TravelWise with Phil Blizzard

TravelWise Looks At How AI Rewrites Travel - From Refunds To Robots

• Phil Blizzard • Season 25 • Episode 5

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The future of travel isn’t arriving someday; it’s booking rooms, approving refunds, and answering questions right now. From the floor of World Travel Market London, Phil Blizzard joins three leaders pushing AI from buzzword to business value—speeding up claims, selling smarter, and restoring trust where it’s been eroded.

First, Steven Joyce of Protect Group shows how Refund Protect turns non‑refundable trips into peace of mind with AI‑accelerated approvals and payouts within hours, not weeks. By partnering with tour operators, OTAs, airlines, and hotels rather than selling direct, the model boosts conversion while removing pre‑trip anxiety for travellers. We break down costs, workflows, and why a customer‑first claim experience matters more than ever.

Then, Benjamin Manzi of Maya opens the hood on travel‑specialist AI agents built to sell more trips and handle support across 150+ languages. Beyond chat, internal agents draft quotes, invoices, and emails, giving human teams leverage where it counts. We explore how market maturity flipped from scepticism to urgency, what differentiates domain‑trained travel AI, and why capturing traffic from search and assistants depends on agents that speak the industry’s language.

Finally, Daniel Reeves of Room Angel tackles the surge of scam sites and opaque pricing. Their verification tokens bring cryptographic trust to hotel bookings and agentic conversations, while fair‑price benchmarks help consumers and regulators see whether a rate is reasonable. With consolidation on the horizon and agentic distribution set to grow rapidly, we discuss the partnerships, data, and rules that will define how hotels compete on transparency and value.

If you care about faster refunds, smarter sales, and safer bookings, this conversation is your map to what’s next. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review to tell us which AI upgrade you want travel brands to adopt first.

SPEAKER_06:

Travel Wise. Phil Blizzard. News, news, and interviews.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Travel Wise. In this episode, we're taking a deep dive into the future of travel, exploring how artificial intelligence is transforming the way businesses operate in the tourism sector. Phil Blizzard visited London's world travel market, speaking with top experts from leading companies who are pioneering AI solutions for airlines, hotels, and travelers. From personalized journeys to seamless customer experiences, AI is reshaping the industry. Join us as we unpack the latest innovations and what's next on the horizon. Let's get traveling with travel wise.

SPEAKER_06:

Travel-wise with Phil Blizzard.

SPEAKER_03:

Hi, I'm Steven Joyce, uh global strategy lead for uh travel tours and OTAs for a company called Protect Group, based in uh the UK.

SPEAKER_05:

So, what are you offering travelers then in terms of protection?

SPEAKER_03:

So we offer a variety of different products designed to help alleviate or reduce travel anxiety before travel actually happens. So our uh signature product is called Refund Protect, and it's designed to allow customers, travelers, to add on to a non-refundable product uh refundability so that in the event that something happens before a trip, they get sick or injured, or uh there's extreme weather or something like that, and they can't actually go on the trip, that they get a refund. And we we take the risk on that refund from the uh seller traffic. You do.

SPEAKER_05:

How does that differ then from travel insurance? Because a lot of travel insurance, and I use travel insurance on a regular basis, you get that built in before travel in case you do go ill or weather conditions. So how do you differentiate?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, my my first point would be have you ever tried to claim that? Our our process uh is designed to be very customer focused. So in the event that something happens, we can process those uh requests for refund within four hours and have the money back in the customer's bank account within that day. Yeah, whereas travel insurance quite often takes you know weeks or even months to process and to get that money back.

SPEAKER_05:

Not hours, or like months, is it not four hours, but four hours. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03:

So we're very, very fast. Uh turnaround uh approvals can be almost instant using AI, and our payouts are within four hours.

SPEAKER_05:

So you're client-based, how does it work? Are you selling this through agents or directly online to the consumer?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we don't sell direct online to consumers because we're a non-insurance product. So we sell through resellers, um, either resellers of travel or tour operators, um, companies that sell travel to consumers, we partner with them in order to resell the product to consumers. Okay.

SPEAKER_05:

Have you got any uh ballpark figures on what it would cost the consumer to take on board your protection?

SPEAKER_03:

On average, it's between eight and twelve percent. Um our kind of sweet spot is about 10%. So on you know, a thousand-pound trip, you would pay$100 for the added protection. Um, and you know, then you know you've got peace of mind in case something happens.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, and then in terms of from your side, the back office side of the operations, are you embracing AI? It's the buzzword at the moment, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yes, yeah, yeah. So we use AI both in our uh on the reporting side as well as on the customer service side. So to speed up the approval process, um, as I mentioned, 70% of the requests that come in uh for refunds are processed with AI instantly. Okay. Um so that's really helped improve the customer experience because customers come in, they apply for a refund, and they get instantly approved if they've got their documentation and settled.

SPEAKER_05:

Now we're talking in London, World Travel Market.

SPEAKER_03:

Where is your protection offering? Is it a global? It's a global offering, so we can provide it through any seller of travel located in any region. Um we have four main verticals that we work in: events, ticketing, airlines, hospitality, and travel tours and OTAs, which is my vertical. Um, and so we can work across verticals as well.

SPEAKER_05:

So to finish off, for those who want more information, how can they get this information about your protection services?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh come to the website at protect.group is probably the easiest place. Or reach out to me, Steven, at protect.group. Okay, brilliant. Thanks very much indeed for joining us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07:

Travel wise with Phil Blizzard, news, views, and interviews.

SPEAKER_01:

My name is Benjamin Manzi. I'm co-founder and CCO at Maya. Uh so at Maya, we build AI agent for travel companies. Uh we help selling uh them to sell more trips and we're helping with the support.

SPEAKER_05:

So that run across the spectrum of travel companies?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Hotels, airlines, and only travel companies, so we focus on OTAs, two operators and DMCs. Yes.

SPEAKER_05:

And what are they after these days with this rapidly moving technological uh world?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, so it's moving very fast, right? Uh I mean we see we started uh two and a half years ago and we see a huge difference on the market, right? When we started two and a half years ago, everybody thought we were crazy. But now uh it's very nice to see that uh lots more and more travel companies uh are interested in AI and implementing agents.

SPEAKER_05:

What's been the biggest changes?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the market maturity, I would say. Uh travel uh market is uh very slow, I would say, but now we see that it's moving very fast for technology, right? Uh and we're happy to see that uh everybody's understanding that there is a shift happening with AI, and this is now it's time to move, right?

SPEAKER_05:

No, no, no. Because there's perhaps a generational difference in people who are involved in the different companies.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes. I mean, the way also uh people uh book travel changed uh with the the with the generation, of course, uh, but also internally within the team, we see that uh more and more uh I would say new uh newcomers want to implement AI in their uh in their company in order to uh yeah to help and boost uh boost uh the company, right?

SPEAKER_05:

So you establish, I believe, an AI agent. So give us an overview of what an agent, an AI agent could do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, so our agent at Maya, they do uh multiple tasks, of course. It starts uh with a chatbot, through a chatbot, AI chatbot, in order to sell more trips and helping with the support, but not only. We also have internal agents. Uh those internal agents help to streamline like internal operation uh and helping the agent in the daily tasks, right? Like uh generating quotes, invoicing, email, reply, etc.

SPEAKER_05:

Thinking of uh chat, um what about the language aspect? There must be some barriers in terms of uh language.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean uh Maya speaks more than 150 languages. We have uh no, we have uh Arabic clients, uh we have uh French clients, we have Spanish clients, uh English markets, uh east massive uh number of clients or potential clients in China. China also, yes, China the Chinese market is moving very fast, even faster than the European and uh the Middle East market and the US too. Uh but it's interesting to see uh the technology also uh used in this market.

SPEAKER_05:

Uh here's the world travel market, what are your aims and how has it been over the last three days?

SPEAKER_01:

It was very intense. We did a lot of steps. Uh we break the workers, it was very nice, but uh the main goal was to meet our clients, right? And to meet also new prospects uh and partner in order to uh to introduce them Maya and their agents.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, okay. As an exposing statement, what can you say to potential clients uh why they should use Maya and your services and your uh AI agents?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, as I mentioned, there is a shift happening right now. Uh people used to think it was in the past, but the past is today, right? Because it's moving very fast. So I think it's the time now uh to implement AI into the travel companies in order to uh make sure that people that come from your web in your website from uh ChatGPT, for example, are not lost and you don't lose any more clients and you sell more trips and you have the support, right?

SPEAKER_05:

I admire what you're doing because there's a multitude of companies here who are offering services to me which sound very, very similar. So how do you stand out from those?

SPEAKER_01:

The first thing is that uh at Maya Travel AI, we only focus on travel, right? There is multiple companies, of course, doing this, but our biggest focus is travel, right? Uh, we are travel specialists and uh we know the travel, uh it's a very specific language. Uh we speak this language. Uh, I'm ex trip advisor for myself. My co-founder Joris was uh ex-consultant at McKinsey for travel, so we know uh we know how it works. And uh of course, uh, I mean the the the technology that we use uh and the data also we use uh is only built on travel. So once again, that's very important uh for the industry.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, thanks for your insights and overall of what uh travel is all about. So uh joining us.

SPEAKER_06:

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_07:

Travel wise with Phil Blizzard, news, views, and interviews.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, my name is Daniel Reeves, I'm the chief commercial officer of the Room Angel Foundation. Uh Room Angel is uh we're positioned as the fiduciary bridge between regulators, platforms, uh, hotels, and consumers to introduce this transparent and trusts, trusted layer as we move into an agentic area of distribution. On top of that, we've got a really exciting new product that we launched this year called Hive, which is all around connecting hotel data to a single system to improve performance across the asset.

SPEAKER_05:

What caught my attention was the fact that scamming is everywhere across all industry sectors. The hotel sector is being hit with billions of dollars every year being taken away from uh companies and individuals. So, what are you doing to protect consumers and businesses from scam websites?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so scam websites is a huge issue. So we're we partnered originally with people like uh the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, the Better Business Bureau in the US and North America, and we started introducing a trusted stamp on hotel websites called verified by room angel. And what we've since done is introduced sort of a cryptographic tokenization that verifies hotel conversations in an agentic world. So that's Room Angel verification tokens. We've taken the same practice of protecting consumers on websites and moved it towards how we're introducing this trust and verification layer around agentic distribution with between consumers and AI agents.

SPEAKER_05:

I suppose the key aspect is that verification. So much technology involved? Is AI involved in that process?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so it's the it's sort of the typical cryptographic and tokenization world. I won't pretend to know the exact in and outs, it's more of a our CTO level conversation, but that's um it's it's unique in the way that we try and guard against there's two things, right? One, as a hotel, you need to know that it's actually a person booking your hotel as we move to agentics. So that's something a lot of people don't talk about. And as a consumer, one of the things you need to be sure about is that the rate that you're seeing and the hotel you're about to book is indeed a real hotel. So that's the the area that we operate in uh in that regard.

SPEAKER_05:

The other thing you mentioned was like the regulatory organizations. Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

So tell us a bit about that and your involvement with them. Yeah, so we spend a lot of time working with consumer and competition regulators. And there's two things. One is around protecting consumers, around what is considered a fair price with hotel rates, and the other thing is around installing and instilling maybe a more robust competition between hotels. So hotels begin to compete more on rate rather than on commission settings, which is in the traditional OTA sphere. As we move agentic, we need to introduce that, as we call ourselves, a fiduciary bridge to ensure more transparency around rankings and fair ranking principles, but also around what the price actually is. So our unique algorithm that we've had regulatory backing, a regulatory um sort of alignment on introduces an expected price for hotel rates. So if you know and you see an expected rate alongside an actual rate, you get a sense as a consumer whether or not that's a fair price. So that's the area that we're we're moving into, and we're providing that data both to regulators, to platforms, to hotels and consumers. So we're introducing this idea of sort of fairer competition, more transparency when we move to the agentic distribution era.

SPEAKER_05:

We're talking at the World Travel Market in London, and uh you're here day three days, and uh some idea of uh the people we've been talking to and perhaps future partners.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's I mean, there's a lot, right? To to bring an industry around this, platforms around this, there's a lot of stakeholders to have conversations with because things are moving so quickly, and we don't know exactly what way it's going to work out. The phrase I've been using is we have a compass and not a roadmap. So we know we're moving this direction. We don't know exactly how, but we do have a little sense of what are some of the key ingredients, key partners, key pieces of technology we need to introduce to to help create the the world that we want to see as an industry transpire in the future.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So we've had a lot of conversations around that future. The other thing that we've spent a lot of time doing with is uh our product called Hive, which is that uh system of systems that enhances performance across the hotel uh or across the asset. And that's what we spent a lot of time doing as well with partners, just looking at early results, onboarding some new customers. So it's been a busy, busy couple of days for us.

SPEAKER_05:

And to finish off, I mean, things are moving rapidly. So get out your compass, get out the crystal ball. Yes. Give us some idea where things will be two years down the road down the road.

SPEAKER_02:

Two years? I think we're gonna see a consolidation across a lot of technology, I think, as sort of older incumbents in the tech space realize they can't move as quick as they would like to. So I think you'll see a lot of acquisitions and and consolidations around uh AI technology in particular. But I think we'll see a rapid growth in agentic distribution for hotels. I think that's that's fairly certain that we're gonna move that way. I think McKinsey and Gartner expect about 80% of all bookings to be agenc in the next five years. So you'll see a lot of the foundational technology. I think we need to bring regulation and sort of trust and verification to bear on how that technology uh moves forward. But it's gonna be moving. I don't think that rate is gonna slow down at all. I think we're gonna see a tsunami ahead of us.

SPEAKER_05:

Well, thank you very much for talking to us. Giving us uh an overview of the foundation and also your insights with your your compass and crystal ball. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_06:

Travel wise with Phil Blizzard, news, views, and interviews.

SPEAKER_04:

And if you'd like to have your own podcast, do drop me an email on PhilBlizzardmedia at gmail.com. Our PhilBlizzard Radio Production. Available on Apple, Amazon, Mgami, Spotify Deezer, and all good podcast channels, and also now on YouTube.