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Creators are frontline in the authenticity war being waged by AI imagery

A couple of reports dropped this week which together tell the tale of the mindset of the travel booker in 2025.

Phocuswire reported on an iSeatz report which found 40% of travellers “said social media influencers had a “significant impact” on how they book and where they travel” For GenZ that number rose to 62%.

The other report from Full Frame Insurance gave a glimpse as to why this might be so and why the number is likely to rise, not fall.

With AI images and touch ups happening at an industrial scale, “four in ten Americans say they’ve been misled by travel imagery, and one in ten cut trips short when reality failed to match the pictures.”

“Eighty-two percent of Americans say they’d rather see realistic travel photos, even if that means revealing construction zones, crowds, or bad weather. The curated dream is losing its appeal. Authenticity, once an afterthought, is becoming a form of consumer protection.”

This is where genuine creators with a genuine care for their community come in. They are the reporters on the front line, giving the scoop, both good and bad on what they are seeing.

So, is 40% of marketing budget going to intercepting this channel?

I can confidently say the answer here is no.

Why does this mismatch exist?

From the hundreds of brands I’ve spoken to I’m pretty certain now the answer to this lies in the lack of transparency in the data between the influencer posting and what flows from there.

For too many brands, creators feel like a slot machine where you put money in, pull the handle, some nice pictures roll around but nothing spits out the bottom. It can be fun (even addictive) to play a little bit but eventually without any data to show otherwise, it seems like you’ve just set money on fire, whilst someone else had a jolly on your experience.

I 100% felt this way when running Urban Adventures.

We’ve built the Videreo product and system to specifically counter this problem and provide the data trail from awareness into consideration and through to conversion.

We can tell the brand exactly how many people not only “viewed” their business in a creator’s post or reel but how many specifically put their hand up to learn more, how deeply they investigated, whether they shared that on to their travel companions and of course whether they took the final booking action.

And we do it cheaper than your ad campaign on Meta.

Videreo is the place for brands and creators to meet & create a new sales pipeline together.

Contact me to learn how we can make this happen for you.

This content is provided by the (interim) newsletter sponsor Videreo.com

Google announces agentic payments

If you think we are years away from having AI agents make our bookings on our behalf – maybe think again.

Google announced this week that they have built the protocol to accept agentic payments.

“We’re collaborating with a diverse group of more than 60 organizations to help shape the future of agentic payments, including Adyen, American Express, Ant International, Coinbase, Etsy, Forter, Intuit, JCB, Mastercard, Mysten Labs, Paypal, Revolut, Salesforce, ServiceNow, UnionPay International, Worldpay, and more.”

No mention of Visa here who are likewise building towards this – potentially with other partners as we’ve reported here previously.

This is going to happen fast.

The announcement says the protocol will “securely initiate and transact agent-led payments across platforms. The protocol can be used as an extension of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP). In concert with industry rules and standards, it establishes a payment-agnostic framework for users, merchants, and payments providers to transact with confidence across all types of payment methods.”

Visibility across LLMs

Godfather of SEO, Rand Fishkin says he doesn’t have a clue about visibility in LLMs.

“People keep asking me about LLM visibility, but I don't even know: – Whether most people get the same or nearly the same responses? – If 10 people ask ChatGPT 5 the same question at the same time, are there 10 different answers? 5? 2?”

If Rand doesn’t know, I probably would be probing pretty deep on people who are telling you they do.

Here are some questions from Rand’s post you might like to ask:

“To what degree are responses the same across intents? Do slight changes in phrasing completely change the answers? How often? – Is there variance in sector consistency? (e.g. if you ask about costume jewelry brands are the responses higher variance than audience research tools?)

Any tool or process that's trying to measure this stuff is surely facing these questions, but I've yet to see the compelling research showing whether brands in AI answers are usually the same or not…”

How are people using ChatGPT?

The answer to this question came this week from the best source there is – ChatGPT maker, Open AI.

The highlight for me came in the headline change of people using the tool for work or leisure.

“ChatGPT’s economic impact extends to both work and personal life. Approximately 30% of consumer usage is work-related and approximately 70% is non-work—with both categories continuing to grow over time.”

This nugget also stood out: “ChatGPT consumer usage is largely about getting everyday tasks done. Three-quarters of conversations focus on practical guidance, seeking information, and writing—with writing being the most common work task, while coding and self-expression remain niche activities.”

Lots more in the full report for those who want to dig deeper (or upload it into ChatGPT and get a summary )

McKinsey drops mega report on AI agents in travel

Speaking of putting huge reports through ChatGPT – that’s exactly what I did when I received the latest McKinsey + Skift report on AI agents in travel. Here are the bullet points.

AI’s growing but not fully realized role in travel – Despite rising adoption, most travel companies still struggle to extract real value due to fragmented systems, siloed data, and a service-first (rather than tech-first) mindset
Agentic AI: The next chapter in AI’s evolution – Unlike generative AI, which advises, agentic AI can autonomously make decisions, execute tasks, and integrate structured and unstructured data, making it especially suited for complex travel workflows
The agentic-AI-powered future of customer experience in travel – Consumers show strong demand for AI travel assistants that can plan and book entire trips. Nearly 70% want this capability, but trust remains a barrier due to concerns about errors and hallucinations
How agentic AI can improve travel’s internal workflows – The biggest near-term ROI may come from behind-the-scenes applications like predictive maintenance, housekeeping optimization, menu engineering, airline pricing, and loyalty personalization
Launching and accelerating agentic AI adoption – While 90% of travel executives use generative AI, only 2% report widespread agentic AI adoption. Scaling will require strong tech foundations, digital roadmaps, employee upskilling, and cultural flexibility

I also took the liberty of turning the report into an AI generated podcast with NotebookLM – more details in the podcast section below on how to access that.

It’s probably a huge flex to be someone who doesn’t drop every big PDF document into ChatGPT but rather just reads it all…… maybe.

ChatGPT as a paid channel? Booking says sure!

Saw this comment on LinkedIn from Fredrik Sjoberg reporting from the Skift conference this week.

Does Booking.com see ChatGPT as a paid channel in the future? Glenn Fogel, CEO: “I would have no problem with that.” He admits, though, that he doesn’t know what OpenAI’s Sam Altman is going to do.

Probably no surprise where your game is built around outspending everyone, everywhere. Opening up new fronts just fractures the competition further.

Speaking of troubling news for hotels and direct bookings, former podcast guest Michael Goldrich also laid out why Trip Advisor’s strategy should strike fear into the hearts of hotels looking to up their direct game.

“Tripadvisor just confirmed what we already knew. Search isn’t dying. It's mutating. And AI is calling the shots.”

So what is he strategy?

“Tripadvisor is adapting. Fast. They’re leveraging AI-first search. They're working with OpenAI. They’ve signed five AI partnerships in six months. They're not waiting for traffic to arrive. They’re engineering it. And here’s the part every hotel commercial team needs to hear. Tripadvisor is getting users to come directly to their brands.” according to Goldrich.

(Note: There is still untapped distribution potential in social through creators for hotels: ☎️ me to learn how)

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Marketplace Spotlight: Travel Trends AI Summit

Lots of key people from the Everything AI in Travel marketplace companies will be taking to the stage in the upcoming Travel Trends AI Summit.

You’ll hear from Jeff Kischuk of Tripian, Brennan Bliss of Propellic, John Lyotier from Travel AI and even I will be making a very early morning (for me) appearance.

Get your tix here.

If you have a B2B business underpinned by AI and looking for people to notice you, you can sign up to the marketplace for peanuts (top right corner, 5 mins, bring your logo).

I’ve priced for bootstrapped startups but also accepting larger companies too.

Sometimes you just need a nudge

“EY’s former head of travel, meetings and events Karen Hutchings has teamed up with Kessie Bratko, previously an SVP at BCD Travel, to launch a travel tech start-up that applies agentic AI to ‘nudge’ travellers towards compliance.” according to article in Business Travel News Europe this week.

The platform is described by Hutchings as a “safety net for policy management… because people don’t read 25-page policies anymore” and as a support system for under-resourced travel teams.

Slack Group!

Podcasts and Sponsors

Podcasts now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts:

New podcasts are now showing up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for your easy listening pleasure!

As mentioned I’ve created a podcast that breaks down the HUUUUUUGE McKinsey report.

If you subscribe on Spotify or Apple – you’ve already got it. For everyone else – listen in here.

Look out this week for a new proper podcast with Alex Bainbridge from Autoura. Alex and I will be hosting a pre-session to the Arival AI Forum on Monday 29 September from 3-5pm at the conference venue. This is a session to bring your crazy thoughts, your stupid questions and your boldest ideas. We’ll probably have a couple of beers too.

The podcast dropping this week gives a little bit of flavour around what that might be like! (subscribe!!)

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Most clicked last week was the link to Karryon’s practical tips to get going with AI for travel agents.

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 focusing. 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

Glossary

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. (source IBM)

Generative AI (GAI) is a type of AI powered by machine learning (ML) models that are trained on vast amounts of data and are used to produce new content, such as photos, text, code, images, and 3D renderings. (Source Amazon)

Large Language Model (LLM) is a specialized type of artificial intelligence (AI) that has been trained on vast amounts of text to understand existing content and generate original content.

ChatGPT – Open AI’s LLM; sometimes referred to by its series number GPT3; GPT3.5 or GPT4. These are used by Microsoft & Bing.

Gemini – Google’s suite of LLM.

If wanting to go even deeper into the AI lexicon – check out this handy guide created by Peter Syme for the tours & activity sector