Rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the travel industry and how companies operate both externally and internally.
Over the coming weeks, PhocusWire is checking in with executives about where AI is making the biggest difference in their businesses.
First up is Javier Cabrerizo, chief strategy, transformation and AI officer for HBX Group, who told us he is in “a bit of a broad role.”
“I started as chief strategy officer some years ago, but it continued expanding,” Cabrerizo said. “Basically, I'm managing the definition of the strategy, the implementation of the strategy through transformation, pricing and revenue management and the AI implementation with the AI office.”
In May, HBX Group acquired experiences technology company Bridgify to drive AI use across its operations. The company said the technology simplifies how supply is accessed and distributed.
Cabrerizo sat down with PhocusWire at HBX Group’s Markethub Americas event in Punta Cana in June to discuss the company’s AI transformation.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for style, clarity and length.
You're balancing a business roadmap with a technical one. Some leaders in similar roles may be facing vendor fatigue and trying to decide whether to build custom AI tools or buy specialized platforms. What's your philosophy?
We did a lot of research, speaking with a lot of vendors and a lot of companies that have already gone through the journey, and we decided that it was better to do it ourselves.
We created our own agentic infrastructure, multimodal, with all of the securities, with all of the roles … that's how we are deploying all of the agents.
It’s better to have the control and flexibility in the future to be able to adjust to different platforms. At the end of the day, the models change so fast that you don't want to be stuck just with one.
What are the biggest legacy bottlenecks preventing travel companies from successfully scaling into daily production?
A lot of people would say the structure of the data, the access to the technology, the expertise—and they're partially right.
But one of the things that we've learned is that you cannot wait for perfection. You need to start moving, because everything moves so fast that if you wait for perfection, everybody's going to go before you.
The biggest bottleneck that we all have … is the mindset.
There is a lot of fear. I think that people need to start changing their mindset: Don't see this as a threat, see this as an opportunity. Be curious, be engaged, try to do new things. Learning is the most important thing.
Change management is a big piece of this. How are you handling the education and training side? How important is that for other companies and your own?
It's really important. We've offered the “AI Foundations” program to every single employee in the company. Every employee needs to do that to become literate in AI.
Change management is not something that can be done in isolation. It's not a tech thing, it's a company thing.
It needs to be driven by the people who need to [make the change to AI]. It's not somebody from outside imposing, and it's about selecting the right people that have the knowledge, the capabilities and, especially, the mindset.
We created something called the “AI champions,” and … they are the agents of change.
You need to empower all of the company, but in order to drive the change, you don't need 100% of the people, you need to select the ones that have the habit and the mindset. That's where you double down.
How is the buy-in going? Are people getting on board with it? How difficult has that been?
They are [getting on board]. We're used to a lot of change, a lot of movement, a lot of technology, so we're probably a bit above the average in that sense.
Still, there are pockets of people that [aren’t]—it's normal, it's human nature. We've been doing things in a certain way for a long time. Some people are faster to change, some people are a bit reluctant. It has been good with some pockets of opportunity.
Where does the competitive difference come in for companies as they all start to use the same technology?
In the past, the platform was the competitive advantage, but now it's a commodity, like developing is going to be a commodity. So, the secret ingredient, the competitive advantage, is the data.
If you have proprietary data, somebody that nobody else in the market can access, and if you can collaborate with, we are an ecosystem with other partners, and you get their data, you plug it into yours, you combine things, that's where the secret is coming.
How are you handling the risk of data corruption or errors with AI implementation?
We do it in three different stages. At the beginning, we work with AI and we continue as kind of a champion challenger model. Now you have the champion that is the model that works today, so you have a challenger and you work both of them in parallel.
When you have a level of confidence, you go to the next stage, that means everything is done by AI, but you have a human in the loop making sure that you check the data. And then when you have the confidence there, you go full agentic with digital guardrails and some agents controlling other agents.
How do you expect AI to change the structure of the travel company?
A lot. I think that all companies are going to change the way they operate.
Here at HBX, what we believe is that there are a lot of different paths. It's not clear today what's going to happen.
We want to make sure we have the full optionality to serve the full industry. We want to help our existing partners to be part of that transformation, help them to change how they interact with their customers, instead of clicks and boxes to do it with conversations, so help them with MCP models to change the interfaces.
Also, we believe a new type of demand will come through the LLMs and platforms.
Is there a risk that results will not be unique enough with AI being so heavily implemented?
Actually the opposite. I think if that happens, it is because people are not using it properly.
At the end of the day, if you provide AI with the right context, the right data, you are able to populate and actually provide recommendations that are very unique.
I think that in the past we had these rigid funnels. Everybody was doing the same [filters] and all the recommendations were pretty similar. Everybody went to the same destinations to do the same things.
AI is going to open the door to new destinations, new experiences, different things.
To what degree is it the job of the travel company to lead travelers to this technology? Does it depend on consumer adoption?
It's both. I think that we need a degree of trust, so I think that the more [people] use it, it is going to be easier for the traveler. But I love the extreme ownership principle. As an industry also we need to take ownership and also support the traveler to gain that trust.
Sometimes people think that addressing through AI is just going through the big AI platforms. That's not the case; you can have your brand trust, and it's about putting different interfaces, so you can simulate that same experience but within your environment where you already have the trust of your traveler.
With everyone chasing the same technology, who will be the winner?
The traveler. What we see is that it rarely happens that it's just going to be one platform [that wins] because we all have unique needs and desires.
*This reporter's attendance at the event was supported by HBX Group.
Stay tuned for additional interviews with chief AI officers, e-commerce execs and CTOs as part of PhocusWire's ongoing AI Transformation in Travel series.