AI poised to transform travel booking
“The internet changed how we book travel, but AI could change who books it.”
Transcript
I don't think people understand how important travel is about to become an AI. The AI app, Instinct, just raised $1 billion in a $10 billion valuation. And now more than 50% of the transaction happening through Instinct are travel related. And as we just saw in Traded VC, Long Lake just spent $6.3 billion taking
American Express Global Business Travel private. This company handled roughly 35 million trips for 10 million travelers across 140 million countries last year. In Long Lake's plan, put AI across the platform. I think these two stories are connected.
Travel could become one of the most important use cases for consumer AI, because planning a trip still sucks. You're balancing between flights, hotels, points, restaurants, and experiences. AI collapses all of that into one conversation. I had 300,000 Amex points.
My family has a week off. Find somewhere warm, maximize my point, get us a great hotel, and keep me under $4,000. And eventually, the agent just does it. That's also why I think rewards are about to become more valuable, not less.
Points are basically another currency that AI can optimize for you. And travel is uniquely positioned for this because it combines massive transactions with something people actually want to spend money on, experiences, physical experiences, in-person experiences.
So I wouldn't look at this as a $6.3 billion acquisition as someone buying an old-school corporate travel company, they're buying decades of travel infrastructure, millions of travelers at a massive transaction network, then they're putting AI on top of it. The internet changed how we book travel, but AI could change who books it.
And whoever owns that layer could own one of the most valuable transactions on the internet. Travel itself. Every business, every industry, there's a larger opportunity hiding inside of it. I'm here to help you find them. Follow me for more tech and AI news.