Everything AI in Travel

How can travel companies turn their customers into storytellers—and use AI to unlock insights hidden inside those stories?
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, Tony Carne sits down with Veerle Wit, founder of Travel Diaries, to explore how a simple travel journaling app has evolved into an AI-powered platform helping tour operators capture authentic user-generated content, marketing insights, and customer feedback.
Veerle shares her remarkable journey from National Geographic travel journalist to startup founder, how she built Travel Diaries with a microloan and a small development team, and why authentic travel stories are becoming even more valuable in the age of AI.
We discuss:
- How Travel Diaries started from a personal need while backpacking through South America
- Building a travel startup while working as a travel journalist
- Growing to more than 100,000 users and launching a mobile app
- Why travel journals create far richer customer insights than traditional surveys
- Using AI to analyse thousands of pages of customer stories automatically
- Extracting hotel reviews, activity feedback and future travel intent from travel journals
- Turning customer stories into SEO articles, social media content and marketing assets
- Why authentic user-generated content is becoming increasingly valuable for AI search
- How tour operators can encourage travellers to document their trips
- The future of AI-assisted travel journaling and personalised travel content
To learn more, reach out to Veerle on veerle@traveldiariesapp.com
If you're interested in AI, travel marketing, user-generated content, customer insights, tourism technology or startup innovation, this episode offers a fascinating look at how one company is creating an entirely new data asset from the stories travellers naturally want to tell.
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In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel podcast, Tony Carne sits down with Bethany Reitsma from the Travel Technology Association to explore the fast-changing world of travel tech startups, AI-native companies, angel investing, and the future of innovation in travel.
Bethany shares how the Travel Technology Association evolved from representing major industry players like Booking, Expedia, and TripAdvisor into building a growing startup ecosystem focused on helping founders get connected, get advice, and get funded.
They discuss:
Why AI-native travel startups are emerging faster than ever
The challenge of fundraising in travel tech today
How angel investors are approaching AI and travel startups
Why proprietary data and integrations matter more than ever
The rise of hyper-personalized travel experiences
How Travel Tech Association helps founders connect with investors
The importance of founder communities and peer learning
Emerging startups like Drifter AI and Pintours AI
How AI is changing travel discovery and trip planning
Why travel startups can now build more with less funding
Whether you’re building a travel startup, investing in travel technology, or simply trying to understand where AI is taking the industry next, this conversation offers a valuable inside look at one of the most important ecosystems shaping travel innovation.
Guest: Bethany Reitsma
Organization: Travel Technology Association

They raised money in AI travel…which already makes Odynn one of the rare ones.
In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, I sit down with John Taylor Garner, founder of Odynn, to unpack what they’re building at the intersection of travel, loyalty, fintech, and AI.
We get into:
Why John left a top trading desk at Merrill to start building in travel
What he learned from his first startup, Card Curator
Why dynamic loyalty pricing broke the old model
How Odynn powers travel portals, rewards, and loyalty infrastructure for banks, fintechs, and travel companies
Why the financialisation of travel is still one of the biggest opportunities in the sector
Where Hopper, Expedia, Booking, and the neobanks fit into the landscape
What Odynn is doing with its new raise, and where the company goes next
If you care about where loyalty, payments, AI, and travel distribution are headed, this is a great one.
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In this episode of the Everything AI in Travel Podcast, I sit down with Jason Swick, a longtime Simpleview leader who spent more than 15 years deep in destination marketing before launching Swix AI.
We get into:
Why DMO teams have a capacity problem, a speed problem, and a knowledge problem
Why most AI adoption today is still tactical, not strategic
The real issue with tools like N8N and Make for most tourism teams…
How Swix is trying to make AI usable across every skill level in an organisation
The difference between chatbots, assistants, automations, and true agents
Why the future isn’t one “AI champion” inside the business — it’s shared systems the whole team can use
If you work in destination marketing, tourism ops, or travel tech, this one is a smart look at what AI adoption inside an organisation actually needs to look like.
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Looking for the Videreo information? You can find the case study here

Egor Karpovich built 12 AI agents in 5 weeks…
…and now they’re running parts of his travel company without sleeping.
In this episode of the Everything AI & Travel Podcast, I sit down with Egor Karpovich from Travel Code to unpack one of the most fascinating AI setups I’ve seen in travel so far.
Egor explains how he and his team went from no-code workflows to a real agent workforce inside their bootstrapped corporate travel SaaS business — including:
A lead agent coordinating the others
Legal, partnerships, sales, SEO, PR, analyst, and dev agents
Agents creating tasks for other agents
MCP servers, APIs, browser tools, and shared memory
How his team now works with agents day to day
We also get into:
Why Eastern Europe’s travel distribution model is so different
Why they pivoted away from travel agents and into corporate travel
What building a $9M GMV travel business without outside funding actually looks like
Why Egor thinks solo founders with 50 AI agents are coming sooner than people expect
If you want to understand what “agentic travel” actually looks like in the real world — not just in demos — this is the episode.
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If looking for the Videreo information, you can find it here: https://gamma.app/docs/Creator-Marketing-gets-measured-in-Palau-oicfv54zvjq0ckb?mode=doc