Three New AI Trip Planners Join a Growing Market – Skift Travel News
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Justin Dawes, Skift
September 7th, 2023 at 3:41 PM EDT
There are too many AI trip planning tools to choose from, but many will disappear as time goes on.
Justin Dawes
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Most of the big travel companies — Priceline, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, and more — have released AI trip planning tools on their websites.
New companies keep popping up, as well, aiming for ways to capitalize on marrying generative AI and travel planning for consumers. Some started right away, like Tripnotes and Roam Around — which will have some updates to announce in the next several weeks. Others released their first products a little later, such as Roamefy and AI.Adventures.
And more coming out, all trying to make a name for themselves in an increasingly crowded market.
There have been four mergers and acquisitions of travel tech companies in the past week.
ArrivalGuides, which provides content to destination marketing organizations, has now been sold by its founders three times.
It has been acquired by travel marketing tech platform Smartvel, which was the company’s biggest competitor, for an undisclosed amount. It was sold by Lion Ventures, which is owned by Magnus Aideborn and Ola Zetterlöf.
The partners founded ArrivalGuides in 2004 and then sold it to Yellow Pages in Sweden in 2007. It was sold back to the founders for $1 during the financial crisis in 2009, according to Zetterlöf. It was then acquired by Lonely Planet in 2019, and the founders acquired it back for $1 during the pandemic-related financial crisis in 2020, Zetterlöf said.
He said ArrivalGuides suffered heavily during Covid, but it has grown close to where it was before the pandemic. It has more than 630 destination guides that are integrated into apps, social media, websites, and marketing initiatives of client travel brands.
Now, the founders are focused on the other companies in their portfolio, including short-term rental platform StayNordic.
Some other recent acquisition deals:
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Justin Dawes, Skift
September 7th, 2023 at 3:41 PM EDT
Tags: artificial intelligence, chatgpt, generative ai, jet.ai, mergers and acquisitions, online booking, online travel, skift, Skift Pro Columns, travel tech, Travel Tech Briefing, trip planning
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