In this episode of Everything AI in Travel, I’m joined by Aimee Armstrong, co-founder of Altitude AI, an AI-native startup that’s taking on the messy, unloved world of corporate travel for SMEs – and breaking a few ceilings along the way.

Aimee’s journey is wild: from motorcycle mechanic on Australian superbike race teams, rebuilding race engines and specialising in suspension, to product leadership roles at SiteMinder, Domain and Go1, and now building an AI travel assistant that lets employees book and manage business travel directly from Slack, Teams or WhatsApp – no clunky portals, no extra logins, no “I’ll do it later” inbox guilt.

We dig into:

How Aimee went from race garages and Phillip Island to leading product in travel tech What she learned at SiteMinder about integrations, partnerships and the hotel tech ecosystem

Why SMEs are massively under-served by traditional TMCs and corporate travel platforms The rise of remote work, offsites and “unmanaged” travel – and why tools built for finance teams don’t work for everyday travellers

How Altitude AI acts like a digital executive assistant: reading your calendar, spotting upcoming trips, nudging you to book, and keeping you inside policy Dealing with off-platform leakage (when people sneak off to OTAs and Booking.com)

The rise of “bleisure” travel and how policies and tools need to adapt

Why AI-native teams (and AI engineering talent) are the new moat in travel tech

The AI trends Aimee’s watching closely – from agentic workflows to video generation and hyper-personalisation  

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For a curated roundup of the biggest AI + travel stories each week, plus extra analysis I don’t cover on the pod:  Head to everythingaiintravel.com or find the link in my LinkedIn bio (Tony Carne).  

Connect with Amy Want to talk corporate travel, AI agents or partnering with Altitude AI? Find Aimee Armstrong on LinkedIn and say you came from the podcast.

If you work in travel and your company still isn’t taking AI seriously… your career might be at risk.
This episode gives you a practical, real-world way to catch up fast.

Today, we hand the mic to Dr. Santiago Rodriguez — educator, PhD, and creator of a suite of free AI tools built specifically for travel professionals, tourism boards, and small businesses.

In just 15 minutes, Santiago shows you how to use his Contextual Market Assessment AI: a powerful tool that evaluates your source market and destination across 29 factors and 5 key dimensions — economic, sociopolitical, environmental, psycho-emotional, and more.

It’s the kind of market intelligence that normally takes weeks of research and thousands of dollars…
Now available instantly — and you can run it anytime you need.

• How to access Santiago’s 9 free travel-specific AI tools

• How market intelligence becomes your unfair advantage

• How to assess ANY source market + destination pairing using context

• How AI weighs risk, opportunity, and scenario planning

• How to spot optimistic vs conservative demand forecasts

• How to adjust strategy based on real-time global conditions

• Why guiding AI with your expertise produces 10× better results

• How to update your market strategy in under 30 minutes, not months

This session walks you step-by-step through:

• Researching the source market

• Researching the destination

• Understanding contextual interrelations

• Rating risk/opportunity across 29 factors

• Generating forecast percentages

• Creating optimistic + conservative strategy scenarios

• Exporting an executive summary you can use immediately

If you want to stay relevant, level up your AI IQ, or help your company stop guessing and start knowing — this episode is for you.

Get Santiago’s free tools here:
santiagor.com/free-ai-tools

Santiago also offers a coaching program where you can learn how to:

• Use all nine tools effectively

• Apply them to your own markets

• Build your own custom GPTs for travel

This show highlights the makers, shapers, and buyers of AI in travel.
It’s now one of the Top 3 Travel Technology podcasts on Apple Podcasts — and most listeners find us through search (wild, right?).

Hit Subscribe if you want weekly insights on AI, travel, distribution, and the tools that are reshaping our industry.

On today's episode of our new and FREE educational series to help everyone get up to speed on AI, instructor Santiago takes us into the first tool - The Tourism Expert.

The Tourism Expert is a custom GPT which you can access for FREE to help you build out your initial strategy for your business.

Santiago takes you step by step on exactly how you use this tool to build an actionable 3 month plan for your business. This will include creating visitor personas and then building from there into the other elements in this course.

The tool will help coach you into building the future of your business.

In this first episode of our new education series, educator Santiago Rodriguez PHD takes us through exactly what this FREE course entails, how you can use it and where to find the tools.

The aim of this education series is to help your business attract high value visitors and boost your career if you are an employee.

www.santiagor.com/free-ai-tools

Welcome to this introduction to our new educational series on AI in Travel.

Quite frankly we are concerned. A recent EY study found only 29% of employees in billion dollar companies believe they have been given sufficient education in how to work with AI and AI agents.

We suspect that number is about 10% in travel and even less in SMB's.

Those in that 29% are set to jump to the head of the promotion list and be sought after by other companies over the next couple of years. This is one of those rare opportunities for people to make a huge leap in their career trajectory - simply by being curious and digging in to get themselves ahead of the pack.

We are removing cost from the decision tree with this series which we are offering totally for free to anyone who wants to finally get themselves or their company moving on the AI train.

The cost of not getting educated is the true cost here.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcast and newsletter to get each edition notified to you.

You can find the tools we will be working with alongside educator and PHD, Mr Santiago Rodriguez who gets paid by companies to provide this education to the staff within here: www.santiagor.com/free-ai-tools

Claire Robinson is building a data powerhouse to pair with generative AI from her base in regional France.

What started as a need for more granular information in her own travels has grown into a sophisticated system to collect all manner of data that nowhere else.

Hear how Claire, who comes from a scientific background, is using that data to provide grounded AI outputs that can beat the competition.

Mennan Yelkenci isn’t waiting for someone else to solve the big consumer opportunity in travel + AI. He is building the solution.

This is an episode about taking big swings for wins.

I always love catching up with Alex Bainbridge. Not only is he the number one member of the Everything AI in Slack community but the way he looks at and conceives (rather than perceives - this man is a doer, not a watcher) the world is just so different to most of us.

I therefore jumped at the chance to co-host a session at the upcoming Arival event in Washington DC with Alex where anyone who has their own ideas, thoughts or challenges with AI can drop by and we can chat those through as a group.

I caught up with Alex in advance here on the pod to help set the scene and to give a glimpse to those who can’t make it. (Discounted ticket below if you can).

We also have special offer for those looking to attend the ⁠⁠Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences⁠⁠ in early October, happening in Washington DC. You'll hear about it early in this episode.

Use Promo Code: FOATOCRDC to get a special discount just for our listeners.

I'll be attending so join me this 29–30 September in Washington, DC for the Arival AI Forum for Destination Experiences — a hands-on, intensive learning forum built for destination experiences leaders serious about applying AI in meaningful, measurable ways.

Special Offer for AI Forum at Arival 2025

The McKinsey report into the impact of AI agents in travel runs at 47 pages.

Only the truly dedicated are reading that one.

For the rest of us - here is a podcast made by AI about AI using NotebookLM to get the jist of what is in the report.

I saw a post by Amir Mohajer of HostAI on LinkedIn that stopped me in my tracks.

Amir posted about how the chase of shiny new objects in the AI landscape nearly killed his entire business.

Whilst the business survived, there were casualties, including Amir's two co-founders. This story is a warning and a celebration all rolled up into one.