years.

Looking back at Airtours rapid expansion may also provide some clues to Jet2’s next major strategic moves.

Airtours initially operated a single MD83 Aircraft fleet ideal for short-haul holidays, but its size was always restricted to 60% of the tour operator’s total summer capacity, due to the difficulty of using these aircraft in the winter.

To overcome this restriction, Airtours decided to establish a long-haul programme to Florida and the Caribbean using third-party charter aircraft, which it then replaced with an internal fleet once volumes reached a critical mass needed to operate a five-aircraft long-haul fleet, the minimum required for operational efficiency.

Jet2 is probably considering the same move, as falling out of the high-margin long-haul market to TUI seems daft. However, finding a partner to provide the aircraft needed for the initial growth phase, while they are aware of Jet2’s longer-term plans, is clearly a challenge. The need for backup aircraft, parts, and crews makes organic growth difficult unless these larger-capacity, long-haul aircraft can also be utilised on high-volume short-haul routes, which, ironically, mainly operate from Gatwick and Manchester.

Airtours also expanded internationally to address its winter flight capacity issues, investing in counter-cyclical markets by acquiring Scandinavian Leisure Group and Sunquest in Canada, which allowed it to redistribute airline capacity globally during its slower UK winter months.

Given current ownership structures, few of these opportunities are available now, but Jet2 must reduce its dependency on the UK market, and international expansion appears to be the next logical step in its growth trajectory.

As Easyjet has discovered, organic growth in flight-only services across other European markets can be both slow and costly. Therefore, a more sensible approach would be for Jet2 to leverage its strong balance sheet and access to capital through the UK stock exchange to acquire a major tour operator, into which it could immediately inject its flight capacity.

The obvious market to target is Germany, since its holiday bookings are three times those of the UK. Given that TUI is the leading company, the next best option is DER Touristik, owned by the REWE supermarket Group. Other options do exist, but FTI’s financial problems make it an unlikely acquisition, and fifth-place Altours is probably too small to be considered.

Expansion into Hotel or Cruise ship operations, like Tui, is also a possibility, but Jet2 Holidays has shown no such appetite so far.

My bet?

Watch out for the launch of a long-haul program before 2030, followed shortly by an international acquisition.

The Golden Age of Travel Is Back — and AI will Power It

Posted on December 18, 2025 by admin

For decades, language has remained one of the final obstacles to truly immersive travel. Although low-cost airlines and online booking platforms have made the world more accessible than ever, most English travellers, because we are notoriously language-lazy, still experience foreign countries through a filter, relying on guidebooks, pre-translated menus, or the ability to speak louder in English to make the locals understand us.

That barrier is now beginning to dissolve.

Google’s newly announced real-time translation experience, which delivers live translations directly through everyday headphones, offers a glimpse into a future where understanding your surroundings abroad becomes effortless, immediate, and human.

When combined with emerging wearable devices like Meta’s smart glasses, AI translation is poised to fundamentally reshape how people explore the world, as not only will we be able to hear foreign language in English, the same glasses will capture our English replies and project them from our phone’s speakers in the local language so that whoever we are chatting with can understand what we are saying back.

At the moment, the tech is just in its infancy, but the rate of progress is jaw-dropping

From “Getting By” to Truly Understanding

Most travellers have experienced the quiet anxiety of not understanding what’s being said around them. Is that announcement important? Is the waiter explaining something I should know? Am I missing cultural nuance?

Google’s beta feature turns any pair of headphones into a real-time, one-way translation device. Crucially, by preserving tone, emphasis, and cadence, the technology doesn’t just translate words; it conveys meaning. You hear how something is said, not just what is said.

This is a major shift enabled by AI. Language is emotional and contextual. Sarcasm, warmth, urgency, and humour are often lost in traditional translation apps that rely on text or robotic audio. By maintaining vocal nuance, AI translation allows travellers to follow conversations more naturally and confidently, even when they don’t speak the local language.

The result isn’t just convenience; it’s inclusion.

The Rise of “Invisible” Translation

The real breakthrough isn’t translation itself, it’s where translation now lives.

Instead of pulling out a phone, typing phrases, or awkwardly holding a screen between two people, translation is moving into wearables: headphones today, smart glasses tomorrow. This makes language support ambient and almost invisible.

Imagine walking through a local market in Tokyo, hearing stallholders’ calls translated softly in your ears. Or inter-railing around Europe, understanding announcements in real time without scanning for English signage. Or attending a local festival, lecture, or guided tour while abroad, fully present, without constantly switching between listening and translating.

When paired with smart glasses, this experience could extend even further: subtitles appearing discreetly in your field of view, translated street signs, or contextual explanations layered onto the physical world.

Travel becomes less about decoding and more about experiencing.

Empowering More People to Travel Confidently

One of the most positive impacts of AI translation tools is who they empower.

For older travellers, solo travellers, or those who feel intimidated by unfamiliar languages, these tools reduce friction and fear. You no longer need to “know enough” of a language to feel safe or capable. That confidence alone can open up destinations that previously felt inaccessible.

And for families travelling together, AI translation becomes a shared safety net, allowing children, parents, and grandparents alike to engage more fully with the world around them.

Cultural Curiosity, Not Cultural Replacement

A common concern with translation technology is that it may discourage people from learning languages. In reality, the opposite is already happening.

Google’s expansion of its language-learning tools, enhanced with Gemini’s ability to understand idioms, slang, and cultural context, shows how translation and learning can reinforce each other. When travellers hear accurate, contextual translations in real-world settings, language becomes less abstract and more alive.

Hearing that “stealing my thunder” isn’t about theft, but about overshadowing someone, teaches culture as much as vocabulary. These moments spark curiosity, not complacency.

AI translation doesn’t replace cultural effort; it lowers the barrier to entry.

Could this launch a new Golden Age of Travel?

Google’s rollout remains in its early stages and is limited to certain countries and devices, but the trend is evident. AI translation is progressing from a basic tool to a travel companion, empowering holidaymakers to explore distant destinations with greater confidence and travel more frequently. Many will become “digital nomads”, using Zoom and other platforms to work while experiencing different cultures and warm climates around the world.

The social and economic impact of AI, which continues to advance rapidly, remains very concerning, with 20% unemployment expected within five years and a high probability that the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer. However, there is nearly 100% agreement among experts that we will all have more leisure time, with a four-day workweek likely.

Combine this extra time with the ability to travel freely because language barriers have been removed, and you can understand my profound hope that we are actually standing at the dawn of the Golden Age of Travel.

Agentic AI in the Browser: A Time-Saver or a Google stranglehold over travel.

Posted on December 17, 2025 by admin

Agentic AI is rapidly moving from theory to practice. Instead of merely answering questions, these systems can now act on a user’s behalf by booking flights, comparing prices, filling out forms, or making purchases, which will significantly impact how travel products are booked.

The ease of use will allow users to bypass both travel agents and OTA sites to purchase non-ATOL bonded packages curated by Google, with Agentic AI guiding them through the complex booking process in minutes using pre-stored booking preferences and credit card details.

Google’s recent explanation of how Chrome will secure its upcoming agentic AI features provides a glimpse into how this future might operate at scale.

At first glance, the consumer benefits appear convincing and provide initial steps toward creating the “Digital Shopping Twin” that I have long forecast will alleviate much of the shopping hassle for users.

Travellers who are accustomed to navigating an average of 72 sites before booking their holidays to compare prices and read reviews often experience tab overload, decision fatigue, and repetitive online tasks. Agentic AI offers a form of digital delegation. However, as these agents become integrated into browsers, arguably the most commercially significant layer of the internet, because they control product access, crucial questions around trust, control, and commercial neutrality arise, as let’s be honest, Google don’t have a good track record here.

Google’s approach to agentic security is sophisticated, layered, and thoughtfully designed. Yet it also highlights a deeper tension: when the same company that controls the browser, the AI model, the ad ecosystem, and the marketplace is acting “on your behalf,” how confident can users be that convenience won’t quietly blur into influence based on who pays Google the most?

Why Google Agentic AI is a major threat to the UK Travel Trade.

The promise of agentic AI lies in time compression. Tasks that currently require dozens of micro-decisions: searching, filtering, logging in, and comparing options, can be reduced to a single voice instruction. “Book me the best-value Flight ticket from Manchester in May 2026 to Majorca for a 7-night duration, combined with the best-reviewed 4-star hotel costing less than £200 per night on a bed and breakfast basis in Alcudia with a private taxi transfer from the airport”.

In terms of productivity, this is transformative. For less tech-confident users, it could also be empowering, reducing cognitive and technical barriers to booking holidays online and posing a significant threat to the traditional role of travel agents and OTAs.

Forget hallucinations and silly errors: Google’s Architecture prevents these.

Google’s outlined safeguards demonstrate a strong understanding of the risk of AI hallucinations and mistakes. Central to this is a multi-model oversight system in which one AI plans actions, and another, called the User Alignment Critic and powered by Gemini, assesses whether those actions genuinely align with the user’s stated goal.

This separation is important. It mirrors patterns found in safety-critical systems, where execution and oversight are purposely separated, reducing the likelihood that Google Travel tools will mistakenly book incorrect items or fail even if the rest of the travel industry hopes they will and jump on any mistake to harangue them or disparage the reputation of AI Tools.

Equally important are Agent Origin Sets, which clearly define where an agent can read data and where it can act. Read-only zones may enable price comparisons on a travel site, whereas read-write zones limit interactions to authorised buttons or form fields and prevent items from being booked without explicit user approval.

Layered on top are URL monitoring systems to prevent unsafe navigation, the explicit requirement of user consent for sensitive actions such as payments and strict separation of password data. In short, Chrome’s agentic AI is not given free rein; it operates within a tightly constrained sandbox when processing customer travel requests.

The Big Risk: Commercial Bias Driven by Convenience

However, security is only part of the story. The more complex issue is alignment, not just with user intent regarding which holidays they prefer, but also with user interests in finding the best value provider, not merely the one suggested by Google because of the highest commission.

Most travellers still do not realise that the top of the Google search page is not dominated by the best providers but by those willing to pay the highest click costs to attract customers to their sites.

Google is in a unique and dominant position. Chrome manages access to the web. Gemini interprets intent. Google Shopping, Ads, Flights, and Search already facilitate commercial discovery. When a Google AI Travel Agent chooses which product to buy, which option is “best,” or which site is trustworthy, those choices are clearly influenced by Google’s commercial interests rather than the customers.

Even if no explicit manipulation occurs, defaults matter. Ranking logic matters. Training data matters. Over time, an agent that consistently chooses Google-affiliated services, preferred partners, or ad-optimised outcomes could quietly reshape user behaviour without users’ knowledge.

Unlike search results, which users can scan and override, agentic decisions are made on the user’s behalf. That efficiency and time saving are the key drivers, but it also reduces visibility.

A Powerful Tool That Demands Ongoing Scrutiny

Agentic AI in Chrome could save users significant time and mental effort when booking a holiday, and, bluntly, it’s tough luck for the travel industry if it replaces some of our jobs. However, although Google has discussed at length its technical safeguards, it remains silent on the clear ethical conflict of potentially recommending not the best travel options for customers, but those that generate the most revenue for Google.

It also triggers the age-old ATOL debate. Why should dynamically packaging retailers bear the substantial burden of “Principal” status when Google can offer precisely the same services without any bonding?

Both the UK Government as a whole and the Civil Aviation Authority must thoroughly examine Google’s plans for Agentic AI in travel and determine whether these constitute responsible activity or an abuse of a dominant market position.

To be entirely clear, I support customers’ right to choose, and using AI in the travel booking process will make holiday arrangements much simpler, but transparency of recommendations needs to be a legal requirement imposed on Google ASAP.

The Travel Sector Shake-Up: Who Survives the AI Storm?

Posted on December 5, 2025 by admin

At the recent AITO conference, I was asked the intriguing question of “Which Travel Sector is most threatened by the rollout of AI?”

Honestly, it’s easier to flip this question and look at what protections the travel industry has against AI. For example, “Asset” holders like airlines, cruise lines, and hotels aren’t threatened just because customers will always need them, and they can’t be “disintermediated”. Therefore, companies such as Tui, Easyjet, and Jet2 Holidays are likely to see AI as a way to improve efficiency and will use it to open new distribution routes.

However, “Online Travel Agents” (OTAs) face two significant and imminent threats.

Over the past 20 years, Google has dominated holiday search, and its algorithms, which reward higher click volumes with lower average costs, have established a fairly “locked-in” hierarchy primarily shared among Love Holidays, On the Beach, and booking.com for most holiday search terms. This is now being seriously disrupted by the introduction of Google AI search mode powered by Gemini, which has taken 30-40% of the traffic that used to flow to the top-positioned advertisers and redistributed it in a completely different way based on the best match to a customer’s request.

This trend is only going to be exacerbated as competing AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity rapidly increase their market share in the UK.

At the same time, Gemini and the other LLM (Large Language Model) search engines are all launching “Agentic AI” solutions for travel. These enable customers to either type or use voice activation to make complex, detailed travel requests, which then open new windows with the “Agentic AI Agent,” which mimics a human and uses relevant travel sites like Skyscanner to identify the best flight options before combining them with hotel options from booking.com.

This new age “Dynamic Packaging” avoids the extensive costs and restrictions of ATOL bonding and therefore offers customers lower cost options, threatening to undermine the OTA’s core offering of range and lowest price.

Some customers will still seek “Principal Status” and ATOL protection, but I doubt this will be the majority, which puts Love and OTB’s market share at real risk. However, nobody should ever dismiss this innovative business, as they could simply pivot to using AI to develop their offering while leveraging their established brand recognition.

Travel Agents also face a significant threat, but ironically, it’s not from being replaced by AI but from more agents joining the hunt for customers and “Super Agents” hoovering up a much larger share of the market.

We have already seen 37,000 agents join the sector under the umbrella of “IntelleTravel”, but this figure is set to rise dramatically as “Agentic AI” tools mean nearly anyone can book travel with minimal training. Add to this the extensive product knowledge available at their fingertips from AI tools, and the “Agency” battle shifts to how cost-effectively agents can attract customers and on what scale.

I believe there will be a new wave of “Influencer agents” using TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to promote inspiring destination content, generating leads that they then either pass on to third-party price-comparison sites or book themselves using agentic AI tools.

Even within traditional homeworking channels, top sellers can grow even faster by delegating all their back-office booking and research tasks to AI, while using their freed-up time to leverage their human sales skills to handle 2-3 times more customers per year. These “Super Agents” will logically gain increased market share, forcing weaker agents to go part-time or leave the sector.

It will also be fascinating to see what new travel brands are created using the new “Model Context Protocol” (MCP) technology. MCP is a simple standardisation wrapper that LLMs are forcing suppliers to put around their API feeds to turn them into “Standardised Bricks” accessible by AI coding teams to create new “Travel Super Stores”.

Using MCP tools from suppliers significantly simplifies the creation of price-comparison sites and innovative packaging tools, such as “Event Trip,” a new spin-out soon to be launched by Neural River Incubator.

The established travel order is set for a significant shake-up, not in the next 10 years as some commentators predict, but rather within the next 2 years, in my opinion, as the wave of AI change is now accelerating rapidly, with even the slow-moving travel sector beginning to engage first gear.

Trust is a Specialist’s Superpower in an AI World.

Posted on November 30, 2025 by admin

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the AITO conference in the beautiful region of Asturias, Northern Spain. My role was to act as a catalyst for a debate about how AI will impact specialist tour operators and how businesses should start implementing AI into their operations.

My core message was that, because travel is a high-value transaction based on a promise to deliver a product at a future date, “Trust” in them as humans or in their company’s brand is their key defence against AI disintermediation, where customers go to “Destination Management Companies” (DMCs) and organise their own itineraries using the knowledge of the internet.

Some individuals argued that their expertise was vastly superior to that of the internet and that AI was prone to “Hallucinations” that could lead to disastrous outcomes. To some extent, I think they have a point, but I reminded them that AI is currently just a “one-year-old child” and that they should be prepared for the rapid progress approaching. I believe it is unlikely that their agents will know about every restaurant, bar, and attraction, or the full details of every possible hotel choice, whereas AI already does.

I advised that they should continue to keep all sales contacts “Human”- facing, as I believe humans prefer buying from humans, but empower their agents behind the scenes with as much AI knowledge and tools as possible so they can continue to know more than their customers.

For example, why not have AI listen to all customer calls and automatically prompt agents on their screens with information they might want to discuss with the customer, or send via WhatsApp or email, using professionally generated content and PDFs with full quotes for the itinerary and pricing.

I also demonstrated how they could extend their interactions with customers by using Travel Voice’s “AI Reps” to manage pre-departure customer service and in-resort information flow when they lacked on-the-ground human representatives. These AI reps use a “Cloned” voice of the agent who handled the initial sale to provide continuity of interaction.

Some operators recognised the advantages of this but wisely expressed a desire to test these tools gradually on a subset of customers so they could “Test and Learn” without risking lasting damage to their brands or reputations. This is always a sound strategy when implementing AI.

However, nearly all the operators I spoke to like the idea of using AI Review Agents, pre-programmed with detailed knowledge of a customer’s itinerary and weather during their stay, to have a “Chat” with the customer upon their return. They encourage customers strongly to upload holiday photos and videos. Our extensive testing already shows that this leads to much more detailed user content being captured, which AI can then use to generate reviews for Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, etc., to be posted by customers. These reviews are automatically seeded with the agent’s name and company details, creating a “Digital Word of Mouth” within trusted sites that power most “Large Language Models” (LLMs) responses to customer searches.

This same content can also be used on the operator’s website and added to their CRMS so that they know not just what holidays customers took last time but what they enjoyed doing during those holidays.

None of these tools replaces humans, as they mainly perform functions that the business currently misses due to scalability or resource cost restrictions, thereby logically increasing business stickiness and repeat booking levels.

Most businesses expressed the opinion that they need to embrace AI as a back-office tool to increase efficiency and allow their staff to focus on the human-facing sales functions, but few had a definitive plan and found the vast array of AI tools daunting.

My advice is simple. If you want to implement AI successfully, the project must be led by the business owner or leader and cannot just be delegated to the IT or marketing departments. It is also advisable to bring in “External Advisors” to demonstrate the “Art of the possible” in a morning session and then guide a business team comprising both senior managers and internal young AI advocates in identifying the 5-10 things the business could do immediately.

This should then be reduced to a maximum of 5 projects to ensure the initial focus is maintained and that these first experiments in “Test and Learn” succeed, allowing the AI rollout to get off to a positive start and creating a virtuous cycle of efficiency gains.

This blog is not an advert, but if anybody does want some low-cost AI Advice, contact me, and I’ll put you in touch with Neural River, the AI Consultancy business that I have invested in as a Chair.

Biggest impact of AI in Travel? Anybody can be a travel agent.

Posted on November 19, 2025 by admin

Although I am a strong advocate of AI tools in travel, I believe it will mainly serve as a co-pilot to human sales agents, as buying travel either requires a “Trusted” online brand or the trust built through a human sales interaction. After all, how many other products cost you £2,400 on average, and you only get a promise to deliver at a date often 6 months or more in advance?

Therefore, the primary threat AI tools pose to travel agents is that they allow nearly anyone to become one, leading me to predict a massive wave of new entrant travel agents working from home, part-time or full-time, over the next five years.

Many traditional consortia openly mocked Intelli Travel when it entered the UK market, offering an ultra-low entry point: you pay your money and get access to their platforms, commission, and personal holiday deals, with only a basic level of training required.

However, after signing up 37,000 agents, they are now recognised as a force to be reckoned with, even though some operators still complain about the number of calls they generate and feel that most deliver very few bookings and are only agents to obtain discounts on friends-and-family bookings.

AI Co-pilots will swiftly automate the booking process with tools like my own www.anybetter.com, enabling agents to compare all offers for a specific hotel from leading providers, including optional extras like baggage and transfers, to achieve an accurate final price comparison before booking.

Rather than relying on API feeds that only supply leading prices, this and similar systems use Agentic AI to script through sites to both retrieve pricing information and to deliver a customer to the final checkout page having used their profile information to complete all the required names, ages and address fields, along with the already expressed preferences in terms of baggage, seat selection and transfers.

AI tools also give agents access to the entire knowledge base of the internet about any hotel or destination in the world, so having been on multiple fam trips becomes less of a useful skill and more just a perk of the trade.

This means the primary skill for a travel agent will be generating leads, which is why we will see a wave of agents with million-pound turnovers, who are TikTok or Meta influencers, producing their own content and turning followers into customers.

We are already seeing leading social media players, such as Social Trinity and Trending Travel, enlisting influencers to license their content for lead-generation campaigns with partner tour operators, destinations, or hotel chains. How long before they form their own consortia and license booking technology?

Good agents need not worry, as the same AI tools will help them become even more productive by freeing up their time to focus on where the human agent truly adds the most value: talking to customers to fully understand all their needs and building trust, the basis of both conversion and repeat bookings.

AI-driven businesses like Travel Voice can even clone agents’ voices to assist customers while they are already on the phone or relaxing on the sofa with a glass of wine out of hours. This same voice can then power a personalised Travel Rep that accompanies customers on their phones to manage all their in-destination needs, such as recommending bars and restaurants, arranging taxis and excursions, and more. To be blunt, the agents themselves can never do this, so using AI can actually build trust and further enhance the customer-agent relationship.

Although many in the travel sector still dismiss AI as over hyped and claim that their customers still want the personal touch, smarter players are working out how to deploy AI to slicken up their operations and take a step ahead.

Take an honest look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Which one am I?”

Travel Republic: The Death of DP or just Corporate Strangulation?

Posted on November 12, 2025 by admin

he announcement that the DNATA group is to close Travel Republic, hot on the heels of On the Beach’s closure of its “Dynamically Packaging” (DP) trade arm, makes it feel like the end of the era for independent DP in the UK.

Having been deeply involved with the Dynamic Packaging sector since its inception, as a founder of On Holiday Group alongside partners Bill Allen (On the Beach) and Brian Young (G Adventures). I spent many enjoyable hours in Kingston pubs with Travel Republic’s founders, discussing strategy and exit options!

Unfortunately, On Holiday Groups’ VAT dispute with HMRC halted merger talks, and the guys became wealthy young men when selling out to DNATA on 28 December 2011, which now appears to be the business’s peak. At this point, they were serving more than 2 million customers annually and had seen their turnover rise by over 40% to more than £400 million in 2011, making them the clear OTA leader at that time.

Sensibly, DNATA tied the leadership of the business, Kane Pirie and Paul Furner, to the company through deferred payments for a further 3 years. However, the business never prospered the same way again, and like many acquisitions, as it lost its entrepreneurial drive and quick decision-making.

Only DNATA insiders will understand how, from these lofty heights, Travel Republic ended up licensed for fewer than 150,000 passengers in 2025, dropping out of the top 20 ATOL holders for the first time in 20 years.

However, I point to three key factors.

Ryanair: No Dynamic Packaging Business can survive without it.

The massive disruption caused by Covid-19 and Ryanair’s outrageous behaviour towards OTAs led to a legal battle between Ryanair and DNATA, after which Travel Republic removed Ryanair from sale for 4 years, from 2021 to May 2025.

Cheap seat access is vital for any DP engine. While competitors On the Beach and Love Holidays endeavoured to find workarounds to keep selling Ryanair during their openly declared war on UK OTAs, DNATA made the frankly arrogant decision that it did not need them. In my opinion, this move effectively destroyed Travel Republic as a competitive force.

I feel free to say this in hindsight, as I openly expressed it to the DNATA management at the time and felt great sympathy for the team, which did not have the power to overturn a decision made at the highest levels of the owner, Emirates.

Ryanair is the lowest-cost flight provider and is estimated to account for approximately 60% of both Love’s and On the Beach’s flight seats, with both businesses booming again after the Ryanair trade reconciliation.

High EasyJet API fees, squeezing OTA profits, and reducing access to Jet2 seats through its in-house tour operations have made Ryanair access essential, and not doing so has strangled Travel Republic, forcing it to reposition itself as a Dubai- and long-haul-focused operation.

The COVID-19 Google Algorithm Reset.

OTAs in general survived COVID-19 much better than integrated tour operators like Tui, specifically because they had a much more flexible model with no plans sat on the ground and no guaranteed or owned hotels sitting empty.

However, COVID-19 disrupted the hierarchy of Google visibility that protected the top three players’ traffic volumes. The Google history algorithm essentially means you pay less to be in the number one search position if you have been there for the last six months, which effectively blocks new entrants who have to fight their way to the top at great cost (a key reason why Low-Cost Holidays failed).

This created a relatively fixed and unchanging access to customers that existed before Covid-19, protecting relative volumes. However, the shutdown wiped out this history, turning it into a race among the major players to reestablish the pecking order once the bounce-back began.

As a privately held company, Love Holidays was able to be much more aggressive than On the Beach and Travel Republic, gaining a massive market-share boost post-COVID-19. This caused Travel Republic to spiral into consistent losses, which ultimately led to its demise.

Corporate Strangulation.

I am unusual in that I had a successful Corporate Career, rising to Deputy Chief Operating Officer of MyTravel, running all its UK business in 2003, before becoming the rogue Entrepreneur of my later career.

This provides me with insight into how corporate cultures have repeatedly undermined and dismantled nearly every acquisition made in travel.

People are central to every travel business because the most successful ones consistently focus on customers and brands, taking great pride in the businesses they have built.

Every time things get tough, the corporate accountants start seeking cost savings by merging IT, finance, and customer services across the business, which destroys this focus.

With Travel Republic, DNATA immediately expanded its use of technology across other parts of its business, shifting attention away from its UK operations, and further damaged it by incorporating its hotel-buying team into group roles to help establish a corporate-wide bed bank called Yalago.

I am sure these seemed sensible corporate decisions at the time. Still, inevitably, they damaged the Travel Republic operation, and when combined with remote, disconnected discussions about Ryanair, they ultimately put the business into a downward spiral from which it has never recovered.

Summary

I know many clever and resilient people who have worked at Travel Republic and other DNATA-owned businesses over the years, and most have enjoyed working for this generous and considerate organisation.

However, I really don’t think Travel Republic marks the end of the Dynamic Packaging era; it’s simply a natural shift, caused by the currents of disruption that have hit the UK industry over the last 10 years. Smaller, more tightly managed businesses can react and change direction more quickly to survive these issues.

I clearly don’t know the full story here, but I hope my analysis, written at 4 am from the Dominican Republic, offers some insights and demonstrates how much I care about the topic.

Forget Expedia — AI Just Became the World’s Biggest Travel Agent

Posted on November 3, 2025 by admin

Having been around long enough to witness the birth of the internet and the impact of the migration to mobile on search, it’s fascinating to observe the beginning of the evolution towards AI Search.

Marriott published research this week indicating that the proportion of travellers using AI has risen to 50% from 41% last year and 26% in 2023, nearly doubling in just two years. Unsurprisingly, younger generations are adopting it more rapidly, but even my age group, 55-64-year-olds, shows a 29% usage rate.

In recent blogs, I have promoted the use of MCP standardisation API wrappers as a vital step towards enabling large language models like ChatGPT to ingest live pricing and availability data from travel businesses. Last week, the launch of integrations with Booking.com and Expedia was announced, allowing travellers to search for hotels using natural language queries such as “Find me a private house with four separate bedrooms near top golf courses in Austin, Texas, for less than £300 per night.”

This would have saved me the trouble of switching between Airbnb, Booking, and ChatGPT when planning the trip I’m currently on, though I’m still redirected to these sites to make the actual bookings. This will be the next pain point to be eliminated, with ChatGPT soon becoming a merchant of record and an even bigger player than Amazon, selling millions of products. However, most of these will still come from Amazon, given its clever vertical integration that has made it a key physical distribution player.

I have also been predicting the development of “Digital Twins” that enable us to build a detailed profile of our personal preferences and update it daily by monitoring all our purchases. Retailers like Amazon already use these AI tools to personalise the offers they present to you, and Google even monitors our conversations to inform their recommendation engines.

The most logical place for a “Digital Twin” is on a user’s phone, so hardware manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have a natural advantage in this race. That’s why, at the start of 2025, OpenAI signed a major strategic alliance with them to exploit this opportunity jointly, and all LLMs are partnering with the hardware required to deliver AI tools.

Wearable tech will also play a significant role in how we use AI going forward, with Meta teaming up with Ray-Ban and Google launching the Android XR glasses. These devices connect to your phone but offer extra utility by being hands-free: they function as headphones that use vibration technology in the glasses’ arms, and as listening devices with microphones positioned just above your mouth.

Most importantly, they can serve as a second set of eyes, relaying what you see and offering instant classification, research, or instructions directly on the lenses. I already use these when travelling to discreetly and instantly translate different languages into my ears, although it hasn’t improved my ability to respond yet, as I still need the Google Translate function on my phone to speak the language. But I’m told this is coming fast.

However, it’s the shopping function offered by these glasses that I’m really looking forward to!

Imagine that, instead of browsing retail clothing stores, you can look at a stylish outfit someone else is wearing and immediately see where to buy it online at what price, with your digital twin instantly showing all your sizes and colour preferences.

This may sound like fiction, but it will be part of our everyday lives within the next 5 years, so we need to start thinking about how these forms of AI will affect the travel ecosystem.

The only businesses protected from AI disintermediation are the travel asset holders—airlines, hotels, and ground transportation —while the rest of the market faces significant disruption.

Logic suggests that major travel companies like Booking and Expedia will grow even larger as they can gather more content while leading AI distribution through partnerships with large language models.

However, with the removal of language barriers, travellers are likely to become more adventurous, seeking unique and authentic experiences best provided by niche specialist businesses, which become more findable with AI search tools, so there will still be a place for the specialists.

I also expect “Event” based travel to boom, which is why I am investing in an MCP-based AI startup aiming to create the ultimate itineraries for Event travel.

The simplification of the travel booking process is also likely to create a new breed of Influencer “Travel Agents”, promoting destinations and specific trips via TikTok shops or Instagram, using their own authentic content creation. So again, I’m investing in this space.

I have always loved disruption, and this is likely to be the fastest and biggest change we have ever seen in the travel sector.

Is your business ready?

Dear Travel Brands: Stop Optimising for Humans – Start Optimising for AI

Posted on September 17, 2025 by admin

At today’s TransPerfect conference, we again heard that content is king, and in a world where customers visit websites, I could not agree more.

Good imagery and well-written, insightful content are essential for transforming Google-generated PPC clicks into bookings, but will this stay the same in a world dominated by AI Search?

All commentators predict that the arrival of MCP Servers, which enable Large Language Models (LLMs) to have agentic front ends that connect to thousands of suppliers to retrieve prices and availability, will mean that customers’ research will be conducted within the large language models themselves. Customers will no longer need to click out to suppliers’ websites to make bookings. Instead, it will act like Amazon, taking payments from customers or, to avoid ATOL package holiday regulations, use the customers’ payment details to either make component bookings via an MCP connection with suppliers or make one booking with an ATOL-bonded provider.

This evolution reminds me of the changes my own “On Holiday Group” (OHG) experienced during the “Dynamic Packaging” revolution that transformed the travel industry in the early 2000s.

Initially, we believed that the quality of our hotel images, descriptions, and video content would persuade travel businesses to use our website to book accommodation over our competitors. However, as the “Online Travel Agents” (OTAs) grew in size, our distribution rapidly shifted from human agents using our site to OTAs accessing our content and pricing via APIs (now replaced by MCPs).

These OTAs sourced the best content from suppliers like OHG, but then linked all suppliers’ prices to this content, and allocated bookings to the cheapest supplier.

So, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Large Language Models are likely to do the same. Therefore, what’s the point in investing in good hotel or resort content if it’s not going to be seen by your customers?

Neural River, my MCP consultancy, is instead advising travel companies on which “differentiators” besides content are likely to influence “Digital LLM” visitors, based on the assumption that their human users are unlikely to leave the AI Search engine to visit your site in future.

The core idea of AI Search is that it helps customers find the “Right” answer faster than Google’s ten blue link advertising directory. Therefore, it is likely to evaluate suppliers based on the speed of their responses and how well they meet their users’ needs.

Therefore, often “Less will be more” with “Cached” and “Curated” holiday recommendations, based on the top 10 holidays that match a customer’s requirements, which receive a better reception than showing the customer thousands of options, because they can be delivered faster and are more likely to meet the customer’s needs.

Initially, AI search terms will resemble those of Google, e.g., ‘Cheap Holidays to Spain,’ because this is how we have trained customers to search online.

However, as voice activation and the use of “Digital Twins” to shop for us increases, businesses will be faced with much more complex queries based on the customers’ age, wealth and preferences.

Don’t you think it’s strange that OTAs ask so few questions about a customer before making them search through thousands of holiday options? For me, this is one of the main reasons why homeworkers and high street agents stay in business.

However, this is all set to change with AI Search, and therefore, smart businesses will be investing heavily in harvesting the content that truly matters, which, in my opinion, is “Peer to Peer” reviews. This will allow them to classify holidays and present results in the same way Spotify or TikTok do by combining my purchasing indicators with a much broader “Lookalike” group based on age and demographics.

This is why TransPerfect, my hosts today, are continually refining their offerings and have decreased their revenue from translation-only services to 50% of their turnover, while exploring innovative new approaches such as enabling English-speaking customer service agents to manage multiple source markets using behind-the-scenes translation tools. Translations remain crucial for how UK businesses access new source markets. However, I believe it is the technology solutions provided by TransPerfect to support sales and customer service operations that will grow the fastest.

Standing still is not an option in the translation space or the travel sector, so what have you got planned, guys?