The Evolution of Travel Distribution: 10 Years of Change with RateHawk

The travel industry loves to talk about innovation, but Felix Shpilman brings a sharper lens: what has actually changed in travel distribution over the past decade, and what challenges still remain unsolved.

Felix is the President and CEO of Emerging Travel Group and the driving force behind RateHawk. Joining Dan from Dubai, he shares an inside look at what it takes to build and scale one of the world's leading B2B travel platforms.

We begin with Felix’s journey into travel technology, from investing in high-growth companies to becoming an operator in one of the most complex industries in the world. From there, we explore how RateHawk emerged from ETG’s experience competing in the B2C space, revealing a much larger opportunity: helping travel advisors navigate fragmented hotel supply through a faster, more intuitive booking experience.

The conversation dives into the realities of modern travel distribution, including multi-supplier strategies, inventory aggregation, localization challenges, and the operational complexities that continue to frustrate travel sellers. Felix explains why fragmentation persists across channel managers, PMSs, CRS platforms, wholesalers, DMCs, and consolidators, and why he believes AI, particularly agentic AI, could become the connective tissue that finally brings the ecosystem together.

We also discuss the evolving role of travel advisors, why they remain more relevant than ever, and how technology is transforming them into highly efficient digital travel experts. Throughout the episode, Felix shares practical insights on product development, mobile-first workflows, automation, and the future of B2B travel technology.

If you care about travel distribution, hotel supply, travel advisor tools, AI-powered workflows, or the future of travel technology, this episode offers a thoughtful and candid perspective from one of the industry's leading innovators.

Interested in hearing more from Felix? Join him online at Ratehawk FutureCast 2026 on June 23, where travel leaders and innovators will explore the trends shaping the future of the industry. Register here: https://futurecast2026.ratehawk.com/

Learn more at ratehawk.com.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Travel Trends Podcast. This is your host, Dan Christian, and we have a very special spotlight episode for you today. This is someone that has an incredibly impressive career in the travel industry. He's based in Dubai, and he is the president and CEO of Emerging Travel Group, which founded Ratehawk, which we're going to get into a great deal of discussion on today, because this episode, as you would have seen from the title, is all about the evolution of travel distribution, 10 years of change with Ratehawk. So on that note, let me introduce you to the president and CEO of Emerging Travel Group, Felix Spielmann. Welcome, Felix. Great to have you on the Travel Trends Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Hi, Dan. Thanks for inviting. Happy to be here. Fantastic. Tell everyone where you're based. I'm based in Dubai. And uh my whole life I've lived in different places. I'm uh Moscow-born, U.S. educated, um, worked in investment banking after my college education. Um, and after my initial early years at City, I became an internet investor and worked at DST Global, invested in some uh fantastic growth equity companies, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, sourced a business called Airbnb. When people said that it's a bad idea to stay at other people's homes uh and that I'm not going to give my house my apartment to a stranger. Uh this initial experience uh triggered my my interest in uh travel and hospitality as an industry, but I continued um investing for a couple years after that initial investment. Uh I and I invested in Uber when I was in OneCT, uh Doordash, Instacart, Coinbase, Gasto, Airtable, Zapier, Class Dojo, Angelist, Pars, and many other companies. But my early interest in travel um that I um that I got from my initial investment into Airbnb as part of my work at DST is what created my desire to become an operator in the sector. And in 2013, I joined Emerging Travel Group um as a VP of Strategy, which is a really weird title, but I started learning about kind of building a business. And initially it was a B2C OTA that was uh building in Eastern Europe. I um and by then I've uh worked across kind of many geographies and many um many weird places. But uh that's

Felix’s Path From Investing To Travel

SPEAKER_01 2:30

uh that's basically my entrance into channel. I joined, started learning about uh different parts of the business outside of the parts that were easy for me to understand, such as finance and uh all of the all of the boring parts, as they say. But I started learning about supply, demand, product, marketing, and uh let's just say uh in our in our investment experience, uh we people would call DST and the team uh as a uh encyclopedias of the business models. So we've seen a lot. But by the time I tr I entered a travel, uh all of my knowledge of internet business models uh felt very superficial. And so the complexity that I observed in the early years was uh tremendous.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, that's fantastic. And this is one of the reasons I was very keen to create this spotlight episode is not only to educate our audience about Rate Hawk and the that business and the success you've had there that will be interesting for many of our listeners, but to start with your background, because as our listeners just heard, how impressive it is, and I wanted to just call out a couple of things that you um uh you mentioned and underscore them, is that you know, given that you have kind of a parallel thread where you're running Moses Capital and uh investing, you have had uh or backed, I should say, 450 startups, including 23 that have become unicorns. Oh, it's 24 now. Okay. You gotta you gotta update that in your uh profile.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Uh what's the twenty actually what was the twenty-fourth? The twenty-fourth I did outside of the outside of Start Fund. Um I backed a company called E Rala, which does eSIM uh services. Now there's many of these companies, but I backed a company called E Rala, and that's uh um the leader, global leader in this space, actually.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, well it's interesting you mentioned that because uh Olofly is one of our uh sponsors, and obviously there's companies like um Hubby ESIM, and it's it's become a very crowded space all of a sudden, and and a number of other companies seeking investment because obviously there's a lot of uh profit potential in that space. So yeah, so that there's number 24. But to give all also our listeners an i an idea, um, when you're at DST Global, those are obviously some of the you know, Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Spotify, but you also work with Yuri Milner, so talking about you know a Russian background, American educated, and um the the startups that uh Yuri has been involved in and obviously your collaboration. So one of the things I just wanted to reference the reason I wanted to reference that for our listeners today is because we've done in a lot of episodes on investing, and um, and I think startups will be fascinated to listen to this conversation, Felix. Um, but obviously people who are working purely in the travel space that are keen to understand Rate Hawk. So let's let's maybe give everyone just an overview of what Rate Hawk is, why you created that, because you as I understand, Felix, that was actually incubated within

Why Ratehawk Started Inside ETG

SPEAKER_00 5:10

the emerging travel group. So tell us a little bit about the background, why you guys started Rate Hawk and a bit more about that business. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So when I got to ETG, um we were in the beginning of our stages of figuring out. We we had a B2COTA, which was competing with Booking.com. And it was a very, very futile sport to compete with Booking.com. Um, but I was tasked with building out the supply part of the equation, and back then we had a couple of suppliers, speedy and maybe a couple of suppliers plugged in. And immediately uh it was very obvious that the supply, uh supply quality was not comp not comparable to what booking.com. Booking.com had breadth of supply, they had unique network effects, they had unique rate plans from all the global chains, and and stuff was never competitive enough. And so I I went on this adventure of plugging in suppliers. Um, and uh initially our board and our shareholders told me, hey Felix, don't don't don't get uh don't get uh carried away with this uh multi-supplier stuff. It will never work well. These wholesalers, consolidators, and travel distributors will never um allow you to build a good business. You'll have service issues, technology issues, and all this stuff. And I didn't listen because I was really hungry about finding all the details where supply pockets are competitive with booking.com. And as we built out this supply part of the equation, um, a couple years into it, it became obvious that it was still not enough to compete with booking.com. And so the unit economics was just not good enough. Um, marketing was still eating up all of the stuff, and so we sat down and we started thinking where can this supply competency be useful and where can it generate uh a good uh a good where can it build a good business? And we very accidentally stumbled into this thing called the B2B, and um and this was maybe 2014, 20 uh yeah, 2014. And um our in literally our initial test was we took our B2C OTA product, we dropped prices by I think 10%, we added basic invoicing functionality, and we took that product to travel agencies. We didn't know any any difference between leisure travel agencies, service travel agencies. We were kids in our mid-twenties just trying to uh sell some hotel rooms, and um but what I saw immediately is that the travel agents' eyes lit up. And I was not a great UX researcher, I didn't know how to get the get kind of how to ask the right questions, but it was obvious that the pain was there. And as we spent more time, we've realized that Rate Hawk, because um of its multi-supplier environment, um um cured a very simple pain, that supply was incredibly fragmented and that people had to have many tabs. It took a lot of time. And when we had all of these suppliers under the hood, in a simple, as we called it back then, white table meta search way, uh things um uh th things immediately became faster and more efficient.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

And literally that's how the whole thing got started. That's great. And and I just want to offer context for all of our listeners too. You know, as we're having this conversation, obviously you can look at ratehawk.com, um, given that's where we're gonna focus our time. But I also want all of our listeners to have a better concept of emerging travel group, where Felix is the president's CEO, because not only did he join in 2013, which is obviously now over a decade ago, they've scaled to more than $3 billion in GMV. They've got over 3,000 employees. Um, they're active across three different continents, and they have three main brands, Rate Hawk being one of them. And of course, that's the focus given that our podcast is B2B. So believe me, for me, B2B is a huge passion. And many people couldn't believe that a B2B podcast could be as successful as Travel Trends has become. But for me, you know, when I look at the industry, you know, nearly one out of 10 people in the world work in the travel industry, and they're all trying to figure out how to either advance their career or grow their companies. And so there's a huge opportunity on the B2B side, and many of our listeners have heard me mention, you know, when you look at focus right and tracking investment, it was you know, in the end of 25 that Q4, that it was the first time that B2B investment overtook B2C investment, especially when it comes to providing tools to travel advisors. Um but just before we we dive into that in more detail, there's also Zen Hotels, which uh and and Round Trip. And Roundtrip is uh focused on uh corporate travel. Um but for those of you who are also uh active individual travelers, you can obviously check out Zen Hotels as well. And um you can check out emerging travel.com for a bit more information about the entire group. And so just before we dive more into Rade Hawk, I want to uh I want to discuss your unique skill set, Felix. Um, given that you're an investor, you're running this business, and clearly you've been able to not only successfully invest, but actually scale companies. So you're uh you know you're truly an operator as well as an investor. And I'd love to learn a little bit more about why you think that has worked, some of your uh lessons on your journey, and um that would be interesting for our our global audience to uh to learn from uh from your experience. So tell us a little bit more about your uh a week in the life of Felix uh Spielman, uh the things that you're across, and and what it is that

Making B2B Booking Fast And Intuitive

SPEAKER_00 10:40

I think you know has contributed to your success.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

I think uh I think um a lot of um I don't think there's one thing that you can say which has been a major contributor to my success. But I think the big the biggest one is when I entered travel, um it um most of the people around me were very content. They were very very comfortable with what was going on, and it was actually difficult to um to find people who wanted to innovate. And we as a team were always very hungry for um for group for faster growth, for uh kind of faster market share capture, for building more innovative products. And one thing that differentiated ETG team from a lot of the regional, oh from the a lot of the regional and maybe even global competitors on the B2B side is that we were never we were never um happy with where we are. And we're not happy today, to be honest. Um, and so this hunger to kind of uh run faster and um to never give up, I think, is what has gotten us today. Um this obviously has a dark uh side to it because people get tired, people get burnt out, and not everybody can uh can uh have have can sustain this pace. And so uh mana managing people and learning how to manage people in this uh difficult environment has been a big uh challenge for me. Nobody, as Brian Chesky says, gets born uh a great uh CEO, and I don't think I was. And uh like Brian, I think uh a lot of the early team has uh has uh suffered a lot of my inexperience.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Well, and I'll I'll just add something here too, from my perspective, getting to know Felix and uh preparing for our discussion and looking through you know his background and profile and and emerging travel group, one of the things I would call out is that you know, when someone enters the travel industry from another background and that understands how to solve a complex problem, but also simplify the process so that from a consumer point of view, and I know that's one of um the business principles that you have as an organization, it's one of as part of your mission statement. So for me, and obviously you being humble as well, I mean recognizing the fact you did what you don't know, but for someone to come into the travel industry and see the complexity of this industry, all the legacy systems, and realize there's an opportunity uh to disrupt the industry, but to do so in a way that ultimately, and Airbnb is always a good example because of the user experience is so elegant. People often use Uber as kind of the gold standard of how intuitive it is to use. But the point of either being is that you don't have to teach someone how to use your platform and do webinars and do training. It's just it should just work. It should just work for travel advisors, it should just be intuitive. And I think as you mentioned uh the um user experience, obviously that is something you're you're saying you're weren't an expert in that, but clearly that is that has been key to your success from my vantage point, looking at the platforms you have, is that there's a great use, there's a consistency, which is a great user experience across all the platforms that you're focusing on, investing in and scaling. Are those are those fair assessments, Felix?

SPEAKER_01 13:52

No, absolutely absolutely. Look, I I I mean this obviously, this uh the this absolute uh absolute uh desire to kind of build easy to use, functional, um in terms of uh functional in terms of features, but at the same time uh beautiful uh products um has always been a core thing for us. I um um I discovered Uber when I was in OneCity. And when I opened up the app for the first time, I thought it was a completely magical experience, and everyone was so excited about the car moving to you on a map, and the entire world was saying how this is the innovation. But the first time when I got out from the car without having to find my card, swipe it, that was the true magic for me. So this fintech innovation that Uber made in such a subtle way, and by the way, they were one of the first apps that allowed you to tie your cart to an internet service, this completely changed how uh mobile users um started using payments. And I and obviously we've seen that repeated in Instacart, DoorDash, and all the other businesses that we've backed. And that uh and now we're now it's table stakes. And so so understanding that customer pain and kind of curing it by building good products has been very important with being able to um to carry that along at ETG as well.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Well, and as you well know, I mean, solving uh the problem that you solve as a startup when you when you're looking at which startups you invest in, obviously the problem they're solving, the market they're addressing, looking at the team, and and so uh let's look at Rate Hawk specifically, because it's like and that is a um a great example of a uh a product in your portfolio that has scaled considerably over the last 10 years, and obviously the the focus of our discussion today for what our listeners can learn from that experience. So let's go back to when you were describing the problem that you were solving with Rate Hawk. Tell us so that we we can all understand the initial problem you were solving with Rate Hawk uh for travel distribution, and tell us a little bit how that's evolved over the last, I mean, I know 10 years is a long time, but obviously it's it's probably gone pretty quickly at the same time. Tell us a little bit about the um the early innovation and how it's evolved in the last few years. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

So when we started building, when we've decided that we're gonna build easy to use functional products, the very first problem that we were solving is that agents needed to use a blue screen of death, aka the G DS, to book travel services, um, and everybody was okay with it. Everybody said it's fine if we have courses that the agents have to use um have to go through to use our platform. It's fine if you have to have manuals on how to look something up. And we said no, it's not. It's fine if you have to pay uh the uh weird payment methods, and we just couldn't we didn't think it was okay. So the very initial product had multiple suppliers under the hood where we matched hotels, matched room types and cancellation terms and food terms, and allowed a quick search so that the agent doesn't have to, doesn't need to open multiple tabs in their browser. Literally, that was kind of the the very early problem. We obviously typed invoicing functionality with it, and um and that was the start. And so the initial uh the initial problem that we were solving is hey, you could be up and running in 15 minutes, and you'll have good supply and you'll have decent service. Uh, we didn't know anything about B2B service because we originally were B2C TA, quick learning there, but the value prop has grown into something that has world-class supply under the hood of more hotels, more rate plans, better cancellation terms, better food, uh better food kind of uh optionality, last room availability in terms of supply, with over 350, I think 354 after suppliers as of this morning, um, including global chains, regional chains, and um and independence. So, in terms of comprehensiveness of supply, rate hook is unmatched globally. We have more suppliers and more supply than anyone else. On top of that, you have kind of a very uh very e very good product. So easy to use, functional. Any any new and any new travel agent can learn how to use the product in half an hour and be an expert in it. We were one of the first, sorry, we were the first, um, the first company um in the world who said, guess what? Travel agents also take lunch breaks, and yep, the best travel agents are the ones that are constantly in touch with their customers. So that means they need to have a mobile app. We were the first ones to build a mobile app for the travel agents as a you know um as a tool. So we have beautiful supply, great supply, beautiful app, and we have uh spent a lot of time figuring out how to automate the service. You can spend an unlimited amount of money on customer support, but at the end of the day, balancing the interests of your clients, of your suppliers, and of the bottom line of the business is an immense challenge. And so bring building a lot of tech and automation around support has been also an important thing for us. And so when you couple all those things together, this really is what Rayhawk is about. There's no one magical thing that we built over the years, it's it's combining those things and doing a good job around.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah, the one thing you obviously mentioned there is speed. And for anyone who's been only in the industry in the last five or ten years, they take that for granted. Anyone who's been in the industry for 20 years or more also know that in those ver very early stages of OTAs being introduced, and this is right before MetaSearch, which, you know, speaking to Paul English, who is the co-founder of Kayak, obviously you know uh Paul, he's been on this podcast, and one of the things that he highlighted to me was the key for them was speed. And even against their other MetaSearch competitors, it was all, and he was obviously the CTO. And from a technical point of view, was how do we produce the most substantial amount of results in the fastest possible way? Because many travel advisors were struggling with the fact. And I still remember this, Felix, from building out platforms for uh corporate travel booking tools and cruise booking engines that you would build a waiting screen that could sometimes be 30 seconds or more while the results were being so you literally had to find a way to entertain people while you were getting the inventory together to be able to displace them, which would be totally unacceptable now. You wouldn't even look at that for two seconds before closing and going somewhere else, let alone 30 seconds or 45 seconds. And so this was our measure of success. And they came along and was like it has to be under a second. So I I like that you mentioned speed as part of that. Is there anything else you uh obviously you mentioned the app, you mentioned the inventory. Is there anything else that you would point to now looking back that was critical to your success early on, like a major decision that you made, and along the same lines too, Felix? Is there anything that you may have underestimated about how complex the B2B travel distribution is? Or for for your vantage point, you made these decisions because from the outside coming in, it was actually a lot easier than many of us maybe make it when we're already uh not seeing the forest through the trees.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

I think a decision

The Supply Bet And The Localization Trap

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I think the decision that we made about uh about supply has been a very important one. As I told you um earlier, many people around the table would tell me you need to stop. You need to stop with this multi-supplier environment. You're gonna drive every your team, your customers, you're gonna drive the whole world crazy. You don't need more than initially people said eight, then they said thirty, then they said ninety. You don't need that many suppliers, people would tell me. And um as and we just kept plugging them in, and we've had a very meritocratic approach to evaluating uh. um whether there was additional incremental uh value out of new suppliers. And so this decision to continue powering through against um everyone's negativity on supply has been a very uh important one. And um I think this is one of the very important lessons to young entrepreneurs that I spend time with is to trust your instincts. I had that instinct that he will be very valuable. And this multi-supplier environment has saved us many times. It has saved us during COVID. It has saved us in terms of managing uh last room availability many times where we simply lost a chain or two because a certain supplier lost it. And so we we this completeness of inventory is a critical thing. At the end of the day uh multi-supplier environment is the ultimate on the fragility recipe to have uh the product on your shelf and so I think that that that has been a very important early decision. I think people don't pay enough attention to that um to that today when they start out to build not just in hotels but in other vertics in other V B2B verticals as well. And then in terms of in terms of maybe things that I didn't expect or that did that I didn't think um would be as complicated as um we discovered them to be is localization. Our initial hypothesis when we started building Ratehawk is that we're gonna build something that will have global product, global tech, global uh supply procurement, but we will try to be uh local in terms of legal tax accounting um uh customer support and all these things and the complexity behind that desire to be local for your customers and supply partners turned out to be much tougher than I ever thought. And obviously all we saw as kids in our mid-20s is that hey hey hey this is um the a blind spot behind uh a blind spot that uh big giant travel companies have and we're just gonna do better we're gonna localize in all these countries um and we're gonna have local taxes and local VAT and that's gonna help us within this business and um and we just kept running towards this localization um and it um created so much complexity in the business and so much difficulty. I'm not saying we should I I'm not saying I regret it. We obviously have a kind of legal presence in a bunch of countries and we're able to win business. But the decision behind that uh turned out to be much more complicated. And now today obviously we have a framework on how we evaluate country by country launch in terms of localization and now we're much more disciplined around this stuff. But back then it was um it was a a pretty naive thought that we're gonna localize.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Well it's one of those things that when we look back obviously hindsight's always 2020 and we can see what worked and why and also where we stumbled and obviously try and correct course and um and one of the things I obviously want to uh bring our conversation ultimately to kind of present day and how the industry's evolving and changing. But just before we do that, if we look at the last decade of travel distribution one of the things you mentioned uh was being the first to introduce an app uh what would you say has been the biggest shift uh and obviously that could be one part of it because the shift towards mobile even the way that um travel advisors today market themselves through social channels um and how you know the the phone has changed their businesses entirely is something that Matthew Upturch from Virtuoso is quick to point out how that career changed. But if you look at the last decade of Rate Hawk, what would you say is the biggest shift in travel distribution?

SPEAKER_01 25:42

I uh think that this is a really funny question by the way because when you talk about when what do you think about it in the at the on the surface it not that many things have changed. But when I when we started uh in the very beginning hotels had fax machines and I was with some early um early booking.com people the other night in Spain and they were telling me how they would go and buy fax machines for the hotels when they broke so that at least uh hotels would get reservations and and and so from fax machines to mobile to cloud to all all of this 10th it all happened in front of our eyes. So on the surface it doesn't look like that much has changed. But in reality the transformation is massive and I think um I think um I think we should shouldn't under underestimate how how much faster that pace of change is mobile book booking on the mobile um is literally didn't exist when we started.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah it's an interesting point because when I was at Lonely Planet this is

The Biggest Shift In Distribution

SPEAKER_00 26:50

going back 12 years just to um uh highlight your point and we were building out an accommodation booking engine the CTO was very adamant that we needed to fax credit card details because that was a secure way to transmit them secure meaning it's encrypted but obviously on the other end depending who gets it um and has access to that uh those details which is crazy when you think now because you you know you won't even hand your credit card over to a restaurant that will take it to the back room it all happens right there at your table and so um but in those days we were literally sending faxes of people's credit card details um because their concern was putting them in a platform where someone could otherwise hack into it and all of a sudden have access to credit card data. So your point about fax machines to me feels very real and I sure a lot of older travel advisors um still remember all of their suppliers sending them their weekly promos via fax and be having them stuck up in their kitchen at the lunch table seeing faxes from different suppliers that had come in. So uh the fax was a very real thing which is what led to ultimately the weekly newsletters and um eblasts as they got called um but one of the things I'm keen to ask you around where it continues to be broken. So like if we fast forward to 2026 when we're having this conversation um what do you think is still broken about travel distribution today?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Where are we still uh struggling to be able to meet the need of of guests and what are some of the uh meet the need of travel advisors in this instance um and what are some of the things that I guess you guys are working on to overcome that yes I think what what hasn't changed and possibly what has become worse actually is this fragmentation of systems and fragmentation of tools and fragmentation of everything around travel. So while customers and travelers have all become much more tech savvy, they all have mobile phones,

What’s Still Broken After Booking

SPEAKER_01 28:40

everybody has a an idea of how how a perfect booking uh service should use whether you're booking for leisure or bus for business travel the stuff under the hood uh remains pretty fragmented and there is you know this channel managers PMSs CRSs banks wholesalers DMCs consolidators and I'm just talking about hospital uh hotels and and I haven't even started with these STRs and carry tickets and cruises and and so the fragmentation of systems is a is a disease of the travel tech um of the travel and travel track tax that hasn't been cured and I don't think it will be and um and I think it's deeply broken. But where it's affecting where it's affecting uh customers the most is uh obviously post-transaction so obviously people have learned how to connect all these systems for the transaction to happen but but what happens what happens afterwards is a big a big uh adventure as I like to call it we have 354 suppliers plugged in integrated matched up optimized we do crazy AI and machine learning exercises to have all of the supply look beautiful for our travelers uh and for B2B customers but out of all of these suppliers I think three or four of them have the ability to change name or date after you've booked the service most of them tell you just cancel and rebook and uh and um if you sell to business travel every third or fourth booking um gets uh gets changed and as geopolitics and business turbulence around the world um is not getting any lighter or easier uh this the this is a constant this is a constant adventure and so we've been building tech around amendments for years so that the customers are not exposed to this cancel and rebook and we just do it all kind of digitally but we are so far away from completing um this this uh effort that uh sometimes I lose faith and my chief product officer loves giving me crap about that decision to start uh to start uh to start uh building this stuff because it's never ending it's literally never ending but I I think it's some of the product principles is that you just have to build it because the clients the clients need it you can't uh just leave them hanging like that and so I I think that hasn't changed and that hasn't uh hasn't been cured and I think this can obviously comes from the fact that there's so so many systems. And AI has a chance has a chance to be that connecting glue um agentic AI has has a chance to be the connecting glue that helps cure that but uh we are I would say still early in proving that well I definitely want to in a moment get into AI and also where humans are still relevant.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

But before we do one of the things I'm really keen to ask you as both a uh an investor and a successful entrepreneur and I always address a question along these lines in any of my interviews because it's one of the things that many of our listeners are looking for and and which is differentiation and trying to actually truly understand when you know I'm a travel advisor using Rate Hawk what feels meaningful meaningfully different about the experience and why someone would choose Rate Hawk. And clearly that's something I'm sure you and the team are close to but just to to highlight for our listeners obviously you're trying to secure more inventory you're trying to price it competitively many people have access to the supply yes for sure there's still challenges with fragmentation.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

But if we think about unique selling propositions this was always the uh the question that got put to all the executives that were brought into the room at the travel corporation with the uh the the chairman and I would see every executive walk in and walk out of that room uh and the them walking out of the room was um their ability to answer the answer this question was you know the chairman say sell the difference what is the difference between your business and what else is out there and it can't be price and so it's like so I'd love Felix if you wouldn't mind like rate hawk you've created it you've scaled it um what would you say is the real differentiation of rate hawk compared to what's out there I think my initial tab uh example works you'll you would have to have 350 tabs open to do um to to achieve the same level of inventory quality um as you have with ratehawk because we have so many suppliers we have more properties in our product than anyone else and we have more last room availability because we plug in regional specialists we plug in direct supply we plug in more staff than most people and our specialty is plugging it in and integrating it into the product and so the very first change that you will observe with us and it's a blessing and a curse is that you will simply have more supply to choose from you will you will very rarely have a situation where we don't have something and you can find it elsewhere um in a competitor's product because we should have it if a if it's available at a competitor's product. And so that that that's why just kind of the sheer breadth of supply is a good starting point. Especially now where so much of travel is becoming centered around big events where rooms sell out so this last room availability that we often have is an important um is an important attribute and it's an important advantage. And we continue to fight for that and obviously recently we started doing more direct deals with hotels and global chains and regional chains and so ability to have um differentiated

What Truly Differentiates Ratehawk

SPEAKER_01 34:40

distribution has earned us a right to have last strong availability in with many of our supply platforms. I think that's a good starting point. And then on top of that obviously the whole product MGUX thing we have progressed over Rayhawk's uh 10 years and we have built we have kind of kept our early DNA of building easy to use functional beautiful products but we have scaled massively on the functionality and today uh an agent um can do so many things an agent that that is a power booker can do so many things with us um in terms of business functionality on the invoicing side on the client engagement side and many other things that um they need to do and yes it's localized in a bunch of markets for legal tasks and accounting um around the world well and just on that point I know you're in 120 countries you've got more than 100,000 advisors and this is where I want to first talk about the human layer and then talk about AI since you know I'm a strong advocate as many of our listeners know for the role of travel advisors and that's ultimately you know who you're serving here.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

But the reality is automation is rising AI that we'll get into in a moment is um able to do things um that many humans just either can't do or they can just do things more efficiently but where do you see the role of advisors moving forward? Are they evolving into something new? Are they becoming just more efficient? And from your vantage point seeing how travel advisors use the rate hop platform, what would you say are some of the standouts of the high performing agencies uh from everyone else?

SPEAKER_01 36:15

So I think um we started we first observed this evolution during COVID because in COVID um advisors um and travel agencies especially in in Europe but also in the US have all lost a lot of traffic a lot of human traffic so you're a high street agency literally uh literally couldn't get clients and so a lot of them started adapting to their digital way of doing things. And what we saw is that a lot of advisors uh became digital travel experts where they started doing their work online. And we were not ready obviously neither was any and nobody was ready for that but we got our stuff together and we built this quotation product very quickly where we allow a travel advisor to engage with their end customer in a digital uh interface which is a website to offer them what they're offering and to kind of get feedback and uh and um to take a payment here Apple Pay or whatever and and uh this product um is what really pushed us to an understanding that travel advisors are a bulk and since then we've um we've spent a lot of time honing in on this vision that travel advisors uh are becoming the digital travel experts they're not going anywhere and and we've seen a lot of uh a lot of um that um trend resonating with some of the venture community that invested in some competitors but uh we but we uh we we we think they're not going anywhere and the numbers the numbers obviously followed right the numbers followed that uh after covet the number of advisors started growing again and so they didn't die so everything that I was told in the early years of Ratehawk of hey why are you building product uh why are you building a product for a dying customer uh turned out to be not true

Travel Advisors As Digital Experts

SPEAKER_01 38:10

and um and we and we were very happy with that decision we think um we we think well you know Jeff Bezos teaches us a very important thing he says think about the things that don't that won't change right and what do we know about travel what will not change about travel travel is an expensive purchase it has been it's been one 10 years ago and it still is today for rich and for poor for families and for businesses travel is an expensive purchase and that will not change geopolitics doesn't make it any easier so travel is complex it will remain complex um and um and that's kind of second thing that won't change and so the travel advisor as the ultimate guide to managing something that is expensive and something that's complex uh likely in our opinion does not get replaced by AI. It gets gets replaced by another travel advisor that's empowered by AI. And that's the vision that we are that we believe in.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

The line that I always come back to when we talk about travel advisors is the famous Mark Twain quote when he was rumored to have uh to have died his line was uh news of my demise has been greatly exaggerated and there's there's various ways to uh uh that that's been quoted but anyway the the the point of it being that uh as it relates to travel advisors there's so many moments that the um over the last 20 or 30 years where people have predicted the end of travel advisors or travel agents as they were then known especially when the OTAs came along and as you pointed out post-COVID they're flourishing more than ever um but they're obviously flourishing now in an age where we have to also contend with agentic AI and not just this concept of uh generative AI that can create content and it can help write emails. All of a sudden now AI as you well know can actually make decisions on our behalf. And in that world I'm keen to get your take. So I'm gonna ask you a couple of direct questions and I'm kind of keen to give you the floor on this Felix to share your your overall views. So um when we actually look at where AI is creating actual value today I'm keen to get your take on that. And if you do think that with websites becoming largely sources for AI to be able to gather information is there a future where uh platforms like Rate Hawk will interact with AI agents um rather than just humans? And what do you see is changing with AI in terms of inventory um how things are priced or recommendations that come up um so I'd love to get your view on technology AI and agentic and how it is changing Rate Hawk and you think the travel advisor experience.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Of course I um I think AI is an amazing technology and we are in year three um maybe year four of um of something well 15 year super cycle and I think uh we uh tech and travel tech will look completely different in 15 years and I think this change that we will observe is bigger than mobile bigger than cloud bigger than internet and so I'm very excited about it. I'm a huge AI enthusiast and all the time that I'm not busy running um running businesses that we have and spending time with family I'm uh tinkering and building stuff myself and so obviously I think um it will change um it will change travel and it will change etg and rate hawk tremendous we have teams in the call center that um we have been able to completely um automate and we move those individuals to do more thoughtful and more important work and um and obviously there is a huge part any travel business any travel and travel tech business has a pretty meaningful operational component to it um and um and it doesn't matter if you're like a transactional business or if you're a software business or if you're a meta search if you're in B2B or in B2C there is always a meaningful kind of human component that can be augmented um or replaced by and so I think these businesses have a chance of having a completely different financial profile um and I uh putting on my investor hat obviously I'm very excited about that in terms of the in terms of the customer experience I'm also excited about how so many things so many things can be improved automated accelerated for our customers to be able to do their job uh better there is no travel agent on planet earth that knows all the destinations that knows all the hotels that knows um that knows all the best uh uh best spots etc and AI helps with that I'm not saying that you should blindly rely rely on everything AI tells you when you're selling to customers but it's certainly a massive assistant in terms of your primary research and so I'm very excited about all the things um all the things uh that are changing in the industry and in our um in our business um in that are empowered by AI.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Well on that note let's talk about where the industry is headed and this is the one uh kind of final area I really wanted to get into with you to tie everything together that we've discussed so far whether it be you

Agentic AI And The Future Workflow

SPEAKER_00 43:40

know your background experience the technology you've worked with B2B distribution how it's changed humans AI ultimately uh it comes down to uh uh monetization and you know running a successful business you're constantly focused on growth opportunities and how best to realize them and so given your vantage point you know you know based into By um you've got uh several very successful travel businesses that are scaling globally. Um if you look at where the real growth opportunity is, and again, thinking about our listeners to the podcast, many of them being travel advisors, of course, so people that you're already speaking to with uh with Rate Hawk, where do you think the opportunity is? It is is it um is there opportunities for better margins? Is it uh adding new products? You know, you look at a platform like Forra, and obviously they're continuing to expand um the available products that their advisors can book. Um, where do you think, Felix, the real growth opportunity is here?

SPEAKER_01 44:35

I think there's I look, I don't like to generalize it like that, right? We're we're working with some fantastic companies who have been in the business for many more years than we have. And for them, the opportunity is to drive profits. They are using AI to automate themselves more and to become more profitable and pay more dividends and um and kind of do that. Then we are we are um we are slightly younger, and for us, the opportunity that we see is to continue growing at uh at uh top speed range in terms of rule of 40 while uh improving the profitability of the business because we see a lot of growth opportunities for ETG and our brands. Um and I'm I'm very excited about that. So we're we're obviously still growing pretty fast, and ability to grow top line without growing a headcount is a core strategic priority for us. So I think it's it all depends on on the type of player that you talk to. But I think for for a lot of for a lot of the uh travel and travel tech players in B2B, I think AI opens an amazing opportunity to transform their business. And many people um in the early years or in the first maybe seven year of AI said, no, we'll we're gonna wait. We're gonna wait until kind of tech uh stabilizes. But I think that's a mistake. I think everybody needs to be spending time with the new technology to be able to uh arrive at uh something valuable for their customers. I don't think you can sit and wait. I don't think I don't think uh the market and the competitive nature of the industry that we're playing in allows us to sit and wait for AI to stabilize as a technology. And so I I think I think um we all have an amazing opportunity to transform our businesses, to make them more profitable, to grow where we couldn't grow in the past because of certain limitations in tech limitations, and I think uh I think we I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Yeah, no, and I I I mean obviously I'm bullish on the future of travel the next 10 or 20 years if you just look at the numbers of uh travelers going from you know 400 million to 800 million, like this is the sector that so many private equity firms and uh are getting behind because of the demographic shift. So like there's a lot of things to be positive about. And um, and so I'd love to finish off our conversation uh with you sharing a little bit where uh rate hawk is headed. So I'd love to hear a bit more about what your plans are for the platform, how you're continuing to sc scale and grow uh Rate Hawk specifically. Um but also I'd love, Felix, for you to be able to share, you know, what you think this industry not is gonna look like in 10 years or five years, but really how what you're paying attention to about how the industry is gonna evolve over the next year or two. But yeah, let's specifically rate hawk first, and then I'd love to hear your views on um uh B2B travel uh more generally as well. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

So I think for us, um obviously we're growing our retail business and we're paying a lot of attention uh to what travel advisors around the world need. We're continuing to add more functionality and become more multi-products. So we launched air tickets, we launched transfers, car rentals, and all of all of the other things to allow our um our agent partners not to ever leave retail. We built a mobile experience. Um we're building, we've built a very, I would say, robust API that does a lot of cool things um with all of our supply. Um, an API is an important avenue of growth for us. So using our um using our uh retail retail power globally to sign up unique supply that we then sell to unique um API partners is an important part of what we do. But also selling um selling more useful stuff and uh making uh travel professionals' jobs easier with Rate Hawk is a very important priority of ours. Recently we've become very focused on working with a lot of our suppliers more directly to improve, to work on this um to work on this customer support uh pain point that I mentioned, for example, amendments. And so spending more time on plugging in more supply directly, whether it's global chains, regional chains, and um very tailored uh hotel partners through our proprietary um inventory system is an important priority of ours. So I think where the future for um ETG lies is in this perfect balance of managing our direct supply versus world's best consolidator that we've built. And so that the that's something that we're gonna continue, um continue pushing with. And our supply partners and our uh travel professional partners obviously will enjoy that. And then in terms of in in terms of the industry, and then in terms of the industry, I think what we will see uh from those who embrace AI and build it into their products and um on the B2B side, I'm talking about the B2B side mostly, but um we will see unique uh we will see we will see uh margin profiles of B2B travel businesses that we haven't seen before. So I think if you look at a standard margin pro gross margin or uh maybe down margin profile of a travel of a B2B travel business, you will see how truly poorly automated these things are. And I think what we will see is that many businesses who embrace AI and really invest into um into using it to automate, will see pretty magical numbers that we haven't seen before in the um in in merch to the travel businesses. And I think that's something that's gonna start showing up in these financials very soon.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think obviously there's gonna be some very significant changes over the next year or two, and and what uh as agentic AI really catches on and people are starting to feel more comfortable um with agentic AI making decisions on their behalf, and I mean that for B2B as well, to be able to manage their workflows and um and so it is I agree with you, Felix, it's a really exciting time to be in this space. It's also a really exciting time to see what companies like Rate Hawk are doing, and even you know, looking at the broader group um at emerging travel group, and I I'll finish on this note in a moment because I'm sure many people will want to reach out and follow up with you. But um, but before we do, one thing I was just gonna note

Growth Plans Product Expansion And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 51:00

obviously, you're based in Dubai. So for all of us who work in the travel industry, um uh I want you and the team to stay safe. I got many great friends in Dubai and also in Israel as well. And I really obviously I think the one thing that's really resilient about our travel industry is that travel keeps coming back and people continue to travel. And so um um, but as far as where you're traveling to next, I'd love to finish on a on a on a much lighter note like that. So I mean, obviously you're an act an active traveler, you love this industry as well. Um, what's next for you in some of your uh either business travel or personal travel plans?

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Well, you know, for uh for us, um we get eight weeks off for kids' holidays in Dubai. So at the end of June, I uh uh and by the way, I just came back from Palma, which is uh B2B uh travel B2B Mecca, where a lot of the European B2B travel companies uh are uh headquartered. So I was just there. But um but my plan uh sometime at the end of June is to transition to our summer base. Dubai gets a little steamy, and um and to be somewhere in Europe and with the family while kids have off and I can uh work and see a lot of my regional teams.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

Fantastic. Good for you. That's a great place to be based in the the summer. And I've got a few friends, a friend uh Shiraf who was based in Dubai and moved back to Morocco in the summertime. But yes, I know summers get really hot in Dubai, and that's one of the things um many of my friends know this of my preferences that you know I'm based in Toronto, but my preferred uh state of being is to spend you know um three months at different places around the world each that are optimized to the seasonality, right? There's no there's no one place that is ideal year-round. And so if you can like uh um but Felix, there's obviously there's no perfect globe, right?

SPEAKER_01 52:39

If you if you could uh rebuild rebuild the globe, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

Yeah, exactly. That's uh the beauty is in the journey and moving around. So uh um, but Felix, obviously, I've really enjoyed meeting you, learning more about uh Emerging Travel Group, your background and uh and rate hawk. And I just want to highlight to our listeners too, the one uh as Felix and I were having the conversation about AI and where you're building in it, the one thing that stood out to me is you know the theme for our conference this year in October is beyond AI, and because we obviously focused in 24 on how AI was going to transform the industry, and then last year was about how it is transforming the industry. And I think the way that you even described it, um, where AI just becomes integrated. And so the concept of beyond AI, and the reason I mentioned this is because it'd be terrific to have you back um to be there as part of that uh conference, to be able to share some of your continued insights. So um well, we'll look forward to hopefully having you join us again in October, um, and then also seeing how your journeys evolve uh um uh from now until then. But before we do, I just want to before we close off, I just want to make sure for anyone that has been inspired to reach out to you uh directly uh or connect with the team, what would be the best ways for them to do that, Felix?

SPEAKER_01 53:48

You can find me on LinkedIn. So I'm um I I uh I'm a LinkedIn uh user. I um I uh write a lot of uh random thoughts that I get. Um but um or you can email me at uh Felix at emerging travel.com. But either works.

SPEAKER_00 54:04

Fantastic. And just for our listeners, uh Felix Spielman, S-H-P-I-L-A-N. But obviously you can look at our show notes and see some of the highlights as well. But thank you again, Felix, for joining us, wishing you and the team every success in 2026 and beyond, and look forward to keeping in touch. Dan, thank you very much. Thank you for hosting. And thanks to all of our listeners for joining us for the special event spotlight as we spoke to Felix Spielman, the president and CEO of both Emerging uh Travel Group and the founder of Ratehawk. I uh hope you enjoyed our conversation today and learned and benefited a lot from our discussion. As I mentioned throughout the conversation, ratehawk.com is one place to go, emerging travel uh.com. You can also check out to learn more about the group. And we, of course, post clips and highlights of all of our spotlight episodes on our social channels. So you can find those on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Travel Trends Podcast. And you can make sure that you are signed up for our monthly newsletter as well as our summit at Traveltranspodcast.com. And if you enjoyed the spotlight episodes, you can find out more on any of the streaming platforms and on our website itself. So thanks again for joining us, and until next time, safe travels.