Travel Tech Podcast

Alex Brooker

The Travel Tech Podcast, hosted by Alex Brooker, features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Alex Brooker is an industry veteran with experience in aviation, start up to exit, and AI transformation.

  1. 2d ago

    Code Is Twenty Percent of the Thing

    AI made writing code nearly free, which only matters if code was ever most of the job. In this compilation episode, host Alex Brooker pulls together clips from seven past guests across travel software, airspace infrastructure, airline operations, corporate travel, content, and airline ancillaries who each arrived at the same idea independently. Alex Ragin of Zoftify puts a number on it: code is about 20% of a software product, and the other 80% is domain knowledge, process, and judgment. The episode follows that 80% through edge cases, daily operational disruption, fare construction expertise, and the question of what a product team's job becomes when execution costs almost nothing. What You'll Learn The 20/80 split: Code is roughly 20% of a complex travel system, and the remaining 80% is knowledge of how the business actually works.Vibe coding limits: A simple invoicing app can be vibe coded, but a CRM, ERP, or GDS cannot, because the hard part is specifying behavior rather than writing it.Edge case cost: One modest custom fields feature at Zoftify took about five days of internal and client discussion before it was ready to build.Failure at the seams: Complex systems break at their interfaces and edge cases, not on the happy paths that teams test and load test.No standard day: In airline operations, disruption from weather, aircraft swaps, or system faults is the normal state rather than the exception.Expertise outside the code: International fare specialists routinely beat GDS pricing engines by thousands of dollars by knowing where to break a fare.Where value moves: As development costs approach zero, advantage shifts to network effects, knowledge of customer pain, and position in the customer journey.The new job: When execution is cheap, deciding what to build and why becomes the core work for every team, not just well funded ones. Time-Stamped Highlights  (0:00) One number about what software actually is(1:08) "Why can't we just vibe code this?"(1:37) Five days of edge cases for one custom fields feature(3:45) Code is 20%, knowledge is 80%(4:06) Complex systems fail at the seams, not the center(5:30) A pilot on why there is no standard day(6:24) The fare specialists the GDS could never replace(7:33) Value shifts from code to network and knowledge(8:16) Shipping a travel product with zero coding background(9:19) If building is nearly free, what is the job?(10:27) From paper scribbles to AI built slide decks(11:33) Why choosing what to build is now everyone's problemGuest bios Alex Ragin runs Zoftify, a software agency built for the travel industry, and Tourseta, a platform for tour operators. He hears the "can't we just vibe code this?" question from prospective clients every week. Full conversation: Episode 20. LinkedIn · zoftify.com · tourseta.comAmit Ganjoo is Founder and CEO of ANRA Technologies, a drone operations and UAS traffic management platform. His career runs from experimental aircraft design to airspace infrastructure, with more than 20 years across aviation, telecom, and wireless. Full conversation: Episode 6. anratechnologies.com · LinkedInLeo Kotil flew commercial jets before founding Overwatch AI, which builds AI tools that give airline crews fast access to operational information. Full conversation: Episode 3. LinkedIn · overwatch-ai.comJim Hetzel began his career in a corporate travel agency, working alongside the international pricing specialists who could outprice the GDS by hand. He now works on retailing strategy at TWAI. Full conversation: Episode 16. LinkedIn · twai.comÍñigo Valenzuela is the founder of Smartvel, which provides destination content for travel brands. Full conversation: Episode 24. LinkedIn · smartvel.comChristopher Olivares is the founder of Elyo. He had never written a line of code before February 2025, when he began building his travel product himself with ChatGPT. Full conversation: Episode 17. LinkedIn · elyo.ioIñaki Uriz is Co-founder and CEO of Caravelo, the company behind many of the airline subscription products launched in recent years. Full conversation: Episode 32. LinkedIn · caravelo.comAbout the Podcast: The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio: Alex Brooker is an engineer, technology leader, and founder of Airside Labs, which applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. Before Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and other safety-critical domains. He also invests in early-stage technology ventures. LinkedIn

  2. Oct 1

    The Pricing Fight Inside Every Airline

    Two euros can decide who wins a metasearch sale. Inside most airlines, moving them is still revenue management's call, and it is rarely fast. Valentino Portnoy is the CEO and founder of TravelDax, a B2B platform that collects flight pricing data from metasearch engines and turns it into competitive insights for airlines and OTAs. He and Alex discuss why airlines now track OTAs more closely than rival carriers, how internal politics slow down pricing decisions, and why classic machine learning still beats gen AI on pricing. They also cover agentic automation for legacy systems and what AI chat booking means for distribution. What You'll Learn AI and metasearch: Metasearch sites dominate AI chat answers to flight questions, and are doing better there than in traditional search.OTA monitoring: Roughly 75 to 80% of airline usage on TravelDax goes to tracking OTAs rather than competing airlines, including whether their branded fares are displayed as intended.Metasearch visibility: An airline fare listed below six or seven OTA offers is effectively invisible to the traveler.Losing the customer: Airlines that tolerate OTA undercutting still lose control of loyalty and the customer experience.Gen AI vs machine learning: In TravelDax's testing, classic machine learning still outperforms gen AI on price prediction and recommendations.The last mile: AI agents operating on local machines could automate the final price change that legacy airline systems block today.Internal friction: Conflicting goals between revenue management and commercial teams are a bigger barrier to pricing agility than technology.Speed over accuracy: In competitive pricing, acting faster than competitors matters more than being right every time.Connector risk: AI labs can see which travel connectors succeed, and the best performers risk being absorbed into the platform.Time-Stamped Highlights (0:00) Two Euros Can Make a Huge Difference(2:03) A University Project That Predicted Fare Drops(7:04) Why Latin America Never Got Its Own Metasearch Leader(10:16) From Manual Checks to Automated Competitor Tracking(14:04) Invisible Behind Seven OTAs(16:50) Did AI Kill Metasearch? The Data Says No(20:09) Why Gen AI Loses to Machine Learning on Pricing(24:47) The Legacy Systems Blocking the Last 30%(26:31) Would You Let an Agent Change Your Fares?(33:42) Revenue Management vs the Commercial Team(40:29) Why Speed Beats Being Right(42:35) Meta Muse, Gemini, and Booking Inside the Chat(50:39) Testing Claude on a Real Lisbon Trip(53:53) The App Store Risk for Travel Connectors Guest bio Valentino Portnoy is the CEO and founder of TravelDax, an automation platform that collects, analyzes, and delivers competitive pricing insights to airlines and OTAs, sourced primarily from metasearch engines. A software engineer by training, he built one of the first metasearch engines in Latin America and has worked at an OTA and as a consultant to airlines and OTAs. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valentino-portnoy/ | Company: https://traveldax.com/ About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses. The show emphasizes tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is an engineer, technology leader, and the founder of Airside Labs, which applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. He previously built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he invests in early-stage technology ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002/ 🔎Connect your agent

  3. Sep 24

    Trust as Infrastructure: Who Your AI Travel Agent Actually Works For

    Everyone is racing to build the AI agent that books your trip, and nobody is building the thing that makes it safe to use one. In this themed episode, host Alex Brooker brings together six guests from different corners of travel and aviation who independently arrived at the same conclusion: agentic travel has a trust problem, not a model problem. Eric Leopold, Christopher Olivares, Mike Putman, Nancy Li Smith, Fred Bean, and Jim Hetzel each address who an AI agent really works for, how a traveler would know, and who makes it right when something goes wrong. What You'll Learn The dual agent problem: Travel merged the buyer's agent and the seller's agent into one intermediary, a setup advertising would never allow.Who pays decides who's served: An assistant paid for by the traveler can work for the traveler, while one funded by suppliers works for them.Free platforms aren't free: OTA commissions show up in hotel pricing, so travelers pay for "free" booking indirectly.Brands at risk: Personal agents that know a traveler well may route around big OTA brands entirely if those brands don't offer the best outcome.The bed bank gap: Today's agents can't reach most bed banks directly because neither side has the infrastructure for it.Social trust over model quality: Recommendations tied to people with a reputation on the line outperform model outputs users feel they need to verify.Fraud at human speed today: Fake hotel sites with full image libraries already outrank real hotels on their own names and take real money.The missing institution: Agent to agent commerce needs identity, authority, enforcement, settlement, and dispute resolution, the functions IATA provides for today's industry.Time-Stamped Highlights (0:00) Everyone's Building the Agent, Nobody's Building the Trust(0:45) One Advisor, Two Masters: Eric Leopold on Travel's Merged Intermediary(1:45) Why a $20 Subscription Changes Who the Assistant Serves(2:21) From Airline Ticket Office to Everything Seller(3:22) No Free Lunch: Christopher Olivares on OTA Economics(4:45) Bootstrapped by Design: Why Elio Doesn't Monetize the Channel(5:24) Getting Branded Out: Mike Putman's Case for the Market(7:02) Why Agents Can't Reach the Bed Banks Yet(8:08) "Is It Even Legit?": Nancy Li Smith on Unsourced AI Answers(9:10) The Fraud Gap: Fred Bean on Moving Beyond Price Centric Booking(10:06) Look to Book at Machine Speed: Jim Hetzel on Billions of Bots(11:54) Identity, Authority, Enforcement, Settlement: The IATA Nobody Has Built(13:40) Six Guests, One Missing PieceGuest Bios Eric Leopold spent 15 years at IATA, where he was behind the barcode on today's boarding passes, and has more than two decades in the travel industry. He advocates for AI assistants that act as true buyer's agents. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ericleopoldChristopher Olivares is the solo founder of Elyo, a conversational flight search tool based in Paris. He came to travel from the OECD with a background in economics and data. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-olivares-40b8b283/ | Company: https://elyo.io/Mike Putman launched one of the first online travel agency stacks in 1996 and now runs Custom Travel Solutions, which gives travel agents and AI agents access to bed bank inventory. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeputman/ | Company: https://customtravelsolutions.comNancy Li Smith built the AI platform behind Meta's Ray-Ban glasses before founding Boop, which pairs AI with social trust for travel recommendations. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyliseattle/ | Company: https://www.boopwithme.com/Fred Bean runs HotelPORT and works on traveler fraud protection and attribute based hotel selling. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredbean/ | Company: hotelport.com | Foundation: https://bigfoundation.net/Jim Hetzel has spent his career in airline distribution, much of it in back office IT infrastructure. He focuses on how look to book economics and trust hold up when bots replace humans at scale. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhetzel/ | Company: https://twai.com About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host Bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigour to enterprise AI systems, helping organisations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety critical domains. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002/ 🔎Connect your agent

  4. Sep 15

    ChatGPT Said the Visa Would Be Accepted. It Wasn't.

    A guy who used to hand carry passports to airport cargo terminals just built the database he couldn't afford in 2018 for a fraction of the cost, and every application still passes through a human before it goes anywhere. Rob Lee is CEO and co-founder of Swift Passport and Visa Services, a company he started in 2008 helping private aviation clients navigate passport and visa logistics. In this conversation, Rob traces the industry from same day passport courier runs through the shift to eVisas and ETAs, and explains why his team uses AI heavily to build internal tooling while keeping customer data out of public AI tools and a human check on every application. What You'll Learn Same day submission: Swift's early edge came from same day processing of small batches while larger competitors sat on high volume mail for a day or two.Business visa niche: The one day speed advantage mattered most to business travelers with short notice trips, which became Swift's core market.eVisa disruption: The shift from paper visas to electronic visas and ETAs starting around 2018 to 2019 initially looked like it would eliminate the need for a service like Swift's.Payment friction: Countries like India built extensive fraud checks into eVisa payment systems, creating a new kind of complexity that replaced the old paper bottleneck.AI reliability gap: Rob says general AI models still give inconsistent, sometimes incorrect answers about visa requirements because the underlying web content is outdated or contradictory.Internal AI use: Swift uses AI extensively to scrape government and consulate websites and build a requirements database, with human review as a mandatory quality control step.Cost collapse: A database project Rob priced at roughly $780,000 in 2018 became achievable at a small fraction of that cost using current AI assisted development.Diplomacy over technology: Visa processing delays are often a diplomatic reciprocity mechanism between countries rather than a technical limitation.Time-Stamped Highlights  (0:00) The Johannesburg immigration story that started it all(3:39) Getting into aviation clients and starting during the 2008 recession(5:24) Hand carrying passports to the cargo terminal(7:36) Cracking the code on same day submission(10:21) Chasing down a Chinese visa in 48 hours(10:37) Brazil's three to four week visa era(11:36) The industry wide shift to eVisas and ETAs(13:46) India's payment fraud checks and 15 failed attempts(18:56) Why AI filled visa forms still get people turned away(25:08) Swift's own policy on customer data and AI(29:27) Building the database Rob couldn't afford in 2018(33:15) How the new platform prefills forms and letters of intent(35:13) Best travel hacks: park fees, natural resource taxes, and 60 day prep windows(38:54) Why visa delays are a diplomatic bargaining chip, not a technical problemGuest bio Rob Lee is CEO and co-founder of Swift Passport and Visa Services, which he started in 2008 to help travelers navigate expedited passport and visa processing. The company has grown over roughly 18 years into a business serving corporate travelers, airlines, and individual applicants across dozens of countries. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eelbor/ | Company: https://www.swiftpassportservices.com/ About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigour to enterprise AI systems, helping organisations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety critical domains. 🔎Connect your agent

  5. Sep 8

    The Deal AI Can Never Find

    Airlines have spent decades making you earn loyalty through repetition. Iñaki Uriz builds the opposite: you pay first, and the relationship starts before you have flown a single mile. Iñaki Uriz is co-founder and CEO of Caravelo, the platform behind flight subscription products at airlines including Wizz Air and JetSmart. He and Alex Brooker cover how subscribers behave once they have committed, the COVID moment that made Caravelo bet the company on subscriptions, why corporate travel is next, and why Uriz expects AI fare comparison to push airlines towards private deals that sit outside anything an agent can search. What You'll Learn Subscriptions vs loyalty: Loyalty programmes make customers prove commitment before rewarding them. Subscriptions take the financial commitment up front and reward it immediately, and can front load status for the higher tiers.Where the incremental revenue comes from: Unused credits (subscribers use 70 to 80% of packaged flights), new demand created by the subscription itself, and market share, because a subscriber stops searching competitors.The number that matters: For every $100 of subscription revenue, $30 to $50 is money the airline would not otherwise have captured, consistently across customers.Churn benchmarks: Monthly churn runs 3 to 4%, so roughly two thirds of subscribers renew for a second year at no acquisition cost.The second wallet effect: Because the subscription was paid at the start of the cycle, a $50 upsell at booking time feels like $50 rather than $200, which lifts ancillary attachment on planned trips.Two products for two problems: The flight subscription suits an airline chasing market share on a route or region. The last minute pass sells unlimited access to distressed inventory inside a short booking window, which helps flatten a seasonal demand curve.First mover advantage is structural: A subscriber leaves the market. The airline that signs them first keeps them until they actively unsubscribe.The corporate long tail: Only a Bank of America can negotiate a bespoke deal with Delta. Prepackaged subscription tiers give a 300 person firm the same trade: better terms in exchange for exclusivity.AI raises the stakes on price transparency: As agents get better at comparing every public fare against travel policy, a subscriber has already opted out of the comparison, and a private subscription deal is not something an agent can find.Execution is no longer scarce: Uriz on running a company through three years of AI: the work has shifted from producing slides, code and spreadsheets to deciding what to produce and why.Time-Stamped Highlights (0:00) The Mark Cuban lifetime flight pass cold open(1:17) Subscriptions explained like you're five(2:53) How this is different from a loyalty programme(5:49) The economics of 24 flights a year, breakage, and $30 to $50 incremental per $100(9:17) Does the incremental revenue effect plateau, and retailing on top of a relationship(13:48) Founding story: pre-COVID product testing and the pivot that saved the company(16:56) Why subscription launches make headlines and then quietly disappear(19:39) Two products: the flight subscription vs the last minute distressed inventory pass(21:50) Regional subscription tiers: the Wizz Air network by country example(27:19) Churn and renewal benchmarks against the broader subscription economy(31:05) The second wallet effect and ancillary upsell behaviour(32:00) Corporate travel as the next growth vector, and democratising the Bank of America deal(36:44) AI's current and future impact on airline distribution(39:32) A relationship based moat that AI comparison can't reach(43:00) Execution is no longer the scarce thing: sketches, Claude Design and deciding what to build(47:23) Closing reflections: the frustration and pull of working in aviationWhere to find Caravelo Iñaki and the Caravelo team will be at Arabian Travel Market, Dubai (14 to 17 September), T2RLEngage, London (21 to 23 September), World Aviation Festival, Lisbon (13 to 15 October), where they will have a booth, and WTM London (3 to 5 November). Alex will be in the startup village at the World Aviation Festival.  Guest bio Iñaki Uriz is co-founder and CEO of Caravelo, the platform behind airline subscription products, including flight subscriptions and last minute distressed inventory passes, for airlines such as Wizz Air and JetSmart. He led the company from its pre-pandemic origins as a broader retailing experiment through its narrowing into subscriptions during COVID. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ium/ Company: https://www.caravelo.com/ About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigour to enterprise AI systems, helping organisations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety critical domains. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002/ Your AI can already build the slide. Does it know aviation? Iñaki's point applies to all of us: the deck now takes ten seconds, so the value is in what you ask for and whether you can trust what comes back. Airside Labs is now a connector for Claude and ChatGPT, listed under Airside Labs in both directories. It puts 6,500 aviation AI use cases by sector and role behind your AI, plus an EASA AI level and hazard screen for any of them. Free tier, no card needed. 🔎Connect your agent

  6. Sep 1

    Above China, Your Starlink Doesn't Exist

    The most reliable AI on your next flight might be the one that assumes it has no internet connection at all. Ajith Balakumar is the CEO and founder of Forthcode, an aviation technology company that grew out of a point-of-sale system built for a 2,500-outlet coffee chain in India. The conversation covers how an offline-first architecture built for retail became the foundation for in-flight commerce, catering, loyalty, and an AI ground-staff agent called Davix, and how Ajith thinks about AI maturity, regulation, and building software at founder speed. What You'll Learn Offline-first architecture: In-flight software can't assume connectivity, because satellite access can be blocked by entire governments regardless of available bandwidth.AI trust: Ground staff trust an AI's answer more when it cites the exact SOP page and paragraph behind it, not just when it gives a confident response.AI maturity: Organizations move through three stages: co-pilots where the human decides everything, agents where the human approves a subset of decisions, and operational intelligence where multi-agent systems feed executive decision-making.Regulatory readiness: GDPR already applies to any European passenger's data, and standardized AI compliance layers, similar to an API gateway, are emerging from major cloud providers.Data sovereignty: Forthcode avoids routing airline data through frontier LLMs, preferring locally hosted models so information never leaves the airline's environment.Adoption pattern: Most airlines are still running isolated AI pilots rather than operational AI, because executives want quantifiable ROI before scaling.Builder speed: AI-assisted prototyping now lets a founder build and test a fully functional application in about an hour, compared with days of spec-writing and revision cycles.Prompting as a diagnostic: How someone prompts a general AI tool reveals their own problem-solving process, which is part of why teams with AI tools still underuse them.Time-Stamped Highlights (0:00) The accidental entry into aviation, through a coffee chain's point-of-sale system(4:03) Why offline-first became the only viable architecture for in-flight transactions(4:45) The geopolitics of connectivity: Starlink, airspace, and government restrictions(7:56) The reconciliation problem: every flight is a store with no fixed manager(11:27) Where Forthcode sits in the airline tech stack: retail, catering, and Lounge in the Sky(13:44) Introducing Davix, the AI roving agent for ground staff(15:54) Why evidence and citations solve AI's trust problem with frontline staff(19:41) The stress of ground staff work and how AI changes accountability(25:53) The AI maturity model: co-pilots, agents, and operational intelligence(29:27) India versus Europe: GDPR, EASA, and the coming wave of AI guardrail tooling(33:37) Why Forthcode avoids frontier LLMs and is building fully offline in-flight AI(36:32) The current state of AI adoption across airlines: pilots versus operational AI(42:38) Building a WhatsApp-driven to-do list app in one hour as a founder(55:05) Closing thoughts: the upcoming Forthcode aviation AI report and what's nextClosing thoughts: the upcoming Forthcode aviation AI report and what's nextGuest bio Ajith Balakumar is the CEO and founder of Forthcode, an aviation technology company built around an offline-first architecture, covering in-flight retail, catering management, and the loyalty product Lounge in the Sky, along with Davix, an AI agent for airport ground staff. Company: forthcode.com. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ajithbalakumar. About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he now also invests in early-stage technology ventures.

  7. Aug 26

    Why Can't I Just Book My Own Trip? Dual Identity, Dreadful Booking Tools and the Real Job of Corporate Travel

    Why can't you just book your own work trip? You can. You just won't get reimbursed. Corporate travel exists to manage risk, cost and duty of care, and the tools built to enforce that have spent years treating the traveler as a problem to be contained rather than a person who books flights every week in their own life. Caitlin Gomez, Head of Growth at Amgine, joins Alex to unpack the dual identity at the heart of corporate travel: the same person is a consumer on their phone and a business traveler in the program, and almost nothing in the supply chain connects the two. They cover why the booking tools travelers have suffered through were never designed for them, how suppliers should think about attribution when a traveler shows up under a personal account, why Amgine positions itself as middleware that plugs into existing GDS and TMC infrastructure rather than replacing it, and why AI in corporate travel is only as useful as the antiquated systems it has to talk to. The conversation also takes in Amgine's omnichannel booking flow, the industry's blind spot on ground transportation, and what the recent strategic investment from BCD actually signals about the partnership. What You'll Learn Traveler experience vs. program design: Corporate travel isn't optimized for consumer grade experience because its real job is risk mitigation, cost control, and getting people home safely, not replicating a consumer app.Middleware positioning: Amgine deliberately avoids becoming a consumer brand, choosing instead to integrate into existing TMC and GDS infrastructure rather than compete with it.Fit over features: Flashy travel technology often fails in production because buyers select tools the way people furnish an apartment without measuring the room, and the tool doesn't actually fit the program.Attribution is unsolved: Consumer platforms like rideshare apps have no reliable way to tie a traveler's personal account back to their corporate persona, which limits how partners can prove value to a CFO.Ground transport is the visibility gap: Travel programs track travelers well in the air and at check in but lose visibility the moment someone is in a car between the airport and the hotel.AI is bounded by data quality: AI in travel is only as reliable as the legacy GDS and API infrastructure underneath it, and teams that skip fundamentals for AI shortcuts get stuck when systems break.Human judgment still leads: AI acts as a force multiplier for agents and engineers who already understand the domain, not a substitute for the human judgment needed when a trip goes wrong.Partnership over funding: Amgine's BCD investment came after four months of proven results and was framed internally as acceleration on an already fully funded company, not a lifeline.Timestamped Highlights (00:00) Cold open and podcast intro(00:46) Can employees just book their own travel?(02:49) Why corporate travel is layered, not hard(05:12) Where Amgine sits as "middleware" in the travel stack(06:18) Inside the omnichannel workflow: email, chat, Slack, WhatsApp(09:13) Lessons from GBTA and building Innovation Row(11:02) The apartment without measurements analogy(14:22) What suppliers get wrong: attribution and connective tissue(19:12) The ground transport blind spot and duty of care(25:17) Walking through the WhatsApp booking flow(32:43) Why AI is only as good as the data behind it(38:53) Personal vs. business travel risk tolerance(42:09) The BCD investment and what it actually signals(44:40) Amgine's agnostic positioning and where to find the teamGuest bio Caitlin Gomez is Head of Growth at Amgine (amgine.ai), an AI powered middleware platform that automates the manual, time consuming parts of corporate travel booking without replacing existing GDS and TMC infrastructure. Her background spans travel technology partnerships at Lyft and CLEAR, a consumer facing role at Staples, TMC sales at HRG and Travel Leaders, and founding Innovation Row at GBTA. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitlingomez/ About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety critical domains and now invests in early stage technology ventures.

  8. Aug 18

    89% of Airline Carts Never Convert

    Airline checkout loses close to 9 out of 10 shoppers before they ever pay, and Kameron Bertine's fix isn't a redesign — it's an identity layer airlines were never built to have. Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, a startup building an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels modeled on Shopify's ShopPay. The conversation covers the origin of the problem in Kameron's own booking experience, why airline cart abandonment runs as high as 89%, how Movmo integrates with legacy PSS and NDC infrastructure without replacing it, and why Movmo is deliberately holding off on fully agentic booking despite having the technical capability today. What You'll Learn Cart abandonment: Airline booking abandonment runs around 89%, higher than e-commerce's roughly 70-79% and close to ferry bookings at the top of the range.Design pattern: Movmo is modeled directly on Shopify ShopPay and payment layers like Stripe Link and Klarna rather than inventing a new checkout behavior from scratch.Merchant of record: Airlines care most about retaining the merchant-of-record relationship, so Movmo is built as an identity and checkout layer that sits on top of existing systems rather than replacing them.Legacy infrastructure: Movmo is designed to work with whatever PSS, GDS, or NDC infrastructure an airline already runs, since rip-and-replace projects in this industry routinely stall for years.Agentic readiness: Movmo could technically ship agentic booking today, but is deliberately sequencing a two-to-three year rollout through express checkout and white-label products first to build traveler trust before letting AI agents transact directly.Sales reality: Enterprise airline sales cycles typically run 12 to 24 months, sometimes up to 36, which reframes a two-month first proposal as unusually fast progress.Industry priorities: Agentic or AI-driven booking reportedly sits under 5% on airline executives' list of priorities, well behind operations and other concerns.Conversion signal: ShopPay profiles reportedly convert roughly 50% better than guest checkout, a gap Movmo is betting will show up similarly in airline booking once identity persists across sessions. Time-Stamped Highlights (00:00) Cold open and episode introduction(02:05) The Ecuador-to-Spain booking that started it all(03:14) The ShopPay moment: the light bulb for Movmo(07:57) 89% cart abandonment and why it happens(11:01) What Movmo's early user research actually found(14:17) Inside the express checkout flow, explained(15:39) Designing the one-click booking experience(17:18) The escalator sales funnel at FTE/APEX Long Beach(21:52) Legacy rails: working with NDC, GDS, and PSS instead of replacing them(23:50) Layla, Gemini, and where agentic booking is really headed(31:18) Merchant of record, loyalty, and airline governance requirements(33:16) The commercial model and transaction-fee approach(36:58) Why Movmo won't launch full agentic booking yet(39:17) Biggest surprises: sales cycle length and a 35 NPS awardGuest bio Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels designed to reduce cart abandonment and enable persistent traveler profiles across booking sessions. He came from a product design background with prior experience in ERP systems, and founded Movmo in June 2024 after his own frustrating international booking experience. Company: movmo.io | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kameron-bertine About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems, helping organizations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he also invests in early-stage technology ventures.

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The Travel Tech Podcast, hosted by Alex Brooker, features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Alex Brooker is an industry veteran with experience in aviation, start up to exit, and AI transformation.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Brooker
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    37
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Alex Brooker
  • Show Website
    Travel Tech Podcast

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