David Shull

There is also a context problem. AI asks a few generic questions (do you want islands or museums). A great travel advisor knows from the intonation in your voice that you're not sure. They use their experience to intuit what's right for you.

Human advisors superpower is relationships. When I asked a travel advisor to help me surprise my mom with a cake in a remote Greece village, they worked with their local partner to handle it all. It made my mom's trip. That cake led to new friendships. AI travel planners tell me to contact the hotel to figure it out.

The latest AI travel planning app (Odessia) is making the rounds. I tried it. It's slick. It won't displace human advisors though. Let me tell you why (thread)...

I always start my weekend AMs with 20VC. @rodriscoll saying “you cannot be an AI provider to a vertical and have any intention of competing with them” is so spot on. While they were taking about legal it applies in every vertical. Def travel. In so many conversations we are asked why not become a tech enabled travel agency. That would mean competing with the industry. We are adamant we will never do this. Several have tried including some really well funded players. But they’ll hit a ceiling. You can’t aggregate an entire industry if you compete with every player in that industry. Especially one that indexes so heavily on human relationships. Being the tech layer that everyone uses (and has to use to stay competitive) is the way to build something much bigger.

The @ternsoftware trips are some of the highest ROI investments we’ve made. December focused on AI across the org. Since then we have increased velocity by 300% The driver? The trust that comes from creating lore with your teammates. I’d also add user conferences to that list.

It’s @upfrontvc Summit time! Crazy this is @ternsoftware’s third year attending! Time flies when you’re building awesome things with awesome people. Always a fun time to zoom out! #upfrontsummit

@TripActions how many chats does it take to book one trip round trip? Chats that auto close and lose all context of the traveler doesn’t respond in 5 minutes (despite agents taking 30+ min) is an awful customer experience.

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Probably my best performance ever on stage. Act two now complete. Thank you science!