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Artificial intelligence is reshaping every part of the travel booking journey, but human travel advisors may be benefiting the most.
In this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, Sarah Kopit and Seth Borko discuss Fora’s new $1 billion valuation and what it says about the future of travel distribution. They also examine Amazon’s latest Alexa travel booking push, IHG’s AI-powered search experience, and how Google is becoming a bigger player in the booking funnel.
The conversation then shifts to earnings season. Sarah and Seth break down Hilton’s decision to cut franchise fees, why JetBlue investors are embracing the airline’s turnaround despite continued losses, and how geopolitical tensions are beginning to affect Royal Caribbean.
Together, the stories reveal an industry experimenting with new AI tools while traditional travel companies continue searching for profitable growth.
This transcript is generated by artificial intelligence .
The number of the week is $1 billion. Yes, I maybe should try to like sound a little bit like Dr. Evil when I say that, but it is $1 billion.
That is the valuation of a travel company named Fora. It is a travel advisor platform, it just raised $60 million in financing. That gives it that $1 billion valuation and makes it our latest travel unicorn.
So that is what happened this week. We got a whole bunch of other stuff going along this week.
You may notice, for those of you watching, I’m in a different location this week because I actually am on vacation. I actually am at the beach this week.
So Seth tells me there’s been a lot of stuff going on, but why don’t you inform both me and the people?
Yeah, Sarah. They let you take a vacation in the middle of earnings season, you’re allowed to do that. They did.
That’s why we got a great team, right? Yeah, exactly. How is your vacation going, by the way?
We have one. So this, as many of you have heard we talk about, this is my big birthday girls trip with all of my friends that I’ve had since I was in elementary school. So we have one more joiner today.
She’ll be the last one and then we’ll be a full group of 11. So it’s been great. Amazing.
I’ve never been. I would love to go.
Yeah, it’s a big short-term rental territory.
It is. We’re at one of our friends’ houses. This is where her house and yeah, it’s definitely, for anyone who’s been here, it’s definitely like Northeast Beach.
It’s very similar to the beautiful beaches in Delaware and New Jersey and even out on Long Island. But we saw some dolphins the other day, which made me comfortable to go in the water because whenever I see dolphins, I think, okay, there’s no sharks.
I only like to see sharks when I’m scuba diving. I don’t like them when I’m swimming, like in the murky surf. So anyway.
So that’s that. That’s my story. That’s how vacation is.
I love it. I love dolphins. I love to see dolphins.
I did pick a lot of our stories this week and it actually is a genuinely very busy news week. I feel bad saying the word genuinely to just sidebar because it feels too AI, but I am saying that it’s genuinely busy news week.
That forest story is fascinating to me because I feel like we haven’t had a lot of travel startup unicorns lately.…