In Phocus Podcast Season 4
In Phocus is a regular dissection of the news, issues and trends in travel and technology, featuring interviews with industry executives and entrepreneurs and hosted by PhocusWire editors. Check back weekly for new episodes.
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CEO Spotlight: Alex Mans of Flyr
June 6, 2025
The road to modern retailing in the airline world is long and very complex.
Implementing the International Air Transport Association's New Distribution Capability technology standard is still a source of consternation for many carriers and their retail partners, but others are beginning to evolve towards offer and order and the dream of offering travelers personalized services.
Flyr, which was founded in 2013, has been steadily building up its own retail technology offering for carriers in recent years. The company launched its airline offer and order management system last September, having announced a $295 million funding round the previous month to "accelerate the delivery of modern reservation system."
The United States-based company also has a presence in the hospitality technology world, having acquired Pace Revenue in 2022.
In an interview with PhocusWire, Alex Mans, founder and CEO of Flyr, discussed the current state of airline retailing and the potential for carriers to begin bundling far more than bags and seats.
How data-driven personalization transforms loyalty programs with Snowflake's Whitnee Hawthorne
April 30, 2025
Founded in 2012, Snowflake is a cloud-based data storage company that works across a variety of verticals including travel and hospitality. In September 2024 the company launched its “AI Data Cloud for Travel and Hospitality” to address industry needs such as dynamic pricing and sustainability tracking, reputation management and performance advertising.
Whitnee Hawthorne, global head of travel and hospitality at, Snowflake, talks to Charlotte Lamp-Davies, founder of A Bright Approach, in the PhocusWire Studio.
Snowflake won the award for "Travel Innovator of the Year" at The Phocuswright Conference Innovation: Launch competition in November 2024.
The dream of a one-stop travel shop with the CEO of Oojo
April 23, 2025
Flight specialist Oojo is a relative newcomer to the online travel world.
The company launched four years ago and is part of Trevolution Group, which is the travel technology and services part of the wider Dyninno Group.
During an interview in the PhocusWire Studio, Gulce Karsli Rozeveld, who joined Oojo as CEO earlier this year, discussed the online flight specialist’s growth and her thoughts on whether a one-stop travel shop can ever really succeed.
Rozenveld spoke about the huge time, investment and resources required for such an endeavor and said she could only think of about three players that could do it and "even then it will take a long."
She also said more analysis of human behavior and psychology is needed to discover why a truly end-to-end travel platform hasn’t happened yet and whether consumers would trust a single company with all their travel requirements.
However, Rozenfeld acknowledged that artificial intelligence might change everything and said she’s open and excited about the potential of the technology in travel.
Airline tech experts from Dohop and CitizenPlane on retailing and distribution trends
April 16, 2025
Airline distribution developments such as new commercial approaches and the move to offer-order have been the topic for many debates.
Discussions around IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology standard are ongoing but general adoption is still quite low and there seems to be an acceptance, or perhaps resignation, that although there has been a little acceleration, it will take more time.
David Gunnarsson, CEO of Dohop and Charles Rajjou, CEO of CitizenPlane, were on hand to discuss recent developments during an interview in the PhocusWire studio.
Gunnarsson has noted a little acceleration in adoption but said NDC was “always a means to an end” and attributed any acceleration to airlines and technology companies “jumping on the offer-order bandwagon.”
He also said that even the carriers that have embraced the technology standard are still only using a fraction of what it could be used for.
Gunnarsson and Rajjou went on to discuss the move to offer and order, the danger of leaving key stakeholders behind with NDC penetration so low and the remaining challenges for airlines looking to improve the retail experience for customers.
How Turkish OTA Wingie is tackling expansion challenges and AI strategy
April 9, 2025
Turkey with its East meets West location, high internet penetration and relatively young population is well-positioned to further strengthen its presence in the online travel market.
At least that is what Çağlar Erol, CEO of online travel agency Wingie Enuygun Group, is hoping for as he shapes the business for further growth.
In an interview in the PhocusWire studio, Erol said that the OTA operates in 22 different countries and is particularly strong in the Middle East.
He shared that Wingie has grown rapidly in that region since the end of the pandemic and is now targeting further growth across the United Arab Emirates as well as beyond.
Erol also said that Wingie had grown, since launch in 2008, from a fintech-focused business into an online travel agency, with its own payments gateway and digital wallet, offering flights, hotels, transfers, car rentals and bus tickets.
He touched on current challenges for the business such as scaling in different languages and different countries as it expands.
Troop founder on travel tech disruption and group travel growth
March 26, 2025
Group travel in particular seems to be flourishing with an uptick in internal meetings and further growth predicted for 2025. Research from American Express Global Business Travel, released in October, revealed that 66% of meeting planning professionals expect their budgets to rise.
Dennis Vilovic, founder and co-CEO of Troop, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2021, believes group travel could increase by 30% next year despite pressure from some large corporations for employees to return to the office full time.
During an interview in the PhocusWire studio, Vilovic discussed trends in group travel such as longer trips for meetings, mostly internal meetings, secondary locations and group sizes of less than 100.
Fast forward in ground transportation with Meili and Mozio
March 19, 2025
When travelers are on the move, ground transportation can be considered in isolation or in combination with another travel element — a traveler could be taking a car to the airport, to a hotel or to the train, the list goes on.
It makes sense therefore that some companies are setting their sights on linking the bookings and data from various travel suppliers — a concept known as the "connected trip," which has been in development for some time across the industry.
Mike McGearty, CEO of Meili, and Niall Carson, chief commercial officer for Mozio, joins senior reporter Morgan Hines in the PhocusWire studio for a wide ranging conversation on whether ground transportation gets the attention it deserves, the challenges it faces and advances in AI and more.
Watch the interview here.
CEO Spotlight: Alberto Gutiérrez of Civitatis
March 12, 2025
Alberto Gutiérrez, the founder and CEO of tours and activities marketplace Civitatis, had no business plan when he set out to build the company.
Asked for his advice for travel startups, Gutiérrez attributed the success of the Spain-based platform, which was founded in 2008, to his ability to do a little of everything from coding and finding partners to accounting.
"I always see this as the key to my success but it is not easy to replicate," he said during an interview in the PhocusWire studio.
Since founding Civitatis, he has built up the brand, attracted significant investment and expanded to Latin America. Most recently, the company struck a partnership with Rappi, which saw the Latin American super app launch a tours and activities vertical as part of Rappi Travel.
Now the company wants to build on its presence in Latin America where Gutiérrez sees huge opportunity through Rappi's 50 million users and a population that tends to travel locally, he said.
Watch the interview here.
How travel brands stay ahead on social media with @Hotel and HolidayPirates
March 5, 2025
Travel is all over social media — and it’s continuing to play a big role in travelers’ decisions while planning and booking their trips, according to research from Phocuswright.
But misconceptions around how travel brands should be using social media remain, according to experts.
“Travel brands are seeing social media as a category of the internet still when it's increasingly becoming the way millennials and Gen Z access the internet altogether,” said Konrad Waliszewski, co-founder and CEO of @Hotel.
“Even Google admits now that most millennials and Gen Z search on Instagram and Tiktok before going to Google search for just about everything … I think it really has become the new search engine. People want to see videos. People want to see social proof,” he said.
David Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of HolidayPirates, discussed why it’s hard for brands to understand the value.
“I think the comparison to traditional search … paid search and the immediate return on investment [ROI], that's a mistake that many brands do [make] comparing the performance of social media with,” Armstrong said.
ROI in social media marketing is a longer term play, he said.
Watch the full interview here.
Hotel experts on speed to market and the role of data with Sonesta and Cloudbeds
February 26, 2025
Advances in hotel revenue management technology mean hotels are able to react more quickly and tap into local trends.
The idea is that if there’s a big event in town such as a convention or concert, hotels should easily be able to find out about it in advance and adjust their revenue strategies accordingly.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly playing a role in bringing more pieces of the puzzle together and ultimately helping hotels get to market faster.
“We talk about commercial engine all the time, every day. How do we drive top line results and how do we move fast? And speed to market is very, very important. So, we're very curious about the world of AI. I feel like, from an industry perspective, we're just touching the surface. There's so much more opportunity,” said Garine Ferejian-Mayo, chief commercial officer of Sonesta International, which has 1,100 hotels across 13 brands.
She was joined in the PhocusWire studio recently during The Phocuswright Conference by Sebastien Leitner, vice president of partnerships at Cloudbeds, who spoke about the company's thinking behind its intelligence product, which was unveiled in October.
“What we're trying to do together with our hotel customers is to bring practices that have traditionally been in silos - revenue management, digital marketing, guest experience — together in one, AI-powered product that allows our customers to make decisions in real time, using and leveraging the beauty of artificial intelligence,” he said.
Watch the interview here.
Opportunity rising in tours, activities as interest in experiences continues with Luuc Elzinga and Christian Watts
February 19, 2025
Tours, activities and attractions — in short experiences — have been a hot topic in the travel industry over the past few years.
And with its staying power as a driver of travel decision-making, new growth opportunities exist, according to experts.
"I think it has increased, more and more," said Luuc Elzinga, founder and president of Tiqets during an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference 2024. He said consumers' focus on experiences over material goods is fueling these new opportunities.
Christian Watts, founder and CEO of Magpie, who joined Elzinga in the studio, said there's certainly room for companies both small and large on the distribution side of the tours and activities sector.
That opportunity comes as experiences are rising on the list of travelers' priorities during the booking process, according to industry leaders. With events like The Taylor Swift Eras Tour and the Olympics prompting fans to travel across the world and boosting business, the value of experiences in travel decision-making has come into focus.
“It's the reason to travel,” Elzinga said. “It's the reason why people remember where they've gone.”
Watch the interview here.
CEO Spotlight: Lisa Chen of ToursByLocals
February 12, 2025
A little more than a year into her tenure as president and CEO of ToursByLocals, Lisa Chen is excited to be leading the company as the tours and activities sector continues to flourish.
ToursByLocals is poised for growth with recently updated technology aimed at improving the 15-year-old private tour company’s strategy, she said.
“We launched a new website this past year,” she said. “We completely ... modernized our tech platform, we changed our UI [user interface], we rebranded so we have a now really strong active runway from which we can launch our growth phase.”
Now the company is working to lengthen that runway through technology — specifically artificial intelligence.
“We couldn't have launched our new platform, our new website at a better time, because we're able to leapfrog over other companies who are established in these enterprise systems in a way that makes us much more nimble,” Chen said.
She said ToursByLocals is looking to use AI to make administrative processes more efficient. The focus is on becoming more productive, trying to remove admininistrative tasks and work more directly with guides, partners and travelers.
Watch the interview here.
Distribution crystal ball with Amadeus' Decius Valmorbida
February 5, 2025
Travel planning and booking at the touch of a button.
It’s an idea that’s been talked about in the context of artificial intelligence travel planning, the connected trip and data sharing.
“I think now the focus of the innovation is around bringing this idea that the traveler is buying trips, and we need to have a connected trip, and we need to make things simpler,” said Decius Valmorbida, president of travel at Amadeus, during a Center Stage interview at The Phocuswright Conference.
But there’s a problem: Many industries, Valmorbida said, have gone through the process of simplifying and have seen external disruption.
“I think that is the focus of everyone here on how we as a travel industry build that solution and it requires collaboration, because it is a big ecosystem,” he said. “So I think AI … it is important because it is the means to an end, but I think the end is customer-centricity.”
Watch the interview here.
AI hype and efficiency gains in corporate travel with execs from AmexGBT and Otto
January 29, 2025
Knowing where to start in terms of applying artificial intelligence to a travel business is difficult.
Some companies bring in a chief AI officer, others establish an AI business unit and more still just start playing with stuff and learning how it all works.
Less than a year ago, American Express Global Business Travel set up a program internally to focus on AI across the business.
During an interview during The Phocuswright Conference 2024, Marilyn Markham, the company's vice
president of AI strategy, shared insights on early applications of the technology and the drive to ensure all initiatives are "relevant to the business."
Markham shared how AmexGBT had spoken to business leaders within the organization "who
felt their area was right for change."
"So, we selected staff efficiencies. Another one we had was engineering velocity and whether AI can help in that space. Of course, we had agents and servicing and the last one was finance."
Markham
was joined in the PhocusWire studio by Michael Gulmann, CEO of Otto, a startup creating AI-powered agents for corporate travel. The company, which is backed by Madrona Ventures, sees huge opportunity to act as a virtual executive assistant for booking corporate travel, learning a traveler's preferences over time.
The
pair discussed the rapid pace of development with AI, how much of what's out there is hype and where the real potential lies.
The importance of using data to empower travelers with Filip Filipov of OAG
January 22, 2025
Many who have left the travel industry often end up back in the industry because they love its ever-changing nature, the people and the dynamics.
Filip Filipov, a former vice president of Skyscanner, left travel more than four years ago, and is now back as chief operations officer of airline data specialist OAG. He joined us in the PhocusWire studio to discuss what he has observed about the industry from the outside looking in.
Filipov spoke about how some of the same challenges persist as well as the pace of innovation generally. He went on to discuss the "paradigm shift in the usage of data" that he is seeing and how projects that were being talked about five years ago are now happening.
Filipov also said he's watching to see how improved access to, and usage of, data will be applied to the travel B2C and B2B worlds going forward, especially as AI developments take hold. He also touched on AI agents in travel and said he doesn't believe they will proliferate that quickly.
"The missing component here is nailing the customer journey and having enough data to actually power it. The more information you have the better the experience you will give."
Watch the interview here.
Travel M&A activity heating up as experts from TSI and Cambon Partners see readiness in buyers, sellers
January 15, 2025
Investors Matt Zito and Min Liu have sat front row as travel merger and acquisition activity has warmed up over the last couple of years, with plenty of attention-grabbing moves in the third quarter of this year, following those that happened in the first and second quarters of 2024.
“For the M&A side, we're definitely on top,” said Zito, managing partner of TSI, which serves as a broker for travel mergers and acquisitions and also provides consulting services to startups. “There's a lot of activity coming from both buyers and sellers.”
Liu, a managing director at investment banking firm Cambon Partners, said that in 2024 the company recorded about 470 deals. That performance is very robust with a year-over-year view, she said, noting the market is vibrant in general.
In comparison to last year, the entire environment is amplified, Zito said, which he attributes to a number of factors.
First, buyers have realized that a recession isn’t happening, so money has been freed up on their balance sheets, and with the pandemic behind us, earnings are improving so there is cash available to deploy.
And on the sell side, Liu said consolidation is a big trend, particularly since companies run by older generations are feeling ready to sell.
Watch the interview here.
Mega deal potential, AI fatigue and technical deficit with Lorraine Sileo, Timothy O’Neil-Dunne and Aaron Gowell
January 8, 2025
Will there be a mega merger or acquisition in travel in 2025? Will AI fatigue take hold? And, will travel companies address not just technical debt but technical deficit?
Predicting what might happen in travel is never easy with the industry impacted by so many external factors, but some executives usually take a good stab at how things might play out.
Aaron Gowell, founder and CEO of SilverRail Technologies, Timothy O’Neil-Dunne of T2Impact and Lorraine Sileo, founder of Phocuswright research discussed some of the current trends in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference.
The executives spoke about what will happen with the new presidential administration in the United States, the possibility of deregulation and general uncertainty affecting consumer spend.
They also touched on the hype around AI, whether travel companies have researched what customers really want when it comes to the technology and the lack of focus on meaningful metrics such as conversion.
Read the article here.
Phocuswright turns 30: Industry veterans Bob Diener, Melissa Maher and Rod Cuthbert look back and ahead
December 18, 2024
Internet boom. 9/11. The financial crisis. The COVID pandemic. ChatGPT. The list goes on.
The last 30 years have been full of course-changing events and technological innovations since Philip Wolf founded Phocuswright's Global Travel Market report.
And some industry leaders have had a front row seat to those changes while pushing travel towards the future.
Bob Diener, president and co-founder of the Travel Funders Network and co-founder of Hotels.com, is among that group, as is Melissa Maher, founder and CEO of the Pinnacle Enterprises Group and a former Expedia Group executive and Rod Cuthbert, founder of Viator, who was inducted into the Phocuswright Hall of Fame last month.
As Phocuswright celebrates its 30-year anniversary, the trio took some time to look back and look ahead at the world of travel in a discussion with senior reporter Morgan Hines in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference.
Read the article here.
How emerging technologies are helping destinations appeal to travelers
December 11, 2024
Artificial intelligence is touching every segment of the travel industry with destination marketing being no exception.
Tourist boards are exploring how AI and other emerging technologies such as virtual and augmented reality can improve destination search and booking as well as the in-destination experience.
During an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference 2024, Gregory Yap, vice president of the Singapore Exhibition & Conventions Bureau (SECB), discussed the rapid pace of change in the travel industry and the convergence of technology.
He shared examples such as a partnership with Google Maps to bring augmented reality experiences in Singapore to maps. Yap also touched on how Singapore's tourism organization and SECB think about innovation.
Yap was joined by Jared Alster, co-founder and chief strategy officer of marketing agency Dune7, who said that while AI is so widely talked about currently, AR and virtual reality continue to show promise for destination marketing.
Watch the interview here.
Acai Travel helps Hopper boost customer service with AI tools
December 4, 2024
Acai Travel, a startup using artificial intelligence to drive efficiency for agency and call center environments, has signed Hopper as its latest partner. The deal sees Acai, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup for 2024, use its technology to support Hopper's human agents. The startup, which recently landed seed funding of $4 million, already counts companies including Globespan Travel Management among its customers.
During an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference 2024, Riky Vittoria, CEO of Acai, shared details of the deal alongside Jo Lai, vice president of customer experience at Hopper.
The pair discussed the potential efficiency gains associated with implementing the technology as well as how the partnership might develop going forward.
Watch the interview here.