What can a tour operator actually do with AI right now — not in five years, not in theory, but today?

In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, I sit down with Oliver Green, founder of Tourstack and former co-founder of Carpe Diem Tours, to get extremely practical about what AI can already do inside a tours and activities business.

Ollie isn't just talking about AI. He's building with it — connecting Claude and AI agents to booking systems, websites, Slack, Google Sheets and other parts of the tour operator tech stack.

We work our way through some of the things he believes operators should be doing today, including:

 Build a company brain — give AI context around your products, pricing, meeting points, guides, costs and business knowledge.

 Connect your systems — bring together booking data, calendars, Google Sheets, marketing data and other tools so AI can actually work with your business.

 Turn spreadsheets into dashboards — combine marketing, social, promo-code and sales data and let AI surface the trends rather than manually trawling through sheets.

 Build an AI revenue-management capability — Ollie explains how he's connected booking availability and business economics so an AI agent can identify underperforming departures and recommend pricing changes.

 Plug AI into Slack — allowing teams to ask questions of company data and enabling agents to proactively flag things that need attention.

 Audit — and fix — your website for SEO and AI discovery — using AI to identify technical problems, structured-data opportunities, missing content and other improvements, then potentially implement them.

We also dig into one of the big questions facing tour operators as AI-powered search and agentic commerce develop:

Do OTAs have an inherent advantage because their product data is already structured for machines?

Ollie's argument is that independent operators still have an opportunity — but sitting around waiting isn't the strategy. Websites, structured data, reviews, FAQs, rich content and product information need to become increasingly machine-readable.

We also talk about security, commercially sensitive data, running AI models locally, controlling API costs and why Ollie thinks someone inside a tourism business should be spending serious time every week experimenting with this technology.

If you run a tour, activity, attraction or experience business, this is one of those episodes where you'll probably want Claude or ChatGPT open in another window while you're listening.

And we only made it through five of Ollie's ten ideas — so there may need to be a Part Two.

Subscribe for more conversations with the founders, operators and builders working at the intersection of AI and travel.

#TravelAI #AI #TravelTech #ToursAndActivities #Tourism #TourOperator #ClaudeAI #AgenticAI #TravelMarketing #SEO #AEO #ArtificialIntelligence #EverythingAIInTravel

How can travel companies turn their customers into storytellers—and use AI to unlock insights hidden inside those stories?
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, Tony Carne sits down with Veerle Wit, founder of Travel Diaries, to explore how a simple travel journaling app has evolved into an AI-powered platform helping tour operators capture authentic user-generated content, marketing insights, and customer feedback.
Veerle shares her remarkable journey from National Geographic travel journalist to startup founder, how she built Travel Diaries with a microloan and a small development team, and why authentic travel stories are becoming even more valuable in the age of AI.
We discuss:
- How Travel Diaries started from a personal need while backpacking through South America
- Building a travel startup while working as a travel journalist
- Growing to more than 100,000 users and launching a mobile app
- Why travel journals create far richer customer insights than traditional surveys
- Using AI to analyse thousands of pages of customer stories automatically
- Extracting hotel reviews, activity feedback and future travel intent from travel journals
- Turning customer stories into SEO articles, social media content and marketing assets
- Why authentic user-generated content is becoming increasingly valuable for AI search
- How tour operators can encourage travellers to document their trips
- The future of AI-assisted travel journaling and personalised travel content
To learn more, reach out to Veerle on [email protected]
If you're interested in AI, travel marketing, user-generated content, customer insights, tourism technology or startup innovation, this episode offers a fascinating look at how one company is creating an entirely new data asset from the stories travellers naturally want to tell.
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders, builders and innovators shaping the future of AI in travel.
#AI #TravelAI #TravelTech #Tourism #TravelMarketing #UserGeneratedContent #TravelDiaries #CustomerInsights #ArtificialIntelligence #TravelIndustry #TravelInnovation #EverythingAIInTravel #Startup #ContentMarketing

In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, Tony Carne sits down with Bethany Reitsma from the Travel Technology Association to explore the fast-changing world of travel tech startups, AI-native companies, angel investing, and the future of innovation in travel.

Bethany shares how the Travel Technology Association evolved from representing major industry players like Booking, Expedia, and TripAdvisor into building a growing startup ecosystem focused on helping founders get connected, get advice, and get funded.

They discuss:

• Why AI-native travel startups are emerging faster than ever
• The challenge of fundraising in travel tech today
• How angel investors are approaching AI and travel startups
• Why proprietary data and integrations matter more than ever
• The rise of hyper-personalized travel experiences
• How Travel Tech Association helps founders connect with investors
• The importance of founder communities and peer learning
• Emerging startups like Drifter AI and Pintours AI
• How AI is changing travel discovery and trip planning
• Why travel startups can now build more with less funding

Whether you’re building a travel startup, investing in travel technology, or simply trying to understand where AI is taking the industry next, this conversation offers a valuable inside look at one of the most important ecosystems shaping travel innovation.

Guest: Bethany Reitsma
Organization: Travel Technology Association

They raised money in AI travel…which already makes Odynn one of the rare ones.
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, I sit down with John Taylor Garner, founder of Odynn, to unpack what they’re building at the intersection of travel, loyalty, fintech, and AI.
We get into:
Why John left a top trading desk at Merrill to start building in travel
What he learned from his first startup, Card Curator
Why dynamic loyalty pricing broke the old model
How Odynn powers travel portals, rewards, and loyalty infrastructure for banks, fintechs, and travel companies
Why the financialisation of travel is still one of the biggest opportunities in the sector
Where Hopper, Expedia, Booking, and the neobanks fit into the landscape
What Odynn is doing with its new raise, and where the company goes next
If you care about where loyalty, payments, AI, and travel distribution are headed, this is a great one.
👇 Subscribe for more conversations with the builders shaping AI in travel

In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, I sit down with Jason Swick, a longtime Simpleview leader who spent more than 15 years deep in destination marketing before launching Swix AI.
We get into:
Why DMO teams have a capacity problem, a speed problem, and a knowledge problem
Why most AI adoption today is still tactical, not strategic
The real issue with tools like N8N and Make for most tourism teams…
How Swix is trying to make AI usable across every skill level in an organisation
The difference between chatbots, assistants, automations, and true agents
Why the future isn’t one “AI champion” inside the business — it’s shared systems the whole team can use
If you work in destination marketing, tourism ops, or travel tech, this one is a smart look at what AI adoption inside an organisation actually needs to look like.
👇 Subscribe for more conversations with the builders shaping AI in travel.

Looking for the Videreo information? You can find the case study here

Egor Karpovich built 12 AI agents in 5 weeks…
…and now they’re running parts of his travel company without sleeping.
In this episode of the Everything AI & Travel Podcast, I sit down with Egor Karpovich from Travel Code to unpack one of the most fascinating AI setups I’ve seen in travel so far.
Egor explains how he and his team went from no-code workflows to a real agent workforce inside their bootstrapped corporate travel SaaS business — including:
A lead agent coordinating the others
Legal, partnerships, sales, SEO, PR, analyst, and dev agents
Agents creating tasks for other agents
MCP servers, APIs, browser tools, and shared memory
How his team now works with agents day to day
We also get into:
Why Eastern Europe’s travel distribution model is so different
Why they pivoted away from travel agents and into corporate travel
What building a $9M GMV travel business without outside funding actually looks like
Why Egor thinks solo founders with 50 AI agents are coming sooner than people expect
If you want to understand what “agentic travel” actually looks like in the real world — not just in demos — this is the episode.
👇 Subscribe for more conversations with the makers, shapers, and buyers of AI in travel.

If looking for the Videreo information, you can find it here: https://gamma.app/docs/Creator-Marketing-gets-measured-in-Palau-oicfv54zvjq0ckb?mode=doc

In this episode of Everything AI & Travel, I sit down with Robert Cole (Rock Cheetah) — Cornell hotel grad, ex-Four Seasons marketing leader, Sabre/Travelocity-era hotel distribution veteran, and a longtime Phocuswright analyst.
We get practical on what “AI readiness” really means for travel businesses:
Why digital identity becomes the foundation for the agentic world
The difference between traveler identity vs hospitality entity identity (hotel ≠ just a building…)
Why “standards” are hard in travel (and why the tech world solved this decades ago)
How Robert uses Claude / Gemini / OpenAI (and his “reasoning gauntlet” to rip drafts apart)
What small operators should do now (security, schema, sources of truth…) before agents arrive
If you’re a hotelier, tour operator, DMO, or travel tech builder trying to understand what’s coming next — this is one to save.
👇 Subscribe for more AI-in-travel conversations
💬 Comment: what’s your biggest worry about agents + trust?

John Lyotier is back — and we go deep on the .BOT future.
AI has moved from “tools” to agents, and John’s building at the sharp end: hundreds of AI-built travel brands, an agentic network underneath, and now a big bet on .bot domains (trip.bot, hotels.bot, ski.bot…).
We talk:

• Why .bot could become the identity layer for agent-to-agent commerce
• What “agentic search” means for travel distribution
• GEO/AEO: what’s real, what’s hype
• Marriott + Google’s AI selling moves — threat or opportunity?
• The coming “return to real” in travel: tech scaffolding, human soul

 Subscribe for more AI x Travel builders & operators.To get your hands on your free trial of Videreo, check out our most recent case study with details on the free trial here.

This week I’m joined by Jason Bryant, VP Strategy (Consumer Applications) at Oracle and founder/former CEO of Nor1.

We talk about:

• How Nor1 started (perishable inventory + willingness-to-pay for upgrades)

• What changes when a startup gets absorbed into a Fortune 500 (risk profile, security standards, speed)

• Why the next phase of AI in hospitality is orchestration, not “the next best model”

• Why unified data platforms are a prerequisite for personalization

• The real reason “AI pilots fail”: not tech, but execution, workflow design, and measuring P&L impact

If you’re in hotels, travel tech, or building AI products, this is a practical conversation about what actually works in 2026.

See the Videreo case study and start your free trial here: https://gamma.app/docs/Creator-Marketing-gets-measured-in-Palau-oicfv54zvjq0ckb

Welcome to 2026 and the first episode of the year on Everything AI in Travel.

As tradition now, I’m joined by returning guest Christian Watts to do something most people avoid: we revisit our predictions from last year and grade them.

Christian ran our 2025 predictions through an AI scoring system (he swears he didn’t rig it), and we go point-by-point on what actually happened:

• Search changed, but Google didn’t die

• LLMs reshaped how people plan (even if they still “Google” quick stuff)

• “Agentic AI” became the buzzword, but real-world booking is still messy

• OTAs didn’t collapse, but the “dumb pipes” conversation got loud

• Authenticity vs AI-generated content became a cultural fault line

• And yes, we argue about whether AI is already mainstream… or just mainstream in our bubbles

We also get into the uncomfortable part: which predictions were genuinely wrong, and what that tells us about forecasting in a year where the platform shifts don’t slow down.

If you want the written predictions, watch on YouTube where they’re on-screen.