Latest / Reframe First / Travis Pittman, CEO of TourRadar | The Future of Travel, AI & Social Commerce
Transcript
- Oleksij Rak: Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Reframe First. I'm Alexey, the host of the podcast, and let me welcome our today's guest, Travis Pittman, co-founder and CEO at Two Raiders. Hi Travis, it's great having you here. Travis: Alex, yeah great to be here on the other side of the world. How are doing? Oleksij Rak: Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks a lot for joining. So from my experience in travel, and especially since we're all building some travel inspirational platform, I do know about the radar and you are watching. So you're kind of adventure booking platforms that offers a huge collection of organized adventures. like you say it's like 50,000 plus, we have 2,500 tour operators working with your brand. Travis: Cool. Great. Yes. Yes. Oleksij Rak: sounds like a huge operation. So could you tell us more about what you built, how you got there, and what the whole story of the two radars Travis: Yeah, I'll probably give the short story, but no, it's been a journey. So 2010 was when Tourada launched and we started out more of a meta search type platform. So we started to very naively think we could aggregate the industry. It came out of an idea that my brother and I had previously. So we created effectively one of the first social networks for travel. So it was like a bit like Instagram or Facebook, but actually when Facebook kind of was just kicking off in 2005. So people could share photos and journals and videos of their travels and write blogs. And then we realized we were not going to make any money out of that ⁓ because one knew what social media was back then. And banner ads were just not very, you know, not much money in those back then. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah. Travis: And then so we very ⁓ said, ⁓ let's do this ⁓ tour aggregator and actually scale this up. Cause my brother and I, we were taking tours in Europe. So Sean was taking Contiki tours around Europe and I did like, ⁓ know, Ireland, ⁓ paddy wagon tour, like for seven days. And so we were doing these tours and so were a lot of people who used our platform. Oleksij Rak: you Travis: It was called Bug Bitten. So to be bitten by the travel bug was the social network we had. yeah, so basically pivoted to this, created a new entity, a new name, because Bug Bitten was quite hard to say. People didn't really know what it was. So came up with the word Tour Radar, which it's quite literal, maybe a bit boring, but actually says what it is. It does tours. And it's kind of the same name in across different languages as well. Oleksij Rak: you Yep. Travis: And the domain was free. So tourada.com was free in the beginning. then we set about building it. yeah, ⁓ think people say a startup journey is very non-linear and can completely confirm that. ⁓ I that, you know, maybe within three or four years we'd build something and then sell it off to at the time, maybe Yahoo or, you know, some sort of a platform. ⁓ But this journey has taken a lot longer. ⁓ It's lot harder than you think. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, yeah. Travis: But also I don't regret it. Like it's so much I've learned and yet now I can see the impact that we're having of sending people on amazing journeys and expeditions and adventures around the world that really enrich people's lives actually make them realize, hey, there's a bigger world out there. Like my eyes were open when I left Australia 20 years ago. ⁓ so I think experiencing that for myself and now building a platform that enables that ⁓ think is obviously keeping the mission. Oleksij Rak: working on a student relationship. And so I'm getting experience with that myself. And then I'm working on my own business. And it's obviously a big, deal. And it's a big deal. Travis: and vision very present for the people who work at TourRadar of, why are we doing this? is very obvious we sell something cool and something that actually does add value to the world and just maybe sell widgets or sell something that doesn't have a lot of value to the So yeah, overall a long journey and we can obviously go into different parts of it, whatever direction you to go. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Then like, if you don't dive deeper into the company, like, maybe let's still dive deeper. Like, what breaks that size of operation? So it's still like a large operation. There is always something that breaks when you scale. What is usually, like, what is the most common thing that breaks nowadays? Travis: Yeah, I mean, you could go in many different angles. One, I've learned the lessons of COVID. We were nearly 300 people before COVID. Then we scaled down and we scale back up and we've had to scale down again. like to, you know, not like to say but I've learned more people, more problems, ⁓ think is the way. And so it just adds more complexity with ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah. Travis: Who makes decisions? How do you arrange teams? How do you have the structure? How do you set strategy? How do you set goals? You know, all these different things. so that is definitely like organizational structure is something that breaks. And I think as soon as you get over 50 people, that gets difficult, you know, so, then ⁓ think, ⁓ then each, each level has its own challenges. And so that's ⁓ I also, yeah, like when you have been around for a while, Oleksij Rak: Yeah, 50 to 70, yeah. Travis: And you started to build and you just were very scrappy. You build a very complex tech stack, you know, which is very legacy and frustrating and the developers are frustrated and that type of thing. Yeah. And there's lots of band-aids that get put on different parts of the system. And so to try and extract that out into different web services or, know, even now today, how do you build it for the world of Claude code and for cursor and that you can actually be having. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, it's 15 years after all. Travis: agentic coding happen on your tech stack that doesn't break it or doesn't introduce security vulnerabilities or whatever else. So I think that's the new challenge that we're kind of now addressing is how do we pivot from the current tech stack, which works and is stable and robust, but from a developer's point of view and from a speed of execution and delivery, it's not where I want it to be. know, so I think we could be developing and executing much faster. but there's a lot of limitations that are in place. And I think big enterprise companies have very much that struggle from 10, 20, 30 years of development and different teams working on things. So I that's one that we're currently trying to address of how do we adapt to this new world, but not break as well. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, awesome. you're talking about AI, you are using some agentic development. What do you do in that regard with terms of agentic development, with terms like everybody's trying to build some smaller agents that are helping customers? different workflows that business workflows are within the company. What do you actually do if it's not a secret information? Travis: Yeah, no, no, no. Happy to share what I can. So we really go all in when it comes to AI across every part of customer journey, but also internal processes. And I've pushed this. I think that's a job of a leader of the company to drive that because there is some curiosity and there is some interest from people in But unless there's ⁓ kind ⁓ I the the rubber stamp or the green light and the approval and that, you can use these tools or you get access to the best models. You get access to the best tools. You don't kind of foster an environment that people ⁓ that they can push the limits and push the boundaries of. So I think that's a really key thing that I've found. And ⁓ introducing town hall meetings, hey, this is what we've done in AI. Like, every week, or sorry, every month, there's a presentation of how did someone use AI to Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: be better or to improve something or do something. that's one. We worked with a vendor called Boost AI. like a chat ⁓ out of the Nordics where they power a lot of it, but obviously we connect our training data. So we connect millions, tens of millions of messages and ⁓ asked questions and tour information and everything to that system. Oleksij Rak: . Travis: And then we see really good success in that, to be honest. So we see about 85 % deflection rate in terms of a customer asks a question to the bot, 85 % of the time it answers with a good CSAT score. So meaning that the customer is happy with the response. Only 15 % are going through to a human then to get further clarification or to have things sorted. it... Oleksij Rak: you Travis: that started at about 50%. So we managed to tweak it and train it and get it better and better. So that's really been great to see. Honestly, a changer has been since February is Claude. I mean, with Opus 4.6, if whoever listens to this, if you're a founder or if you haven't started using it yet, I have not opened ChatUVT since I've got into Claude. Like I was an avid ChatUVT user. Oleksij Rak: Awesome. the Yeah, same here. Travis: And I've forced the entire company now to basically switch across to Claude. It's such a game changer with cowork ⁓ the connectors ⁓ be able to connect Slack, connect amplitude to connect confluence, know, all the different areas and tools we use to connect them into one spot and be able to ask and create and do everything. It's such a game changer. Like, so yeah, like I, I really am going all in. so We have a hackathon next week actually. So two days this time. So where we're to have a two day AI hackathon where everyone has been given like a debrief of, okay, this is kind of we want to do. There's a training day. So people have had mentors to sit down and say, Hey, this is how these tools work. And submit their projects before. then, know, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week, we're going to just go nuts for two days and everyone, the whole company, the customer support. marketing, finance, everyone are going to be doing it. that's the power of Claude is that it's possible for them to do it. You don't have to be a techie to be able to do a lot of this stuff and automate processes or make things faster or ⁓ do things that they didn't realize was possible now. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Claude is amazing. That's my thoughts. So I switched from Shared GPT because it's just useless compared to what Claude does. ⁓ Travis: Completely. Yeah, yeah, very much so. Oleksij Rak: mentioned like, ⁓ yeah, you're sitting on a huge pile of data for 15 years. So huge pile of information. You mentioned already the chat solutions that helps your users and answers like 80 % of their questions. How does customer support accept that? And how does customer support embrace all these ⁓ You you have a hackathon, but know, it's a very strange like... Travis: I think it's... Oleksij Rak: The customer support team is usually the one that is most afraid about job security. out of curiosity. Travis: Yeah, it's in a way, for sure, there's been efficiencies that have been made, but it's not just that we said, okay, we don't need those people. It's been more of the case of how do we redeploy those people into sales oriented roles? So, okay, we know that we can filter out certain inquiries or calls that are above a certain value. Maybe they're over 5,000 or 10,000 euros or whatever it is. And we can do more proactive sales with those people. So we can kind of turn the team from being more of a cost base into actually a profit center. And that's where that automation has them having to answer really dumb questions from customers. Sorry to say it, but they're the same, not dumb as in dumb, but more from repetitive. Like, what is the meeting point? What's this include and what's that include? Oleksij Rak: I've to take the same idea. Travis: We've got all the answers there. Like, so we can give those instantly so they don't have to respond or a human has to go, give me one minute. I'll go find those for you. And they look in the exact same spot that the robot looks in. So I think it's taking those repetitive automated things off the table. So our employees can actually work on things that add more value and be more creative, you know, with things. So I look at it, it's a multiplier rather than, we're just doing this for efficiency. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's a very healthy approach. Awesome. In terms of market trends, what do you recently see? What has changed recently and what has changed the most? What do you see? Travis: Well, I ⁓ let's not specifically talk about the Middle East situation because that's a very localized situation. ⁓ I mean, clearly putting a lot of stress on a lot of different ⁓ players within industry, ⁓ including us. I think prior to that ⁓ coming, think the that I'm ⁓ really about seeing, from COVID is experiences over things. That generally is a macro trend where people are saying, hey, maybe I don't need a new 60 inch TV. Maybe I'll go on a holiday instead, or I won't buy a new car. I'll actually go traveling around the world. I think that's a positive trend that I see. think people, when they go on these types of experiences, they realize that, ⁓ I am going with a group who I obviously don't like everyone in the group, but I like a good chunk of them. And that I make lifelong friends in that group and the guide, if they're good, make it amazing. Cause the stories they tell and the history that I learned and whatever else. And so I just did a trip to Iceland on one of our first hosted adventures, ⁓ I can talk about ⁓ the future. But I two people who hadn't ever been on a group tour before. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Travis: And at the end of it, they're like, wow, that actually was really cool. I didn't realize all the benefits of not having to think about logistics, not having to think about if the weather goes wrong, what do I do to switch activities? Like, you know, we had hail and, you know, lightning strikes on glaciers, so we had to change our plans. so, yeah, anyway, so I feel that organized adventure and guided trips are things that people are starting to realize is actually a pretty cool way of traveling. So... Oleksij Rak: Mm-hmm. Travis: we're seeing a lot more spotlight put on this part of the industry, which is nice to see. Also at an industry level. like, know, typically you go to these conferences like Focusrite and Arrival, and it's more about day tours and activities and attractions or hotels or flights. Multi-day is now starting to be part of the conversation, which I think is a really positive trend for us, obviously the sector in general. And what we are seeing, just some maybe trends is that Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: There is a bit of a trend towards shorter trips potentially. So people going for like five days instead of maybe seven to eight days. think they're trying to just fit an adventure into one week. So they have like, obviously fly in on a Saturday or a Friday night, have a five day trip, have a day and then be able to get home ⁓ well. So one smaller group. definitely ⁓ a trend. we're seeing, know, instead of the coach type 50 seater ⁓ tours, we're Oleksij Rak: Okay. Travis: people want to opt for more 15 to 20 or even a bit smaller, maybe even six to 10 people type size groups. So yeah, there's a few different trends and Arrival just did a multi-day tour survey with about 600 tour operators ⁓ partnership with us. And some really good data out there. So if you just Google Arrival multi-day, ⁓ you'll that latest report and there's some really good trends that are kind of surfaced in that too. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Yeah, that's also what I hear, like travel becoming a necessity of post-COVID because people who were locked in home for two or three years, they want to travel nowadays. And about authentic experiences and smaller groups, other customer experience, ⁓ guided experiences, but ⁓ smaller groups. ⁓ How prepared are users nowadays when they come to BookyTree? Travis: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oleksij Rak: because in the age of AI, they kind of come a bit prepared. Did you notice this kind of... Yeah, in terms of what they know. So do they come to the platform to explore or do they come ⁓ already knowing what they want? Travis: What do you mean just in terms of what they know or what exactly do you I think there's ⁓ large a cross section of customers to put them into one bucket. And even say that there's a trend, ⁓ all can of share is that the traffic we get from LLMs, so specifically like Chachi Buti, ⁓ converts about three four times higher than the traffic from SEO. Oleksij Rak: Okay. Travis: So it's definitely a higher intent. So they have gone through probably had a conversation this long with ChachiBitit about what they want to do. When they land on us, a lot quicker and a higher conversion rate because they've really gone through and screened a lot of that stuff. whereas someone types in Italy tours to Google and then comes through to land on our Italy tour page, which has ⁓ 200 tours on there. Oleksij Rak: Okay. Okay. Yep. Travis: They're kind of starting from scratch there where they have to filter, they have to read through the different itineraries and then they're obviously going to convert. So yeah, like the LLMs and the experience is phenomenal. Like I think of what it does. think the huge challenge for ⁓ as platforms and just businesses in general is it's an even bigger black box than Google is. So how ⁓ you rank in those ⁓ really? Oleksij Rak: Yeah, for sure. really interesting observations as they connect, ⁓ ⁓ much better. It's a great benefit for you ⁓ nowadays, ⁓ do see it as a ⁓ potential because like users come prepared and when the is done, you know, but ⁓ I don't it ever gets smart, but ⁓ when an agent like Siri ⁓ will be... When users will be having this kind of gigantic experience, they will be telling their agent, buy me something, go and book me something. Do you feel it as a threat that they can go directly ⁓ the supplier, not to you as intermediary? Travis: So our take is a few different of looking at this. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: Technology is not yet there and then obviously it's moving super fast, but the way we're ensuring we're not going to be disintermediated or cut out of the loop ⁓ ⁓ our inventory through an MCP service. So the whole to a radar inventory, you can connect to our MCP and built LLMs to be able to, it's like an API, but for LLMs to read. And we've built ChatUBT app, which is in the app store of ChatUBT. ⁓ ⁓ And so our belief and our knowledge of the industry is that there is simply not the connectivity and the pricing and the bookability existing in our industry today. that, and I'm not like a person if they find a, ⁓ let's say a, I don't know, Tanzanian tour operator, it's just not possible to book on their side. They have an inquiry form, they have an email address, you know, they have a WhatsApp number, but they don't have. for the 7th of October, 2026, this is the departure date, this is the price. They don't have that. It's a very archaic industry when it comes to technology. the reservation platforms like Resdy and Bokkun and those guys have not yet managed to get really the reach into multi-day specifically. So got it a little bit into the activity sectors, but not into multi-day. And so that's where we feel the play for us is to be the infrastructure. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Travis: to allow bookability on the LLMs. because we have it, like we have 75 % of our inventory is instantly bookable and can be done via the API. And so that's our play is that we want to give an operator in Tanzania who has zero idea about technology that they're actually bookable in Chatchiputti because of us, ⁓ they listed onto a radar and then we've distributed them to the channels that are actually wanting to sell this as well. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yep. Travis: you probably would have seen OpenAI about three weeks ago step back from ⁓ checkout, which obviously caused the share price of booking and Expedia to go up pretty instantly. ⁓ But think what that showed was that it's not as simple as like saying, ⁓ I'm buying a USB or I'm buying a pair of shoes like through Chatjibiti. What happens if there's cancellations? What happens with regulations? What happens with taxes? What happens with all these backend processes? If things go wrong? Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: And that's where platforms like us that have been around for 15 years and have had to build the infrastructure to make that happen, that just doesn't get replaced overnight. And I think that's where we're thinking about it of how do we make sure we stay part of that conversation and be the critical infrastructure to enable this new sort of phase of discovery. But yeah, I don't see it as actually taking us out basically. Oleksij Rak: . Awesome. Yeah, that's interesting. So basically, you're seeing that you will repeat the same path as you did with Google. ⁓ exposed all of them to Google. Now you will expose all of them and Mike. Travis: It's a similar way. Oleksij Rak: make a platform agent ready, it's agent bookable. ⁓ Travis: Correct. Yep. Yep. Yep. So we are always sort of keeping ahead of, know, we're looking at H2A from Google. We'll start to look at UCP, you know, the whole commerce side of things, the protocol. So whatever gets released, we're going to stay on top of that to basically make sure that we're there ready to go once the agentic type, you know, world does start to take off even more so. Oleksij Rak: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, it makes sense. So, was curious about it. Because I'm hearing these discussions that in the end there will be user and user's agent on one end and on the other end there is supplier. And why can't they talk to each other? Why do they need to all the intermediaries? You explain that. ⁓ terms of some other trends, I'm hearing around the industry about booking windows change. Travis: Yeah, I hope so. Oleksij Rak: If before it was, know, they book on December, they plan their next year because December is Christmas time, ⁓ Thanksgiving time stuff. Europeans mostly do it like late December, ⁓ early And nowadays it has flattened and booking window has changed. So users are booking prior to the booking window. Do you also... Do you also see this kind of trend? Travis: Not really. It's kind of gone up and down. mean, our booking window, it's quite an extended one anyway, because these products and it depends on the source market. So Australians, as an example, they're having to book Europe, which is a long way away. It's an expensive, they've got to get time off, whatever else. So we see that booking window being about 120 days, like so from when you Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: to actual travel And it is a fairly significant and that's the median. So actually, I think ⁓ there's big chunk of people who are booking ⁓ nine 15 months, even 18 months out. ⁓ Like, that's kind of the window that we see. But on the median, it's around 120 for the US that numbers about 105 days. And we've really seen it. marginally change, like a little bit shorter, but not really. Maybe it's gone to 103, but it's not significantly changing. What we do see around summertime Europe, which is a big destination for a lot of our tours, people that does shorten a bit then. So, and I think what you're going to see now ⁓ that we've seen for the last six weeks because of the war, that people are a bit nervous to book, but I think what we will see this summer is that Oleksij Rak: Okay. Travis: pretty last minute people going, hey, it's all clear. It's I can get time off. The price is okay. The flight's okay. I'm just going to book this. So I have a feeling that this summer is going to be quite different in terms of a lot of that demand that kind of has just not really surfaced because of the war is going to come up and bubble up and people just go, I need to travel. need to get away. I need to do this European trip. And they'll just book it maybe three weeks in advance or maybe two weeks in advance, which is going to be troublesome for the tour operators because they obviously have to check, do they have rooms? Do they have the capacity? Do they have those? So there is a flow on effect of that booking window shrinking as well. Oleksij Rak: But are you having this booking seasonality? which months do people book most? Not ⁓ which months, but in which? Travis: Yeah, January is our peak booking month, but Q1 typically is our peak booking season. And Q4 is probably the next after that. like around Black Friday, ⁓ so is a driver of sales as well. Oleksij Rak: I see. Awesome. What other trends do you see? What do you see that's happening that maybe industry is not seeing? because you're creating quite a big platform. Travis: Yeah, it's a ⁓ one. I think the, what would I say? I mean, one that gets talked about quite a lot that we don't see that much shift towards, but there is some, is this whole personalization aspect. And there's this whole premise that people always want to be special. People always want to have the custom and perfect trip. We offer custom on TourRadar, but when an operator goes back to the customer and says, well, this is the price. If you want to do this in the way you want to do it with Five Star or private group and ⁓ activities and all, they look at the price and say, ⁓ actually I can't afford that. ⁓ Whereas, when you go on an organized schedule tour, you're benefiting from the group, obviously bringing the cost down of everything because of the... Oleksij Rak: Thank Travis: the bus or the coach or whatever, and then the accommodation, the group rates. there's false, I think, feeling that everyone wants this personalized, specialized experience. What we're finding is that there's always specific points of interest or bucket list items like the Eiffel Tower or maybe ⁓ the Taj in India that people absolutely want to see. If they go to that country, they'll be pissed off if they don't see that attraction or that they won't be able to go back to their friends or boasts with a picture on Instagram of, I saw this or I was there. But it's all the things around it then that is the, I guess the stuff, how do you personalize that for the customer a bit? And so a concept I talk, you know, a couple of times in panels recently there's concept that Joe Pine who wrote the book, Experience Economy. I don't know if you've read it ⁓ or Oleksij Rak: So. Travis: you haven't, suggest you read it. He's come out with a new book now called The Transformation Economy, but he talks about ⁓ customization. And he, ⁓ an he gives is Dell, so computers. So back in, you know, the early ⁓ 2000s, to build your own computer was quite hard and you're putting pieces together. So they build a very good system of saying, here's the base model. Here you can add the hard drive, you can add a different screen, you can add all these different customizations, but it's using modules that are scalable. I think that's the future of our industry is now, like G Adventures have a good API that we can connect to. We can show the product, but you can't book any optional activities like hot air ballooning or whitewater rafting until you get to the checkout page. ⁓ And so where I want to push the team is how do we bring up that hot water? Hot water white water rafting and hot air ballooning a step further up in the funnel so people can go Hey, I've seen this Tanzanian Safari But yes, I definitely if I go there I want to do the white water rafting and so they can build that and kind of customize it to their liking saying okay I want to make sure that this trip is is customized for me So that when I get to the end of it, it's going to be different to someone else who doesn't want to do whitewater rafting. They want to do the cooking class. They want to do the whatever. So that's using the base template of the tour, but then actually allowing the customer to select the different things that they want. So I don't know that makes sense or not, but it's, feel we need to do a better job of merchandising and bringing this flexibility and optionality further up the funnel than it currently is available. Oleksij Rak: . mean like kind of user customizable packages that they can package differently in their trip, in their experience. Can you do it at your scale? it's like, know, smaller players I'm chatting with on this podcast, the more Travis: Correct. Exactly. Yep. Oleksij Rak: hyper personalization and stuff because they can do it as their scale they are small and you're a big one. Travis: Yeah, no, and it's a, it's a data challenge of how do you get that data? like I said, we have some operators who have good technology, who have good feeds where we can pull that information. Then it's up to us to show that experience on, the tour radar marketplace. However, a lot of the tour operators just don't provide that. Like they just give, okay, it's a, ⁓ this is the rooming situation, single, double, whatever. And that's it basically. So there's not the customization. mean, we've got some operators who even ⁓ Iceland, think they, offer renting hiking shoes and, and, and renting camping equipment and stuff like that. So where you put that into your checkout as well, but it really depends on how, how much information and level of granularity that the tour operators provide either through a feed or through the platform, the operator dashboard that we provide them. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, I say, okay. next one would be like, what are you building nowadays and ⁓ do you believe in? Like what's your bets about the future and what you're building towards? Travis: Yeah. So our focus right now ⁓ we call social commerce. And believe it has a number of different angles. Trust the biggest factor for people to book online and to book through like a platform ⁓ like ourselves. in the world of AI slop, you don't know really what's real and what's not. ⁓ Like so and so ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: What we've been building is we started with what we call two radar moments, which are kind of like reels that people upload a video from the tour experience that they have. So we know that the customer booked, we know that they were on that tour and we can connect the dots and say, this is a verified moment from someone who's been on that experience. so when we put those moments, those videos onto our marketplace, we see a 29 % uplifting conversion because people trust it more. They actually like, okay, I can see what this is experienced like. And it's not. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: just I call it raw authentic, so raw and authentic content because it's not going to be just Instagram beautiful. It's going to be kind of a bit shaky and it's going to be a bit like, hey, this is where we stopped for our lunch break or it's just giving the real side of what these tours are. So feel more ⁓ understanding it. So that's the first aspect. The second is how do we empower people? Oleksij Rak: I think that's fine. . Travis: instead of just paying platforms. So we pay Google and Meta, obviously quite a lot in advertising, but influencers and guides and travelers and travel agents, they also have influence and they have customers and they have people they could bring into the network. And so what we've built is a program called Rise. It's a partner program we've actually dedicated a million dollars of how do we pay that out to people who actually bring to a radar customers. So we've quite a lot into influencers and creators, but also travel agents. So, you know, we did a fam trip in Morocco last month and had 12 people, had an amazing time. we had, I think, collective following of those people was like one and a half or two million people on Instagram. And the content that was created was phenomenal. Like, so we obviously just gave everyone a broader perspective of what this type of travel is like, but then connecting that to commerce. how do we get people to go from that to then book? That's what we've been building out. So we've built out like a whole affiliate program and profile sharing. to be introducing micro conversions in the future of how do we reward our ambassadors for driving app installs. So if they drive us an app install, we want to pay them for that. If they drive us a new account sign up, we want to pay for that. So how do we enable people to spread the word and grow rather than rely on the monopolies of Google and Meta basically. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: And so that's a ⁓ big one that we've been working on. And travel agents, mean, everyone always talks to their employees, they're going to die. No, they're not. There's and thousands, if not hundreds of millions around the world. ⁓ they're doing a great business. mean, you look at fora travel, you look at IntelliTravel, ⁓ enabling basically ⁓ independent ⁓ to be able to sell travel and make some money. And we actually, built a effectively like a GDS, so like a global distribution system for this type of product. So a travel agent or an advisor signs up with Tour Radar's agent marketplace. They have one account. They make any booking on the 50,000 tours and they get paid a commission on that. They don't need to go to Intrepid and negotiate a commercial contract. They don't need to negotiate with a DMC in Tanzania. How do I actually pay you or how do you pay me and what commission do I get? We've just simplified that. yeah, we are kind of going all in on this social commerce and people side of things, well as obviously we're still paying Google and Meta, but don't think that that's the future ⁓ of we can really scale the business and obviously increase the reach and awareness of this type of product, basically. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, so that great. ⁓ basically, yeah, trying not to work that much with Google and MITRE and instead you enable the CGC content on your platform, you enable the creators you enable the agents. Travis: Correct. Oleksij Rak: How much do you think you have saved already? Maybe not in terms of money, in terms of percentage of what you paid to Google and make them buy this kind of Travis: Yeah, it's hard to know, because you just you want to deploy it in a different way. I wouldn't say it's saved. I think what it's ⁓ what it's trying. Oleksij Rak: Maybe what percentage, what drives the traffic, what drives the user acquisition nowadays? How did it change recently? Travis: Yeah, exactly. So that's where we've shifted now to that part of the business, like with agents and affiliates and with creators, it's about 15 % of the business now. And that's a shift that before you're this ⁓ drug Google and you're on this drug and you can't get offered because you ⁓ spend and it works, ⁓ but not long-term ⁓ sustainable and not really scalable. Whereas if you get network effects really going ⁓ other product we released was the hosted trip concept I said that I did in Iceland is that me as an influencer, I'm not, but if I just say I am, ⁓ if I go ⁓ say, Hey, I want to do a trip to Iceland. Here's a link for anyone who wants to join me. Anyone can book and pay. They don't need to, as a host, I don't need to handle any funds. I don't need to do anything, but Oleksij Rak: Thank Yep. Travis: That host is bringing five new people, six new people, 10 new people into Tour Raider's network who didn't know about Tour Raider before or didn't know about organized adventures before. And so that's where we feel the leverage really comes in is if you get the network effects of people bringing their audiences to the platform to, and we're not doing that just to be greedy. It's they, the host and the creator and the agent, they get rewarded for that. They get paid for bringing in that audience. So. Oleksij Rak: Yep. Travis: So yeah, we feel it's kind of a win-win-win situation and the operators love it because it's incremental bookings that they wouldn't have got before. yeah, we sort of see it definitely as the push for the future of how do we get less dependence on those bigger platforms and actually drive more through this type of channel. Oleksij Rak: ⁓ Have you been building this kind of channel? Travis: We launched Rise in August last year. So it's only been going for about eight months, seven, eight months. Yeah. Oleksij Rak: like seven, eight months and that's already 15 % of your acquisition. Travis: Yeah, we did have some agent business before that as well. Like so we built the agent model about two years ago. But yeah, it's definitely growing quite nicely. It's good. Oleksij Rak: That is huge, That is huge. what else do you build? Are you building something maybe? Travis: The only other stuff is the AI side of things, which I touched on earlier, ⁓ released the ChatGPT app. ⁓ that's a very cool new type of experience. So if you go into ChatGPT and you type at to a radar, it invokes the app. ⁓ then ⁓ can then use the server in the background to obviously only talk to that. ⁓ Oleksij Rak: Yeah. them. Travis: Yeah, and the visualization we've built there with the maps and how you can kind of view different days and what you do and what you get. That's cool. Like, you know, we've we've integrating our UGC into that as well. So, so yeah, that's a we'll keep evolving that type of conversational search and how we think about people finding and discovering this type of product and just continuing to double down on the trust side. moments and videos and empowering people to Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: share that content ⁓ is really the future and guides, the actual guides themselves, they take of people every season. ⁓ so if they can ⁓ asking for reviews or getting their customers to upload moments, that to that tour ranking better ⁓ and more conversion because it's obviously so it helps the tour operators that they work for as well. So that's why we've tried to build this kind of flywheel that does just keep reinforcing itself through demand and then trust and conversion to how do we actually really grow out the platform even more. Oleksij Rak: Yeah, that's a great approach in the current world, especially with a lot of fake, say, generated content. Awesome. Great, Treviz. That was a great discussion. And I'm kind of out of topics to ask you. Yeah, we touched on pretty a lot of other things. So before we wrap it up, is there anything else you would like to add? Travis: Yeah, exactly. We've touched on everything, have we? Nice. Oleksij Rak: of what we discussed. Travis: No, not really. ⁓ think it's where thing maybe ⁓ as a thing for our sector is ⁓ I and about it and I find that pop drives a lot of awareness ⁓ of different things that influence our industry, like white lotus or, you know, there's different TV series that really put a spotlight on a certain destination or a certain type of travel. I think ⁓ thing organized adventures and multi-day tours have not nailed yet is what's love boat moment. So if you think back to cruise back from the eighties, the ⁓ S series called the love boat, it put a real ⁓ sexiness or, know, awareness of this product called cruising. and that people then were like, Oleksij Rak: Yep. Travis: I want to do that. I want to be on that boat. I want to be that person. And I think we, as an industry around experiential travel, we need to have the same type of moment or we need to have collective moments over the next years having TV series or having things that are in pop culture that elevate awareness of this type of travel. And think that's a challenge that I kind of issue out to anyone in the industry is how do we collectively try and raise that awareness because People just look at multi-day tours or group travel and think of like an umbrella. They think of an umbrella walking around a city with 50 people boring, not ⁓ heard it around, no free time. That's not the case. There's such great experiences that are local, cultural, all these things that once people do them, they realize it depends on the operator. They depends on the itinerary. I think we ⁓ an industry need to do a better job of messaging. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Travis: How do we get consumers to understand that, basically? Oleksij Rak: And how do you do it? Because there are other labels, like you mentioned Iceland, there is Norway, there are some. And the market is trending towards authentic experience, local authentic experiences. But how do you promote them? How do you expose them? Travis: Yes. How do you stand out? How do people really connect to it and understand without having to Oleksij Rak: Yeah, probably that's the job of destination management offices companies, but still, you Yeah, yeah, yeah. Travis: think it's everyone. I think it's the tour operators, it's the DMOs, the tourism boards, obviously, but it's just something that I keep trying to raise because at one point we might get some momentum on how do we come together more collectively to raise the profiles. Oleksij Rak: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks a lot for this great discussion. It was really insightful and full of content. Travis, a lot. Yeah. yeah, cheers. soon, maybe. Travis: No, thank you for having me on. appreciate it. Cheers. Bye bye.