The Rise of Agentic AI Part 3

Agentic AI is quickly becoming the difference between a travel experience that feels generic and one that adapts to you in real time. In the final episode of our Agentic AI Series, Dan sits down with three builders deep in the work: Jeff Kischuk, CEO of Tripian, Jessie Fischer, Founder and CEO of GuestOS, and Marius Nigond, CEO of iWander. Together, they break down what “agentic” really means for travel in 2026, AI that can make decisions, not just generate content, and the infrastructure required to make it work reliably and at scale.

We get into tangible use cases you can immediately picture, from iWander creating dynamic, in-destination audio tours and recommendations, to GuestOS running hotel phone lines with AI teammates that capture conversations and turn guest needs into action. We also explore Tripian’s role as the critical data layer, structuring and connecting travel data so AI agents can deliver relevant, contextual, and dependable experiences. For anyone in tours and activities, hospitality tech, or travel startups, this conversation shows how agentic AI can reduce friction while still preserving what travelers value most, meaningful human moments.

We also take an honest look at the challenges ahead: fragmented tech stacks, overtourism, personalization that risks crossing into discomfort, and the misconception that any one company will “own” the traveler. From data ownership to dynamic, real-time itineraries, including complex scenarios like cruise timing, this episode maps the trust layer the industry needs before AI-driven booking truly scales.

Thanks to Maya for sponsoring this series!

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Agentic AI

SPEAKER_04 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Travel Trends season seven and our agencai series, which has proven to be, from all the feedback we've received so far, potentially our most popular series that we've ever done, which is incredibly exciting. And I think one of the reasons for that is the caliber of the guests that we've had on the previous two episodes and today. And then obviously the topic is meeting the moment, that's for sure. Everyone needs to understand how agentic AI is impacting travel in 2026. We're actually doing an event in a couple of weeks' time, depending on when you're listening to this, you might still be able to attend. But if not, you can definitely watch the recordings. We'll have a live recording of our in-person agenci series that we're recording in Intrepid's office in Toronto. And one of the companies that is sponsoring that event is Trippian, and Jeff Kisschuk is here to join us today. But you're going to know all of the guests that are part of the series. But just to give you some context to how this has come together, we started with the rise of Agentic AI and had Gillad, Christian, and Tani Perry on our very first episode on this topic. And the idea there was to bring together an investor, an operator, and a consultant to set the stage for agentic AI. And then in episode two, we had Ben from Maya, who's kindly sponsored this series, Michelle from Mind Trip, and Brianna from Travel AI. And that was much more focused on the enterprise side of agentic AI. And you can see the success of companies like Mind Trip and Travel AI in this space. Ben, of course, and Maya is much more of a startup, but a very successful one. And today we have three of the hottest and most innovative agencai, and I would say native AI startups in the travel industry set to join us. So this is going to be an amazing episode. And I can't wait to introduce you to all three of these individuals. Many of them are very well known to our travel trends listeners. All of them have been a part of our AI summits for the last few years. And just so you know, you can register now free for our event in October, thanks to all of our amazing sponsors. But let me bring in our guests for today's conversation. So first we have Jeff Kischuk, who is the CEO of Trippian. Welcome back, Jeff. Glad to be here. Great to have you. And next, I'd like to welcome back Jesse Fisher, who is the founder and CEO of GuestOS, who kindly sponsored our luxury hotel series to kick off this season. Welcome back, Jesse.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Thanks, Dan. Great to be here.

Meet Trippian, GuestOS, And iWander

SPEAKER_04 2:24

And then we have Marius Nagon, who is the co-founder of IWander. And all of these individuals are great friends and colleagues of mine. And Marius and Jesse are two businesses that I am personally very vested in. I'm an advisor to both of their companies. I'm great friends with Jeff as well, but I just wanted to establish that for all of our listeners because we've been working together for the last couple of years, and I've been so impressed with how they've grown these businesses. And all three of these individuals are certainly leading the way. Jesse in hospitality, Marius in tours and activities, and Jeff with all the work he's doing across infrastructure. So we really have the perfect panel to have this conversation. And I just wanted to highlight that this series is kindly sponsored by our friends at Maya. And Maya is the AI agent for travel companies helping brands automate conversations, support internal teams, personalize engagement at scale, and convert more travelers across channels. You can learn more at MayaTravel.ai. That's M-A-Y-A-Travel.ai. Thanks again to Ben and the team. And on that note, let's jump right into this discussion. And I'm going to go to Jeff first. And what what I'm going to do is I'm going to have each of our panelists just give a brief overview of their company, what they do for those of you who are meeting them for the first time. So Jeff, tell us about your role and tell us about Trippian.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Hi, thanks, Dan. So at Trippian, we're a travel data company. We were formed in 2016. And where we've evolved to is we're a data infrastructure company that supports agentic AI. We're that structured, unsexy plumbing that helps make those connections, ties things together, makes the suggestions, provides the data across multiple layers to connect experiences to travelers. And we've been doing this and kind of very quietly under the scene, but that's the nature of infrastructure. That's great.

SPEAKER_04 4:06

And Jeff, you're based in Toronto, same as me as well, right? That's great.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

And that's where we were able to have a coffee together this morning. So I appreciate that, Dan.

SPEAKER_04 4:12

Yeah, of course. No, thank you, Jeff. And Jesse is at the heart of everything that's happening in technology, San Francisco, but she also has a strong connection to Yosemite. Anyone who's heard her incredible family stories, it's remarkably inspiring. She's grown up in hospitality and she's really innovated in the technology side for both her family business and expanded this technology more broadly. So tell us, Jesse, about your background and give everyone an overview of GuestOS.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Thanks, Dan. GuestOS is an AI-powered communication platform. We call them AI teammates for hotels. And growing up in hotels, uh, since as long as I can remember, helping guests and uh, you know, doing every part of the hotel operations, reservations, front desk, uh I noticed there's a lot of repetition. So I really just built GuestOS to solve some uh operational problems and challenges at my family's hotels. And then I started talking to other hoteliers, showing them what I had built. And then it turns out everyone else needed it too. So that's why I started GuestOS.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

For those of you who are multitasking, it's guestos.ai is their main website. And on that note, I want to bring Marius into the conversation. Marius is based in London, and I get to see him at many of the conferences, and he has really been someone that has stood out to me over many years as a leader in the travel industry. I knew him from his last startup. So we've known each other for seven or eight years now, and I've been an early supporter of what Marius has built with iWander. But tell everyone, Marius, more about you and what you've built with iWander.

What Makes AI Truly Agentic

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Great. Well, thanks so much for having us. Thanks so much for having us all on, Dan. So I'm co-founder iWonder, which I founded with my brother Antoine. So iWonder is an AI travel companion that helps customers explore new destinations. So what we do, we really serve that customer when they're in destination, so during their trip, with guided audio tours, which we build on the fly thanks to AI, and inspiration on what to do, what to see, what to eat. So, like these great personalized recommendations. Uh so we deploy our tech through Travel Apps, so inside of Travel Apps to help travel brands engage with their customers once they're in destination. And we also have an IRS app, which is out on the app stores. So go check it out. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

And so, Marius, I'm gonna come back to you first and then we'll continue to have a dynamic, free-flowing conversation because you all have so much to contribute on this topic and have a great deal of domain expertise in regards to how agentic AI is impacting the travel industry. But I want to speak to each of your utilizations of agentic AI because Marius, as we've covered over the course of these episodes, to understand the difference between generative AI and agentic AI, the simple way to delineate between the two is generative AI creates content and agentic AI actually makes decisions on your behalf. And the very nature of the platform you've built with iWander is to be able to have a platform that will help make decisions and recommendations for travelers to have the best experience in a destination. And I know that City Sightseeing is one of your key partners to do hop-on, hop-off experiences in cities to give people the right recommendations that are truly personalized. And you know, I've been a big believer in this category for many years with the idea that, as I've described to our listeners in previous episodes, that someone would arrive at a hostel, and I use that example just because the younger generation with their iPhone, putting their headphones on and walking towards the Coliseum and having a customized tour based on their specific interests, whether it be food or architecture. And so I'm a big believer in the potential for the technology to deliver on that. And so tell us a little bit more about having built an agentic platform and how you view agentic AI here in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Sure. So I mean, like for me, agentic AI is just giving the AI the freedom to, you know, have that agency to make decisions autonomously. And so the way which we do that, we're, you know, the way which we give our AI models that agency to make those decisions and basically orchestrate that best possible experience for that individual customer, um, is to basically like make sure that it generates content for that specific customer in real time. So instead of, for instance, serving up static itineraries, um, what our AI does is it goes like searches our POI database in real time, it pulls live information from online sources, uh, it really understands that traveler's like context and intent, and then decides what type of experience to serve that traveler. So that could be building uh a walking tour with AI on the fly, it could be building up a visual itinerary with just a couple of recommendations on what to do, what to see, what to eat. And uh yeah, so you mentioned, you know, that kind of that use case for a customer who arrives in a destination. Like for us, like, you know, it could even be you arrive in Rome, you're you wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning, you're jet lagged, um, and then you could just like go outside your go outside your hotel, ask our our tech or our app to build yourself, build your give give me a walking tour of this neighborhood that you know dives into the history, the the political history, like shows me a couple of statues, and it will go build that in real time for you. Uh so that you know was not possible before AI, and it's like really quite magical to see it all come together. For sure. That's great, Mary.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

And Jesse, you built the very first agent for travel trends named Jet. You even gave him his identity. And it was so exciting to work with you on this because I got to understand exactly how guest OX works. GuestOS works and the back end of being able to build an AI agent that would then serve for the people who are registering for our AI summit. They could contact Jet, they could ask questions about the event, about tickets, about content. And as many of our listeners know and and Jesse knows, I present Jet on stage almost every keynote that I give at World Travel Market, and I have a great deal of fun doing it to interact with an AI agent on stage. And I've kind of hone the questions I typically ask, but I always throw something new into the mix to see how JET will respond. And I'm continually amazed at how the technology has evolved and changed. So you really have been at the heart of agentic AI with GuestOS, focused on hospitality in particular. But tell us a little bit more about Agenc AI in hospitality, your platform, and how you're seeing its impact on the industry.

Hotels Use AI Teammates On Calls

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yes, and thanks for uh letting us bring Jet to life. It's so much fun because today we have so many more uh we call them AI teammates, but uh every property, you know, no two properties are the same and they choose a name and it's a whole team decision. And then uh really with the agentic side of it, it's uh based primarily on the brand, the property, the processes. You know, I'm here at the St. Regis in Mexico City for the direct booking summit where Guest OS powered uh their AI communication. And um, yeah, I mean the details here are are very specific to their brand. And so um by that, it would the AI teammate would be trained based on their processes that exist today, whereas other you know, resorts have a different brand and um persona like ones in the mountain terrain. So it's just uh really incredible to be able to bring that AI teammate to life and to base it on uh the brand, but also have it reflect with every interaction um, you know, the brand persona because uh guest OS takes over the main phone line for every uh customer. So it's really a huge trust, uh huge trust with guest interactions because it's their first touch point. So guest calling, uh the main number, immediately talk to one of our AI teammates. We just onboarded our first two Michelin key uh property. So, you know, the expectations are high. We're their first AI partner and really setting the standard there. So that's great.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

We're gonna get into some use cases here in a minute and also share how anyone listening to this should be thinking about leveraging agentic tools. And on that note, I want to bring Jeff into the conversation since you know when he sits at the infrastructure and he mentions being in the unsexy part of the business. But the reality is this is probably the most important part is the infrastructure layer. And when you look at the list of clients that Trippian has, not only is it incredibly impressive, from major credit card companies to some of the largest players in the travel industry. You may not have heard of Trippian yet. You will, but a lot of the larger companies are already working with Trippian. So tell us a little bit, Jeff, more from an infrastructure point of view, since a lot of the work you're doing is in the back end around how agentic AI is being implemented specifically with your platform.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah, no, thanks for that, Dan. And it's really interesting, you know, the overlaps and hearing the way Marius and Jesse both talk about agentic AI because there is that common theme. And I think it's really about, you know, two key words I heard that we reflect on is trust and decision making. And those can be very deep and get very layered, and that's the way Trippian looks at it. So when we think of decision making, we think about how do we provide the data in order for those agents to make better decisions? What sort of data do they have? Do they have the right context? Do they have the right relevance? Are they able to react to a moment in time which is always changing? So it becomes, you know, how deep do you get? And when we get into the agentic AI with our clients, like you mentioned, it's how do we take that travel data and connect it back into a product catalog that a DMC may have with offers and operators and tour guides? How do we connect agentic AI back into an offers management system and partners for a travel credit card? It's bringing that data into an ecosystem that the agent can make those relevant decisions for your relevance at the time and also be able to support that transaction layer. Because at the end of the day, travel's a business. And where we think about enterprise, everything resolves down to a transaction. And how do we provide that data layer and that agentic AI tools to enable transactions for our enterprise travel clients? That's that's the way we really dig down into agentic AI.

SPEAKER_04 14:08

Well, and let's look at a specific use case of that, since I know you power uh itineraries that need to be dynamic and also adapt in real time. And an example of that, you know, but for many years when I was working at the travel corporation, brands like Trafalgar, there was an attempt to introduce an app that unfortunately didn't land because the main challenge was that it wasn't fit for purpose in the marketplace because the app itself did not have a dynamic itinerary. The itinerary was slipped under the door every day of the guests going out on the coach for the day, and it was adjusted by the tour leader in advance of that next morning to adjust uh checkout times and changes to the route or the itinerary based on what was uh uh closed or unavailable. And so unfortunately, as a traveler, what I had on the app was the generic itinerary that was part of what the tour that I bought, but it was changing day to day. And so instead of relying on my phone, I was relying on a piece of paper slipped under the door. And that sort of highlights the challenges that exist in the travel industry in terms of operating. Um, so tell us a little bit more about agentic AI in the back end and how platforms like yours are making sure that you can update content in real time and feed that through to all the different players that are involved.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Yeah, no, that's a good, it's it's quite interesting. We uh have a product in market with a in the cruise industry, and it's called Cruise Genie. And one of our favorite features in Cruise Genie that we built into it is a very dynamic calling it return to ports. And it's really about that dynamic update. So you can take somebody through the town, through their port excursion, shore excursion. Times can change, they can get carried away, spend too much time at the museum, think they have to go to that cafe because it's on their itinerary. But in the background, we're monitoring the time, we're monitoring their location, always doing an update on what are the best routes and ability for this person to get back to port and sending notifications to that traveler saying, skip this cafe, go to this one instead, because you need to leave now to get back to your ship on time. Because, you know, a bad recommendation, you know, isn't gonna ruin a cruise passenger's day, but missing their ship because they had a good recommendation they spent too long at will ruin their day. So we bring agentic AI into solving those kind of problems. So got it.

SPEAKER_04 16:26

That's super helpful. That's why I want to make this as practical for our listeners as possible and just speak about some of the use cases and the challenges you're overcoming. Because clearly, anyone who's in the startup space knows that the most important thing is to figure out what problem you're solving. And then in terms of how you actually go about that, will obviously determine how successful you're going to be in the marketplace. And given all three of you are having significant success in the marketplace, one of the things you then get visibility of is how people are using these tools. Because it's one thing to conceive them, it's something else to roll them out and then see people interacting with them. So, Jesse, I want to bring you back back in on that topic because we've definitely seen chatbots being one of the first utilizations in the world of generative AI moving into agentic AI. And it's the perfect use case in many ways for agentic so that you can actually speak, which I still can't believe how many people are not taking the opportunities to talk to their phones versus type. And just so everyone knows it's three times faster, even though I talk fast. Um, I it's so for me, it might be four times faster than my typing. But the reality is you can provide voice commands so much more quickly. And you're seeing that with platforms like Whisperflow and some of the developments happening within these platforms, but you were actually there even earlier than that with a voice platform speaking to an agent. So, what I'd love to know from a hospitality point of view, what are some of the guest experiences that you have seen that have been significantly improved by introducing your technology? Like what was breaking down before, and what are you solving by uh applying this tool as opposed to just getting new towels to your room or something you know as simple as that?

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, that is a great question. And I think that you just really covered uh something I tell every customer that we speak with before you know they become guest OS customers. It's like really determining step one, what problem do you want to solve? Do not even think about the technology, just think about the problem and then bring in the technology. And so I think it's really focused on the immediate pain point. And um, for a lot of people, that's just understanding what people are calling about. Um, you know, we give that insight because every call that comes through, uh, the hotel gets real-time transcripts, and then action items are generated from that to their team. So we're definitely deep into the back-end operational layer of uh of hotels. And through that, we can see what guests are calling about, uh, identify exactly where the pain points are, where things are uh, you know, not being completed end to end, and then really act almost like a consultant to say, uh, okay, these are the things uh happening today, rather than, okay, you can do a you can do a million different things with AI. Uh yes, that's true, but why not just fix them where the pattern is today?

SPEAKER_03 19:14

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In-Destination Decisions And Overtourism

SPEAKER_04 21:25

And now, back to the show. One of the things that I'm keen to ask Marius on the idea of the in-destination experience, and this is where I genuinely feel like this is probably the most unexplored space. Most people book uh either in advance or they'll book the day trips the day before. Um, but very uh seldomly are people interacting with technology in their actual travel experience. And I think that there's uh some misunderstandings, Marius, around that. I'm sure you would agree when when we attend you know the arrival conferences and people are concerned around you know the livelihood of travel guys. And the reality of the human versus the machine, if you will. But the reality is that people are embracing technology when they're traveling. Most people are on their phones already. And one of the problems that I have certainly seen collaborating with Get Your Guide, and when I was there in their office in Berlin doing a panel about some of the challenges of over tourism in major cities in Europe, is that most people are going to the same places at the same time. And these places are overwhelmed and they're not having a great guest experience. And so one of the things they're trying to encourage people to do is to travel to other places in the city and at different times. And this is where I feel like your platform is so perfectly positioned to offer travelers that hand holding that they need in destination. So I'd love to know how you're seeing agentic AI in destination serving travelers.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, for sure. And I think for me, that in destination piece is the perfect use case for this because, you know, a lot of you know, a lot of your time spent in destination is not necessarily structured. You don't necessarily know what you're going to do that day or uh what you've got planned, even like for instance that afternoon. And I think one of the first things which we've seen actually is uh since we even since we released the very first, our very first chatbots within other travel apps is the ability to influence that in-trip decision-making process about what that customer wants to see or do, or like these sort of questions, you know, like for instance, what can I do this afternoon, or like what area do you recommend? And seeing the customer actually act on those um recommendations as well. And a big thing which we actually offer our customers as well is is insights, so data and insights. And that for me is just so so interesting because then you can actually see like we've almost got like you know tourist heat maps and flows of the city, and you can see all these different dots. And what a beautiful use case of this technology is is that you can actually start directing the customer to different hotspots, and especially once you start understanding a bit more about that customer, who they are, uh, what sort of things they like, start creating cohorts, you can start pushing those customers towards experiences and places which you know they'll like. And so, yeah, it's uh I think I think it's uh it's a great use case for the technology, and also uh it's good to see customers actually coming good on those recommendations.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

Well, and to your point, I think Jeff does a lot of work with tours and activity providers, and so keen to have him jump in on this point as well because one of the things that happens, Marius, in the tours and activity space is uh the fragmented environment. You still hear Douglas Quimby talking about, it came up in his recent report about the multi-day tour space. It's messy and it continues to be messy. And everyone keeps talking about how fragmented it is and how offline this industry is. And you keep hearing these shocking stats that you know, still 70% of these uh tours and activities are not available to be booked online. And so, you know, for you to be successful, Marius, when someone's using your platform and then choosing to book a property, they need to be bookable through your system. And so that's where Jeff and Trippian comes in. So, Jeff, keen to get your take on this. In terms of where we are today in this journey, because obviously there's still a lot yet to come, but where do you see we are when you hear Marius share what they're working on with their platform?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, no, that this gets super exciting because whenever I have somebody else like Marius to talk data about and data concentrations, yeah, I'm no longer alone. These were things you know we've been talking about, and so it's so great that it's it's being adopted. And what that illustrates is like what Marius was kind of saying, and and related to what Jesse was also saying, is that these decisions and these ability to recommend and direct people require information. They require alternatives, they require tag data, they require some sort of real state knowledge of is there a discount at this tour that's suitable for a family of four that has an English-speaking alternative that's 300 meters away the other way, go here instead. And that's something at Tripping that we've really been working on. As you say, we work with a lot of different tour providers and suppliers. And what we do actually is we do a lot of heavy lifting where we vectorize the data of all of those different suppliers. And to your point about having a chat interface, we we built something like a data parser that somebody can really just describe what they're interested in. Our data parser will extract it into usable data and tags and then run it against through our algorithms to find those matches, to find those places that aren't busy right now. And it's taking an interest in a context of a real-time need and being able to have real data deliver it. So for the agents to get effective, again, the way they're gonna get smarter and the way they're gonna evolve is if they have good data to work on. And a lot of that data is in real time, and a lot of that data is through real people. So when we think in the future of what's next, is how do we get that context? How do we get those hidden gems? How do we get that? There's a pop-up shop that opened a block way. And these are things I think we're all trying to keep an eye on and solve for, because it will deliver that information for the agents to make these better recommendations. So it's super relevant. And to your point about the fragmentation, it's just, I think, again, I hate saying data is the answer to everything, but it kind of is. But more data can eliminate fragmentation by making better decisions.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

And that's that's kind of where we're focusing on. If if I can just jump in on there as well, I couldn't agree, I I couldn't agree more, Jeff. But um, just to push back on something which Dan said about they these experiences have to be bookable. I don't necessarily think that that's true. So, for instance, what Jeff just said there about the shop, you know, that shop is not bookable, but that's almost like a point of interest with data which is worth seeing. Okay, the shop might not be the example, but one of the best experiences that I've had recently is this tiny little boat along a river which had like it was almost like a micro experience. It's not available online, but I was still able to find that place, walk to it, and then pay on the door, and that was a great experience. And I think that's almost more important. Like that bringing that context and that information online for me is key to digitizing the experience, not just the transaction there. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 27:53

Cool. Really good point. Yeah, it's a really good point, Mary. And I and totally take your point about whether something's bookable or not. The one thing I'm actually keen to understand from Jesse's point of view with hospitality is when someone stays at a hotel and has a great experience in destination, what we've seen is they then give a more positive rating to that hotel. So hotels are incentivized to add in experiences or offer experiences to their guests. So, Jesse, whether it's bookable or not, what do you see in terms of offering guests activities in destination from your experience running guest OS?

SPEAKER_01 28:24

Yeah, I really think about the guest experience as a whole destination. And I'll use Yosemite as an example. And I uh created this uh ecosystem, you know, uh map of how everything's connected with the visitor and how many touch points and different stakeholders are part of that process, especially somewhere like Yosemite National Park, where you have the federal government who manages the park. You have Eramark, who currently is a concessionaire doing all the tours and activities and lodging inside the park. And then you have all the local businesses, restaurants, tours, and activities uh that guests ask to do. And um, I really noticed because you know, I'm still very closely uh connected to our guest experience. So I see how guests are emailing us at our Yosemite resorts, and they always, because there's this level of trust, like they're staying with you, they're paying to stay with you, and they're asking you for the best things to do in the area: hikes, water rafting, rock climbing. And so just being able to provide them with the best things to do uh and give them those recommendations is huge. And it really does connect things. You know, okay, the highlight was rock climbing, and uh now I'll remember my Yosemite experience uh for that or something. You know, it's really all connected. Uh that's what that's one thing I will not stop talking about, is how it all connects.

SPEAKER_04 29:53

Yeah, one thing I've seen is that in the back end of your platform, the fact that you're capturing all this information over what people are asking, and then you can figure out how best to continue to train the platform to improve. And this is something that is really unique to this new technology that we only now have access to because when we were building out websites, we would often look at the site-wide search and what people were typing in as sort of keywords to figure out how we could improve the site architecture, people typing in like travel insurance, for example, because they couldn't find it. Now you have the ability to look at what they're asking. And that used to be something we used to have to listen into the contact center to understand the guest experience and journey. And then you got better technology that you could get sentiment analysis from the contact center. But really, with a platform like GuestOS, you have access to all this data and it's then how you use it. And I want to come back to this whole question because Jeff mentioned data and Marius, obviously, I know it's very important for you too, because ultimately, what does data do? It allows us to personalize the experience for guests. And this is where I think the first wave of uh generative AI tools has been a bit more limited in the respect to the fact that the itineraries would be more generic. What's a five-day itinerary of Valencia? It's very different depending on who you are and what type of traveler you are and who you're going with. You don't just want a generic itinerary. So, Marius, on this topic of personalization, I know how important it is to the iWander platform. How are you leveraging data to better understand who the customer is and make the right recommendations for them with agentic AI?

SPEAKER_00 31:18

So, I mean, for us, we've been on a long journey on this front, and I think, you know, the it's almost like the cold start problem where that experience needs to be great for that customer, assuming that you have zero data on him because on that, on that customer, because the reality is that most travel brands are not going to have any meaningful data on that customer. You know, you're not really gonna know too much about who that person is, and even like for instance, me, to take me as an example, I could be like super interested in, let's say, history and football. But if I go to a modern art museum, I want something to, you know, I want an experience based around modern art. So, you know, personalization, it's you know, that's just the the starting point to this about it's not just about what kind of data you can get on that customer, but it's also context. And I think context actually matters almost more than data points on the customer in a lot of in a lot of situations. Um, so yeah, I that's that's in terms of data, that's that's that's that's that's my answer on that.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

And Jeff, let's bring you back in on that one because obviously you brought up the topic of data, and I know how how critical that is to the clients you work with. Tell everyone, and especially for our listeners that are trying to get on this journey of better understanding data. And I know you and I we have met for coffee earlier today, as you alluded to, and it was always great to see you in person. And you and I meet at least once a month in Toronto. We have fascinating conversations on topics like this. And one of the things that we both know and here in our industry, it's all about data, and you know, may it's uh data in, data out, so you'll make you have to make sure you get accurate data, which isn't always an exciting conversation to have about data because it's more of what it what you can use it for. But tell us when people are at travel companies are trying to figure out how better to utilize their data and how impactful that can be working with a company like Trippian to actually leverage that information to make better booking experiences. Tell us, tell us your journey with data and and how you work with that Trippian.

Personalization Without Being Creepy

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah, no, it's interesting. And thanks for that. And I'm again, like Marius, really good setup, totally agree. And the thing area we struggled with is like many companies, we we hung on the personalization term. That was in the early days of AI, because it it landed and it it's something you could talk to people about. And I think we've all talked about personalization, and even on today, it's about the real time. Uh, we're all using words like the context and relevance, which I think is great. And I think it's all about you know, an easy interface, easy access to the data for the user to communicate and share their interests and time. That context can be shaped with things like weather, time of day, whether your booking was delayed, and that it's contextual awareness will know some things about your situation, which will help make it easier. But where it gets down into the enterprise in helping the enterprise extend and use that data, again, it's it's how do we tie into a product catalog of a company and their tours and our operations through tags and keywords in order to extract more data to drive that relevance, to give the AI agents more information to make a better informed decision. We'll have some POIs that may have like 120 tags of very minute uh elements on it. Same with tours, is we'll go through tours and extract themes, extract some keywords, extract some things that the local traveler described about that tour and try to pull out that context and store it so that the algorithms and the AI can be trained on it in order to connect that information. So between open data and then also enterprise data, where a travel company or DMC will have a lot of their own data historically over years, is how do we unlock that? Um, similar to, you know, we're working on a project now where we're with the DMC taking five years worth of their past itineraries, parsing that data out, really just reading it and extracting and correlating that against what worked, what didn't work, what was popular, what wasn't popular. And it's a lot of data mining and then taking that data, marrying it to current data so that these recommendations can be more have kind of more foundation to ultimately drive better suggestions.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Well, and here's a question I'm keen to ask Jesse on this topic as it relates to what data you use behind the scenes to guide the guest experience to make smart decisions versus what you actually expose to them. And uh the the setup I want to give you on this one too, Jesse, when I'm doing keynotes on this topic, and before I get to the point of doing my guest OS demo, I always talk about the fact that the first iteration of these generative AI tools were used by some of the largest technology companies to manipulate us. And so you know the algorithm was very much trained on uh our behavior. And I'll give you an exact example that everyone is familiar with. Just a few days ago, I was on my Instagram feed and this incredible video of a honey badger came on that I had to watch. And I didn't I know very little about honey badgers. I know a lot more now because every third video for the last few days has been an epic battle of a honey badger somewhere in the world and how incredibly resourceful, resilient they are. I've fallen in love with honey badgers, but it's all because I stayed on a video for a few minutes, but and that now it's to the point of okay, enough honey badgers already. But the whole idea of that is it's training itself on our behavior and adjusting cores. And so my question to this with you, Jesse, is that when you're dealing with customers, especially high-end hotel customers, well, how do you avoid being creepy and um and and also freaking people out with the level of knowledge that we actually have about them versus just trying to be helpful? How do you strike that balance?

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Yes, I think uh to what Marius and Jeff have spoken about personalization, uh, you know, the the context matters so much. Uh if if you haven't shared it directly with them, you know, if I'm uh scrolling through social media and I see a bunch of ads that now kind of look like me and I I there's a Cavalier King Charles, like because I know I have a doctor who read me, I'm creeped out. I'm like, I don't like this. Like, why do you know this? But so I think it's just, you know, back to the basics and really focus on the core service. That is something that uh is the foundation of what keeps the guests coming back and why people uh invest in stays like that, those experiences. And so for us, it's really just focus on uh the core service, the guest interactions, the touch points, the main uh points about hospitality. You know, none of none of the uh customers that we work with are going into that level of saying, oh, let's uh we've found out that they have a dog and they also have this. Like, let's just send this to them today without them ever sharing, you know. So I think there are many, uh it's kind of just a progression of a natural human relationship. You know, you learn, you get to know them, then you know. And so the people who have met Remy at a resort and they welcome us back. And it's like, oh, well, you met her, you remember that interaction in the lobby versus uh just like personalization at scale.

Who Owns The Traveler Relationship

SPEAKER_04 38:09

Well, Jesse and I were at the Visit California conference a couple of uh months ago, and Remy joined us for dinner, which was awesome, at the main like gala night dinner. And I had the privilege to have uh Remy sit on my lap and the number of pictures that were taken of Remy, me with Remy, and I took pictures of Remy, and all of a sudden my feed totally changed because I'm a dog lover already. So I totally I totally take your point, and that's another great example. I guess the other thing I want to talk to you about on this topic, though, is ownership and the guest experience. Because one of the things I learned from my time at Lonely Planet, and I had many valuable insights there working with Tonya Maureen, a Maureen uh Wheeler who was the really oversaw the brand. One of the things that she reminded us is that we don't own the customer, and she would never refer to Lonely Planet as our travelers. They're just travelers. And nobody wants to feel owned, yet at the same time, we're trying to get larger wallet share and trying to keep customers coming back. So, in effect, we are trying to own more of the customer wallet and keep them engaged with us, but we don't ever want to be possessive because that also will push people away. And so, my question to you on this topic, and I'm keen, Marius and Jeff, for you to weigh up, weigh in on the concept of ownership, like who owns the customer and how do you guide them through the experience? But as it relates to hotels, one of the things I've heard people express concern about is you know, who owns the guest experience in an AI-driven world? Are we gaining control or losing control of the guest experience by introducing these tools that with the difference between human interaction versus technology? How do you see that?

SPEAKER_01 39:36

Great question. And I think because I'm a hotelier first and have had so many people approach me from the sales technology side of things, and it's just so transactional. And even when I would do demos with AI concierges, it was just very transactional. And I did not like the missing piece of the guest experience. And I'm a firm believer that if you bring value, the rest will come. You know, you'll generate revenue, but focus on value, and then I think something major in terms of uh reframing how we think about owning it, it's more just we have aligned incentives, and the guest experience is our both of our uh, you know, goal to have that be exceptional. And so when that happens, it's it's much easier because we're helping each other and um all of us work together to get to that same goal, and that's really the game changer uh in terms of like hey, hey, we learned this from these transcripts, and then it informs their decision making. And so we know, you know, when we transfer to the front desk, if the front desk is not picking up calls, we get an error that says the front desk did not answer. So then we share that data with the team and immediately, okay, great, we moved one person to focus on um back end operations, only answering the phone. And then immediately they saw an increase in the the calls getting answered and the guest experience. So I think those sorts of things uh are really about the team teamwork that's involved.

SPEAKER_04 41:10

Yeah. And so um, Mary is from Jesse's point of view, when someone's staying at a hosp at a hotel or resort, you know, they're they're in that experience. So they're, you know, but when they're utilizing a platform like I wander, you're guiding the discovery um in a destination. So my direct question to you on the same note is if if AI guides uh if AI guides the discovery, does that layer now own the traveler? Like how do you look at that with your platform and technology?

SPEAKER_00 41:38

No, I mean I I would I would um I would probably echo what um I think was it Maureen Wheeler would say, I don't think anyone owns that traveler, like at least now or maybe yet. Um and it's because you know that trip is just so fragmented. You're feeling and interacting with so many different uh suppliers and companies and moments, you know, even from like you know, the pre-trip where you could search for a flight on Skyscanner and book on British Airways and then go to hotels.com, um, you know, go buy your experience on Tickett, use Google Maps, use iWonder, stay, you know, interact with GuestOS. Like there's so many different pieces, and importantly, none no one is speaking to each other. So there's no communication between all these different interactions, and so that data is kind of like fragmented everywhere and no one's got a holistic view. I do, however, think that you know the the if someone is going to own that customer or deliver the connected trip, um, I think it has to be the that the company which has the most interactions and conversation with that customer is probably going to be the one who's more likely to own that end-to-end. Because that's we went, we were speaking about context. That's where you get the true context from. That's where you you manage to have that relationship, you can deliver value before, during, after your trip, you keep coming back, you've got everything in one in one in one place. And maybe like push that a little bit further. Like, who's going to be the one who can actually own that customer? I don't think it's gonna, I mean, I think trip.com's doing amazing amazing things with the amount of the breadth of products which they offer, with what they've got with their genie product. Um, but it's probably gonna be, you know, Google, an LLM, or maybe the bank, even a bank, because I think what the banks are doing in travel is becoming very, very interesting. They've already got that trust, they know that customer. Um, I think there's a couple of little steps going, you know, to go forward. But I I think those ones are probably these guys are probably more likely to own that customer than an OTA which only sees that customer once or twice a year.

SPEAKER_04 43:37

And what's really interesting about this, and it comes back to a conversation I was having with Jeff this morning over our monthly coffee catch up, and we ended up talking about the merchant of record. And what we were alluding to, uh, Marius, relates to what you were sharing is that everyone wants to own the customer until something goes wrong. And so then that because all of a sudden that adds in the level of complexity. Now there's an issue they have to resolve. And so we were talking. Talking to Jeff knows about the payment. Like, well, we're the payment provider. We'll just do the refund, but we don't necessarily want to handle the guest, you know, rebooking and everything else that's involved in guest management. So, Jeff, you guys are the end-to-end solution for a lot of partners. So you control the traveler relationship in many ways during the trip itself. What's your view on ownership and who controls the uh the traveler relationship during the trip itself?

SPEAKER_02 44:23

Yeah, no, thanks. And and this again, Marius, keep going in front of me. I'm just gonna keep agreeing with you. The the answer is right now nobody owns the traveler. And I think Jesse and Marius have both illustrated that and why not, and the importance thing to it. Where, if anybody is gonna own the traveler, it has to be valuable to the traveler. And you know, both we've all talked about it is travelers, you know, want that convenience. They want the security, they want the ability to navigate between all the different products easily and have this, you know, let's just again use the term connected trip. The traveler doesn't think of it as a connected trip. The traveler calls it their trip that has multiple different elements. They're interfacing with multiple apps and different experiences. From the industry side, we think of the connected trip, and that's from that control perspective. But where we think of it, we think about it less of control. And an element that Trippian is really starting to explore, you know, over the years is that data sovereignty layer, is the trust. Because if you're going to connect two products and two vendors, there has to be a degree of trust between the product and the vendor. There has to be the ability to exchange data securely. It's how do you take the passport data from a trusted ID verification service and share it via token to a tour operator who wants a proof of age for over 21 to book the trip without the traveler exposing their passport data once again into another data black hole? So it's in order to have this sort of ownership and connectivity between all the different service providers, again, there needs to be a data broker layer that has trust and data sovereignty so that the AI agents, as we started out at the beginning, it's that trusted layer. How do you trust an agent to take your information, to make a decision on your behalf and know that it's secure and that they just haven't, you know, exposed your data onto the black market? So it's it's to achieve this and to have the ownership, which ultimately we want the traveler to own their trap trip like they do. We just want to help them make it easy, which will in turn make the enterprise customers and the different partners able to collaborate better without the drive to a super app.

SPEAKER_04 46:29

That's great. I appreciate all of your perspectives on this, and I'm sure many of our listeners do as well, as they try and wrap their head around technology partners, who owns it, especially if they're trying to figure out if they buy, build, or partner with someone. And and the reality is most of our tech stacks are still so fragmented, and um, and they're only just going to start to realize the benefit of agentic AI once they have all their data in one place. We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_03 46:52

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Where Humans Still Matter Most

SPEAKER_04 49:02

And now back to the show. There's one other overall important topic I want to make sure we cover. So this is kind of the final section that I wanted to get into, and I think it's perfect timing given this is the third episode in our agentic AI series, which I'm presuming we're going to definitely continue in season eight, but also it will be a big part of our summit that we're referring to as Beyond AI, because we want to cover how AI is just fully integrated into travel. We kind of went through that with digital and marketing, where like actually all marketing was digital, and most businesses are now in the travel industry, have embraced AI, and they're trying to figure out how to integrate it into their business. So there's two things that I want to discuss on this topic to uh to round out our conversation. One is on the operational reality. So where the human involvement is still important. I want to get all of your take on that because that's always a source of debate. And the reality is AI can't do everything today. And there's always the question that gets asked of the AI experts what are the jobs that are still going to be left for humans to do? Can I still be a plumber? Can I still so I want to talk about where human involvement is still essential because the reality is in the travel space, it's part of the reason that we travel. I always come back at this end of my presentations, that we travel for human connection. And so it's going to become more important in an age of technology and AI. So my first one is going to be to each of you about the human involvement. And the second one, just so you know what I'm going to be coming to, and I'm sharing this as well for our listeners, is the business impact of agentic AI. Because it's another thing that's been called out is are we seeing enough benefit yet? And I always find it's like one of those questions when you're asking, you know, in the dot-com era, is Amazon going to be a successful business model? And the reality is a lot of those were just ahead of their time. And so the business impact is starting to be realized. But sure, in terms of investment right now, a lot of companies are still trying to figure out how best to see the ROI on their investment in AI. And it all comes down to where you're choosing to apply it, how much investment you've put into it, and what you are expecting as a result of that. A big focus, as we know, has been operational efficiency, reducing costs, but ultimately it's going to be about increasing revenue as well. So I want to finish on that, which is where you're seeing the most immediate revenue impact. But let's start on the operational reality today. And maybe, Jesse, this is a good one for you because the human touch is still so important in the hospitality space. Where do you see the role for human involvement versus AI today in 2026 in the travel and in the hospitality space?

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Yeah, it's an amazing time uh for with the AI and technology advancements aligned with where we can see hospitality going, you know, especially it's always a question. Uh the the elephant in the room, like, will AI take my job? And every uh hotel partner that we work with, um, it's it's one of those things you have to clarify. And as soon as I share, you know, I I am a hotel here and I grew up answering all of these repetitive questions or these things that no one really likes doing because it doesn't, you don't use, you know, a lot of creativity. It's just re repetition. And so uh it's incredible because now AI is excellent at doing those repetitive mundane tasks that allow uh staff to get back their hours and time to focus and execute those on-site experiences, which drive revenue. And so we're seeing that cycle happen already, uh, tremendous results. And you know, a lot of the partners we work with are the luxury boutique hotels, full service that have all of these incredible amenities. Uh, so now you know you still really need uh the staff to be on site to carry out these uh experiences. And um, it's just a really exciting time as well with uh the teams. Uh they they call their AI, their assistant, and as soon as you know someone asks uh a repetitive question, they go and they enter it in uh guest to us, so they never have to answer it again. And I think it's so important. Um, my family's hotels have had uh our our employees, our team for decades, and you know, it's been incredible in that that relationship. And so many of the partners we work with, the teams are everything. They're the core of the business and the guest experience. And so now um it's really exciting to build a product that the teams love, the guests love, and it's really uh a win-win there.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

That's great. Thanks for sharing that, Jesse. And and Marius, I'm gonna come to you on this one because you're always squeezed between the great debate between people like Mitch Bach from Torpreneur, who very much is for the love of the guide, and I and and then and then Alex Bainbridge, who runs OTORA, who's looking at you know, offering AI guides. And there's uh you know often been raging debates between those two that are thoroughly entertaining, and and you sit there quietly in the middle of those two with your platform. Tell us your view on where the human involvement is still important and your view on AI's role, agentic AI's role in the travel experience.

SPEAKER_00 53:56

Yeah, I mean, the reason why I started this business is because I love guided tours so much. I still think it's the best way to discover a city. I like for instance, just you know, a couple weeks ago, I did a I did a breakfast tour with this great guide in London who basically sat us down, brought us to these different like English breakfast places, um, introduced us to local commerce, like gave us the food, and then stopped at the all these different locations and read basic chapters from Oliver Twist, which happened in that exact moment. That was beautiful, and like you know, like that I think that human touch and that human connection, that experience will never be replaced by AI. And um, however, the the reality is that very, very few people do guided tours. And when I, for instance, go to Colosseum or Roman Forum and I see people just kind of like wandering around, you know, not even looking at the signs, just kind of go in, go out, it just makes me think like actually, I think a huge power of AI is to actually bring that human, that experience which a top human can give you and basically democratize that. And I don't think it's gonna eat into uh you know the market share of of the top guides. Um I think those kind of experiences are always gonna be there. I just think I think you can actually like lift lift that experience for everyone. So that's the way which I see it. Um and just sorry, just on on that as well, like what I almost see AI just more generally as well, like in the kind of like in the booking phase, it's almost come full circle where you know, with digitization in travel and the rise of booking platforms where you basically you search, you compare, you book. And you know, what we've got now with AI is we've almost come back to this kind of human travel agent model where you can go in and you can say, hey, all right, like this is my budget, I'm kind of in the mood for this, and then the AI can actually almost like direct you back in. So it's almost kind of gone full circle and become a little bit more human. So I'd like to take the the optimist view on this that AI is actually making tech a little bit more human.

SPEAKER_04 55:49

Maris, I really wanted to get your take on that because when you mentioned the number of people that take a guided tour and destination, I think the reality is that number is very low, like 3%. I remember seeing in an early uh business case for IWander. And the reality is that if people can have that experience, they will still want to have an experience of a guide. So I see, I definitely see the benefit of both. And like you, I see a lot of positivity with the introduction of technology. But on this, Jeff, I'm keen to get your take and not only just on the human aspect, but as we transition into the most immediate revenue impacts that we're seeing as a result of Agentic AI, maybe that leads into that because when people are questioning the roles in their organization around what what is going to be the most important for the human experience, you know, where do you see the role of humans? And then t tell us, if you wouldn't mind, from your experience, where you're seeing some of the biggest impact for customers around implementing agentic AI.

SPEAKER_02 56:42

Yeah, no, again, this is a fascinating part of the discussion. And it's it's really, you know, comes down to often the way we think about it, I think is the way anybody's thought about technology innovation over the years. Like AI will be good at taking over the work that's messy that people would rather not be doing, so that people could focus on delivering their tours, focus on being an operator, focus on being a good agent and delivering that human service. And when we think of what a good agentic AI should be, it should be able to identify problems, identify opportunities, identify recommendations that take somebody to the human, but it can't be the human. So as Mary said earlier, he used AI to find that little boat, but it's that's the handover. That's where it becomes a human-engaged experience, and that human is still very important to it. The point you made earlier about the customer service, who's gonna deal with the customer? And I think Jesse mentioned it as well. There's still gonna be that customer service, that human factor. And by having AI support people, take away the noise, take away the masks, we'll give them more opportunities to engage in stronger and better human service. That's I think it's something we all believe in. And I think as humans, we still still are comfortable and want to deal with people. Um, from the operational side, you know, this is where it gets quite interesting as well. It's it's just making connections more efficient. It is reducing time, and it is basically increasing service levels with existing assets by you know having AI do that. And one area I'll loop this back into content, which we're kind of excited about, is you know, being able to get more data and more POI data. You know, a good example is we're identifying uh local travel bloggers in Japan who are writing about their neighborhoods in Japanese, that no LLM is going to discover somebody writing about the tea houses in a small neighborhood and introducing you to the operators, but we're able to discover that, parse out the data, translate it, correlate it to an actual POI, and have that now appear in recommendations, where otherwise a normal search, you wouldn't know to search for this place because you know it wouldn't have been tagged. So the fact that AI can unlock and introduce more of these small businesses and small owner operators and get them more known will help the earlier uh problem we talked about of distribution and getting people away from just the common places, but you know, opening up travelers' eyes to these niche events, getting them to the small neighborhoods that they have to take a bus or a taxi into that they wouldn't otherwise go. But that's where I think the fascinating human experiences lie. And I think travelers, that's what they quest at the end of the day, is that what makes them feel alive? And I think AI will do a large do a lot to help people find those experiences.

ROI, Engagement, And Attach Rates

SPEAKER_04 59:29

That's great. Thank you for that, Jeff. And just to close off uh with the business impact, I'm gonna come back to Jesse on this too, is and and for each of you, I've got kind of one final question, and I'll wrap it together with ultimately the what I think many of our listeners are gonna want to figure out how best to apply is the business impact. And so, in terms of the guest experience for you, Jesse, how is that translating into measurable results? And where do you see the biggest impact of agentic AI today? And where do you think this is headed?

SPEAKER_01 59:58

Yeah, I think to touch on what Marius and Jeff said, you know, the future, uh, the future of all this technology and AI is that it's more human. It gives the the business owners uh the more control. It puts the power back in uh in our hands. And so uh it's it's incredible just being able to bring those immediate data and insights and uh see the full guest experience and be able to make the updates without you know having to uh have a third party involved then uh that you can really focus on that and see the direct insights within the the operations of the hotel, which is really incredible. And it's really in three simple steps. Uh, you know, the AI helps with things like either end-to-end with FAQ questions or AI assisted. And so it helps the the teams see the insights to execute and get the um get the guest experience completed. And so then through that, then you're seeing the revenue generation and um it's really like a team. And it every team in the future, uh, every productive team will have an AI teammate, I think, you know, because it helps with those things, discovery, bookings, and then the humans uh get to focus on the guests and build those memories.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:22

That's great, Jesse. And I'm obviously I'm very bullish on uh the hospitality utilization of identic AI and and guestOS's role in that. And so that's why I wanted to disclose up front that I, you know, am an advisor of GuestOS because I'm a huge believer in you, the company, and the category. And so I think this is something we're gonna continue to explore. And I'm glad you're a part of the luxury hotel series and part of this. And so thank you so much for joining us today and being a part of this conversation. It's really great to have you back, Jesse.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Thanks, Dan.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:50

And Marius, I want to go to you on as we prepare to wrap up now as well, because you're gonna be at the Focus Right Europe conference with me. And when so, people listening to this, obviously make sure you grab your ticket. We have a discount code on traveltranspodcast.com. Come meet us at FocusRight Europe. All of us will be at Focus Right in uh uh Florida later this year. So you'll be able to meet everyone and join us for that event. So if you can't join us for Europe, make sure you join us in the US. But the reason I mentioned FocusRight is because Mike Coletta and the team over at FocusWire have done some great research on agentic AI and its impact on the travel industry. And this relates to the final question I wanted to ask Marius. Over the last three quarters, we've seen utilization of generative AI for planning go from 30% to 40 to 56%. It's now uh literally on the same level as Google, but we haven't seen yet is its impact on booking. And so it's very much being used for research. And I also do think there's something to be said there about trust. And Jeff and I were talking about this at coffee this morning. Once people trust AI to make a booking, I think that the dam will break and people will start using agentic AI to handle their bookings, not just customer service. And so when you think about your platform and where iWander's headed, and you think about the business benefit, where do you think the biggest business benefits are for companies right now and specifically for iWander?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

Well, uh there's two parts to the this answer. I think the first is actually where we're seeing revenue, actual revenue being generated right now, and that's with our unsexy products. So it's with the products which we've built using AI to basically make a process uh cheaper, better, faster. But it's generally an existing line on the balance sheet, and that's where we're generating the most, you know, most revenue right now, actually like bringing these solutions for travel grants. However, where we're seeing you know the most long-term impact, like where there's the most opportunity, is like what we are showing right now is engagement. So what we're managing to do is actually increase uh engagement time per download by up to 12 minutes, like this is per download of people interacting with partner apps. And with engagement comes monetization, but it will take a little bit of time to get there. You know, it's like all the kind of like big tech platforms, content platforms. I think uh once we can, I think we first gotta we first have to focus on delivering great content and utility and value to that customer. And with screens on eyeballs and engagement time, that's when you can start building in monetization, being a bit smart about that, trying to like, you know, upsell different products, different experiences. Um, so I think that will come. So yeah, kind of two parts to it, where it is now, and I think where it's gonna go. That's great.

Final Wrap And How To Connect

SPEAKER_04 1:04:20

Thank you, Maris. Thank you again for joining us. And obviously, congrats to you and your brother Antoine for all the success you're having with iWander and the clients you're bringing on board. Obviously, I'm bullish and confident in your future success as well. And I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks. And thanks again for joining us for today. Thanks so much, Dan. Thanks for having me. And Jeff, I want to bring you in to close out this conversation because you guys, I mean, since we've gotten to know each other in the last few years, you really have gone from success to success. And I know more and more people in the next year or two are going to learn about Trippian because any great success story is five to ten years in the making, as you know. And uh you've built this incredible foundation. You're seeing business impact already from your platform. Tell us where you think you'd uh direct people to look at the business benefit of Agentic AI today, and then please, by all means, follow up with the best ways that people can reach out and connect with you after this.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:09

Yeah, no, this is this is great. So thanks for that. The real kind of benefit that we're seeing and that we're focusing on is a combination of what has already been mentioned. It's how do you create what we're referring to as attach rates? How do you keep people more engaged? How do you get more relevant products and offers connected together? Whether it's one of our card products, being able to factor in their merchant offers or then get points cash back to drive more card spend. It's really how do we use AI and use the tools to solve fundamental business needs? And that's an area where we really, again, by being that infrastructure company, we work with our clients to understand their business and business operations. And then how can we bring AI to streamline their processes, as we've mentioned, to drive those connectivities and to ease it through? So we're really bullish on the fact that, you know. People are now demystified. It's no longer a novelty. It's actually a utility. And I think if we start thinking about AI as a utility and how we're going to use that in our businesses, is where the success is going to come. In terms of getting in touch, yeah, you can reach out to me at jeff at tripune.com. I'm always interested to talk and through any times like this. It's really exciting talking with friends and peers. So really enjoyed today.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:25

Fantastic. Thank you, Jeff. And obviously, thank you again, Marius. Thank you, Jesse. Make sure you reach out directly to, they're all very active on LinkedIn. You know all of their websites. I'll make sure all the notes are here for you. But definitely, these are the three companies to follow in terms of agentic AI and its impact in travel. And thank you for being uh making the time for today's conversation, sharing so many valuable insights. And I look forward to seeing your continued success over the course of the year and keeping in touch regularly as we do. So thank you again, Jeff, Jesse, and Marius. Thanks, Dan.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:54

Thank you, Dan.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:55

See you guys soon.