Vio Travel has spent the last few years trying to fix a problem most travel agents know all too well, which is building multicountry itineraries by hand is slow, messy and inconsistent.
The company has combined direct supplier contracts across 15 destinations with a platform that lets agents design and price trips in real time. It recently became the first destination management company (DMC) in Asia to be certified under the Preferred by Nature Standard for Sustainable Travel Activities, a Global Sustainable Tourism Council-recognized benchmark, after an independent audit found its Indonesia operations 100% compliant across responsible management, people, nature and climate.
We caught up with co-CEOs Dominik Schaufler and Michael Lynden-Bell to talk through what the platform actually replaces, what it deliberately doesn’t and where the business is headed next.
The gap they’re closing
For Schaufler, the starting point was recognizing that too many tour operators are still doing this the slow way.
“A significant number of tour operators are still building itineraries manually—slow, fragmented and inconsistent,” he said. “What we set out to do was to remove that complexity.”
“They get access to local suppliers that we’ve directly contracted across 15 destinations, they’re delivering proposals faster, impressing clients sooner and closing deals at a higher rate.”
Lynden-Bell framed the change in behavior the same way, not as a rip-and-replace of existing relationships but as friction removal.
“We’re not trying to replace them,” he said of agents’ existing DMC contacts. “What changes behavior is when agents realize they can keep the relationship but remove a lot of the friction.”
He broke down what that friction removal actually looks like in practice, saying, “Instead of waiting days for a quote, they can build and price an itinerary in minutes. Instead of requesting availability, they can see live inventory.”
And the pitch itself, he said, isn’t really about the tech at all. “The most effective pitch isn’t technology—it’s convenience, speed and consistency.”
What’s happening under the hood
Ask Lynden-Bell what the platform is actually doing differently from a traditional DMC’s product team, and he’s quick to push back on the idea that software is replacing people.
“The real advantage isn’t that technology replaces product managers—it doesn’t,” he said. “The advantage is that technology can process thousands of variables simultaneously and do it instantly.”
That shows up most obviously in speed. “The platform doesn’t have a queue,” he said. “An agent in London at 10 p.m. can build and price a 12-day multidestination itinerary without waiting for Bangkok to open.”
But he’s also clear about the limits.
“What it can’t replace is judgment on non-standard situations—knowing a specific operator only works with small groups, or that a tour changes their route entirely in a given week.”
Technically, we could automate 99% of the booking journey, and we’re close to that. But the 1% that matters most is human judgment.
Dominik Schaufler, Vio Travel
His rough split: “The tech handles roughly 80% of the work. That frees our travel specialists to focus on the 20% that actually needs them.”
Surprisingly, Schaufler puts a number on the automation ceiling too, adding that, “Technically, we could automate 99% of the booking journey, and we’re close to that. But the 1% that matters most is human judgment.”
He’s not interested in closing that last gap. “No algorithm captures earned instinct.”
That instinct is what the company doesn’t want engineered away.
“When a travel specialist recommends a specific hotel or experience not because it’s the most popular, but because it’s exactly right for that client, that’s irreplaceable,” he said, adding that the goal is to protect that layer, not shrink it.
“We want to automate everything around that expertise, so specialists can spend all their time doing what only they can do.”
Getting hundreds of suppliers online
Contracting directly with local suppliers across 15 destinations sounds clean on a slide, but getting there wasn’t.
“It required hands-on effort and real patience,” Schaufler said. “Many of these operators work with limited resources and aren’t built for speed, which is the opposite of what Vio Travel stands for.”
The real bottleneck, he said, wasn’t willingness, it was infrastructure.
“The walls we hit were mostly around technology literacy and bandwidth. A lot of these suppliers had never worked with a booking system before.” Getting pricing standardized and expectations aligned was, in his words, “where it got hard.”
What actually moved the needle was a team on the ground, not a better onboarding flow.
“Our in-destination team has been critical there—people who are local, who speak the language, who possess the expertise and can guide suppliers step-by-step,” Schaufler said. “That human layer is non-negotiable as you can’t automate your way into solid relationships.”
“Once suppliers started seeing bookings come through and seeing revenue they wouldn’t have otherwise had access to, the conversations got much easier,” he added.
The sustainability line they won’t cross
Vio’s recent Preferred by Nature certification wasn’t a bolt-on marketing move, according to Schaufler, it’s meant to reflect a filter the company already applies to every supplier decision.
“The rate doesn’t matter. If they don’t meet our sustainability bar, they don’t qualify as a Vio Travel partner. That’s a firm line.”
“Our audit covered responsible management, people, nature and climate, and it passed 100% across our Indonesia operations,” he said. “Sustainability is embedded in how we select suppliers, not something we layer on afterwards.”
That said, Schaufler added that it’s not a purity test with no way back in.
“We don’t walk away from suppliers who fall short but genuinely want to improve,” Schaufler said. “If there’s a real appetite for change, we’ll work with them to implement concrete sustainability initiatives. We’d rather help a supplier grow into the standard than turn our backs on someone committed to getting there.”
Competing with Booking.com and Klook…or not
With companies like Booking.com and Klook operating at a completely different scale, it’s a fair question whether “online DMC” is a category that survives being noticed by bigger players.
“We don’t really see ourselves competing directly with Booking.com or Klook,” said Lynden-Bell. “They’re incredible businesses, but they solve a different problem.”
Vio’s lane, he said, is specifically the complicated stuff. “Our focus is multiday, multicountry travel across Asia Pacific, often involving hotels, transfers, tours, guides, domestic flights and complex logistics.” That’s the kind of itinerary, he added, where “an agent needs white-label proposals, direct supplier relationships and someone to call when something goes wrong.”
We don’t really see ourselves competing directly with Booking.com or Klook. They’re incredible businesses, but they solve a different problem.
Michael Lynden-Bell, Vio Travel
On the threat of being copied, he’s candid that the tech layer isn’t the hard part to defend.
“Could a larger company replicate the technology? Probably,” he said.
“Could they replicate the relationships, product curation and operational infrastructure across 15 destinations overnight? That’s much harder.”
The problem tech still can’t touch
Every roadmap has a section technology hasn’t solved yet. For Lynden-Bell, it’s consistency at scale.
“Travel is ultimately a people business,” he said. “It can’t fully solve challenges around service delivery, supplier quality or unexpected events on the ground.”
The stakes of getting that wrong are personal, in his view, travellers don’t remember the platform. “Every traveler remembers the guide, the driver, the hotel and the experiences they had,” he said. “Those human interactions still matter enormously.”
Software helps him see problems faster, but it doesn’t fix them on its own.
“Technology can help us monitor quality, collect feedback and improve processes, but delivering exceptional travel experiences still depends on people,” he said. The hardest part, as he puts it, is “encoding nuance,” things like “a change in a local operator’s team, a quality issue we’ve flagged but haven’t fully resolved.”
What’s on Vio’s horizon
“We’re building toward a world where any agent with a fair knowledge of a destination can design a complete, tailored trip for their client in minutes—no friction, no ceilings, no waiting,” Schaufler said. He notes that curation stays human even as the process gets faster. “The quality and curation still comes from us—having exceptional handpicked products is not something we’re automating.”
“Our goal is to build one of the most respected and trusted B2B destination management companies in Asia Pacific,” Lynden-Bell said, pointing to “fixed-price packages, wholesale distribution, groups and API-driven products” as areas of opportunity.
“Growth alone isn’t the objective,” he said. “We want to build a business that is scalable, profitable and recognized for consistently delivering high-quality travel experiences.” He’s equally clear on how they’ve gotten this far. “We’ve built the company organically and remain focused on long-term value rather than growth at any cost.”
“Our priority is building a sustainable business with strong foundations, great people and lasting partnerships,” he said. The end goal, in his words, is “not one of the answers, but the answer.”
This story originally appeared on WiT.