I go down the AI rabbit hole so you don’t have to!

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In breaking news: Propellic - Travel Marketing has been shortlisted for the Global Search Awards!

Best Use of Search - Travel / Leisure (SEO)

The Global Search Awards honor the innovation and creativity of companies excelling in SEO across various industries.

This recognition underscores our commitment to delivering outstanding results for our clients. When passion, dedication, and teamwork combine, amazing things happen.

Congrats to all the team. Be great to see you take home the cup!

Check Propellic out for yourself here.

The gap between building an MVP & production in AI 

A fantastic post this week from Vinay Dhavala looked at the not so insignificant gap between doing a little proof of concept (PoC) and turning that into a full production piece on which your business now relies.

I think many have been lulled into a false sense of how AI can scale across their business because we’ve never really had technology that non technologists could build with.

In what was one of the most popular articles I came across this week from Jurgen Geuter reposting an article from Ludicity poetically titled “I Will F&#king Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again” Ludicity quite correctly points out “Most organizations cannot ship the most basic applications imaginable with any consistency, and you're out here saying that the best way to remain competitive is to roll out experimental technology that is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than anything else your I.T department runs, which you have no experience hiring for, when the organization has never used a GPU for anything other than junior engineers playing video games with their camera off during standup”. Harsh but fair.

Dhavala in his piece gives us a great checklist to make sure that we are deploying with the right considerations such as:

Is it accurate?

Is it consistent?

• Can it stay on the topic, or can it be easily distracted?

• Does it have any guard rails and safety net?

• Can I trust it to safely represent my brand?

• What would its behavior be at the edges?

• Do you as an engineer have control over its behavior and outcomes?

• How would you test this probabilistic system?

• What is the response time? Is that acceptable to the user?

• Would users accept interacting with AI systems?

• Is the system secure? Is the data secure?

• How can I ensure my legal and regulatory compliance?

• What are the operational costs?

• What are the scaling limitations?

• How can this system be integrated with my ecosystem? What is the cost of integration?

• Can you manage logging, debugging, CI/CD, analytics, support and monitoring and observability with this paradigm?

Ignoring these things might lead to more than just egg on your face but as Dhavala says in his own moment of poetry: “Attempts to pass off an LLM with a user interface layer as a Gen AI application would fall apart like a sandwich with soggy bread slices.” Sticking with the food them, Ludicity concurs “This isn't a recipe for disaster, it's a cookbook for someone looking to prepare a twelve course f&#king catastrophe.”

Happy building everyone!

Anthropic drops its latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet

Another week, another iteration up there in the LLM maker land. Like most of these new drops, people can’t wait to get in there and build something potentially spectacular and show everyone on X.

Maybe I’m just getting jaded but there is definitely a pattern emerging and now I understand better how these models work, it is a pattern that has probably always been there.

This week the big buzz was on coding incredible apps with just a couple of prompts. And that probably is amazing I guess. But if we are looking for real world utility, what you will find is that the things people get models to do in the hours after release are things we already have. And this is very intentional.

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. The transformer is the big brain of tiny chips making the Nvidia share price get a nosebleed. Generative means the model’s raison d’etre is to create something. And pre-trained means its starting point for creation is everything it has already learned.

Pulling it apart like this makes creating a blackjack game from a few prompts slightly less amazing. It is pre-trained on how to code a basic app. It knows about Blackjack. It is generating what it knows.

What we are hoping for of course is some help in creating solutions to problems that we don’t know the answer to - or at least it is not obvious to us. But maybe, just maybe it can tie some threads that have been not connected by any human together to do just that.

Is AI the new UI for Travel?

A very good article this week on hospitality.net brought together a stellar lineup of experts to talk about whether AI will become the new UI for how we maneuver our way through the digital travel journey.

The summary is AI has the potential to become a significant part of the travel UI by enhancing efficiency, user experience, and integrating with existing systems. However, the emotional and visual aspects of travel, the complexity of practical planning, and the need for usability over mere innovation present challenges that must be addressed. The future likely holds a hybrid approach where AI complements but does not entirely replace traditional interfaces.

Case For AI Becoming the New UI

1. Transformative Potential and Efficiency

   • Simone Puorto, Founder, CEO, Futurist

     • Quote: "Conversational platforms like ChatGPT will likely become the main or even the sole gateways to the internet. This shift could dramatically change the current structure and interface of the internet."

   • George Roukas, Partner at Hudson Crossing

     • Quote: "AI agents can achieve goals across multiple tasks using multiple models and data sources, offering a more sophisticated approach than current chatbots."

   • Binu Mathews, CEO at IDS Next

     • Quote: "Generative AI is transforming the travel industry, driven by Gen Z and Gen Alpha's preferences for convenience and speed. AI-powered virtual travel assistants are becoming a staple in the industry."

2. Enhanced User Experience

   • Mark Fancourt, Co-Founder at TRAVHOTECH

     • Quote: "Voice input is becoming more prevalent as it's faster and more convenient than typing. This shift toward voice communication is a natural evolution in our interactions with technology."

   • Leah Rankin, Chief Product Officer at SiteMinder

     • Quote: "AI will improve every digital moment in travel. The true power of AI is enabling businesses to drive meaningful innovations from the inside out."

3. Integration with Existing Systems

   • Stanislav Ivanov, Founder and Editor-in-chief of ROBONOMICS

     • Quote: "AI will become the new user interface in travel, but traditional OTAs will still play a crucial role. GPTs can enhance user experiences, but OTAs' booking engines will remain essential."

Case Against AI Becoming the New UI

1. Visual and Emotional Aspects of Travel

   • Martin Soler, Partner at Soler & Associates

     • Quote: "Generative AI can answer questions, but the emotional and inspirational aspects of travel still rely heavily on visual and auditory elements. AI-generated content must include actual images to inspire travelers."

2. Complexity and Practicality in Travel Planning

   • Fergus Boyd, Hospitality Consultant

     • Quote: "Conversational interfaces can add friction to searches for airlines, hotels, and restaurants. Travel searches are intrinsically visual, and AI's lack of logic makes it unsuitable for complex travel planning."

3. Usability and Consumer Expectations

   • Michael Toedt, CEO and Founder at dailypoint

     • Quote: "In hotel technology, we must prioritize usability over innovation for its own sake. Large Language Models (LLMs) are fantastic, but their impact is often diminished by misuse or misunderstanding of their proper application."

Disclosure: AI was definitely the UI to pull together this summary.  

Could Wander be giving us an early glimpse into what we will see from Airbnb?

This article in Fast Company this week about luxury apartment rental brand Wander I felt hit a lot of the notes we’ve heard Brian Chesky talk about in terms of what they are trying to realise over at Airbnb when it said “guests can chat with an AI-enabled concierge loaded with site-specific data, so it’s able to answer questions from where to find the TV remote to where to go for dinner.”

The automated concierge can also field maintenance requests if there’s a problem at a property—or, if need be, transfer questions to a human operator, says founder and CEO John Andrew Entwistle.

“If for whatever reason you seem frustrated, then it’ll automatically transfer to a human, to make sure that you’re getting the best quality of care,” he says.

Watching!!

Can AI lead to the rise of the DMC as a powerhouse in travel?

This Op-ed in Entrepreneur by ALEX GORYACHEV raised an interesting possibility about how the tactical efficiencies possible with AI could free up these businesses to move up from mere operators of other people’s product to taking their own place amongst the ranks of consumer brands.

Goryachev argues; “take Destination Management Companies, for example. They already have experience, contacts and knowledge about local travel details that can make or break a trip or turn a good trip into a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience. Add in the power of GenAI, and they become industry leaders when it comes to tailoring individual trips for their clients — plus, this technology makes it easy for them to broaden their reach.”

There have been many attempts over the past decade or so to bring the consumer and the DMC together, because it does lead to a better priced product for the end consumer. And with all other things being equal, that SHOULD win out.

But it doesn’t, mainly because the DMC can’t overcome the consumer trust issue. I don’t know this brand. Will I be OK? This payment checkout looks funky. And so on.

Even savvy (read as tight) travellers haven’t really made this leap at scale. Can AI change that?

If you think someone (or everyone) you know or work with could grow from being more informed on the topic of ai + travel (or could use the training above) then please forward this email to them and they can click the button below:

Current funding landscape for AI

Sooooooo, do you want the good news or the bad news……….

Let’s start with the good from this Phocuswire wrap up on the topic from their recent PhocusWright conference in Europe. AI investments over the past 6 years are “accounting for between 60 to 70% of investments by travel and mobility companies each year during that period.” Yes - 6 years. Not a typo! (Not to say there aren’t lots of other typos here……)

In the not so good column, “Data has shown travel funding totaled $4.6 billion in 2023, a drop from $12 billion in 2022. And 2024 is off to a weak start, too: By the end of May only $1.7 billion had been raised, according to Phocuswright's Travel Startups Interactive Database.”

Gaurav Tuli, partner at F-Prime Capital summed it up best saying “We're seeing great companies actually get funded now, and we're starting to wash through a lot of the noise and aftermath of the last two years.”

Maybe we’ve landed where we always should be?

New LIVE show where you can ask your AI questions

We hosted our first LinkedIn live on our inaugural “Watts The F&#k” show this week! It was a lot of fun. Especially when the guest of honour walked out on the show because he forgot to plug in his computer. I filled the gap with some singing. None of this is made up. You can see the replay here.

Hopefully we also hit on some interesting things as well………..

Slack Group!

Alex Bainbridge shared this great chart in the Slack Group this week.

How to work with Tony

The calendar is now very full I’m afraid.

Lots of work going on to launch the marketplace for buyers and suppliers to find each other with ai solutions. If you have an ai solution in market (product, SaaS tool, service) - please get in touch to get information about being listed. We are grandfathering forever the lowest listing price for those who are in for the launch.

Please email me to deep dive into the specific opportunities within your business you might wish to explore. By interviewing key internal stakeholders we can identify which of your bottlenecks are most ripe for an ai powered fix and the approach to take to fix those across a month long project. The earliest I am available for this is now September with very limited availability.

For the fully committed business who now understands the transformative power of this technology, the final phase is to move to build your own internal “AI centre of excellence” which is combination of building an ai culture in your business by taking a human centric approach as well as building out or buying in the best solution to each identified issue. Please email me for more details on any or all of these phases.

Want to follow in Propellic’s footsteps and get in front of a highly engaged audience of travel decision makers by sponsoring the newsletter? We are booking Q4 sponsorships now. Also email me on that one for rates and details.

Most clicked last week was the link to the Databox survey on how brands are using AI for content marketing. Unfortunately not enough filled in the survey to be able to share any results.  That’s it - you’ve made it to the end of this edition. I’ll be putting the result of the most clicked post in next week’s edition so you can see where others are focussing. If I’ve missed something, you’ve got a tip or any feedback at all - you can simply reply to this email and it will come straight to me. I’m doing this for You so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think