If you don’t already listen to podcasts and watch YouTube video interviews of the world’s AI leaders, it’s maybe time to start.

I have already documented in previous blogs that my biggest fear is that the implementation of AI technology will occur so rapidly that it causes a structural upheaval in our society, resulting in a 50% decline in new white-collar jobs and unemployment surpassing 20%. Inevitably, this will create a world where the rich become even richer and the poor are left devastated.

Listening to a Wired interview with Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, which is now a Google-backed business, gave me a much more positive outlook.

DeepMind has already dramatically boosted the productivity of medical scientists with the launch of AlphaFold. This is a groundbreaking AI system capable of accurately predicting 3D protein structures from amino acid sequences. This capability addresses one of biology’s grand challenges and has had a transformative impact on fields such as drug discovery, enzyme design, and disease research.

Already, this new AI technology is leading to cures for diseases and extending human life; however, this surely creates more humans competing for the limited resources of our Earth.

However, Demis believes that we are merely being short-sighted and that “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI) will be achieved within the next five years. This is where computers become as intelligent as humans and are capable of programming their own improvement. Demis believes that this will lead to a golden age of “Radical Abundance.”

He predicts, for instance, that AGI will solve the issue of power production through nuclear fusion, thus providing abundant clean energy that will enable countries to tackle water shortages by desalinating the plentiful seawater that surrounds us. This, in turn, will increase the available land for growing food, allowing the planet to sustain the growing world population, eliminating the need for mass migration and reducing the necessity to wage war over resources.

He notes that we already know the solutions to climate change, but a lack of geopolitical cooperation hinders their implementation, as no single country is willing to bear the cost. In his view, this “zero-sum game” mentality will shift in a time of radical abundance.

When asked about overpopulation, he predicts that AGI, along with radical abundance, will enable humans to invest the substantial sums necessary to make space travel viable. This, in turn, will allow humanity to reduce overcrowding on Earth and to populate our galaxy and beyond.

He, however, also acknowledges that it’s a time of significant risk for humans, as a lack of international cooperation and regulation means AGI could easily fall into the hands of bad actors, and the increasing digitalisation of our societies makes cyber warfare virtually inevitable.

I am therefore pleased to hear these more cheerful views of the future from Demis and also from Elon Musk, but it does make me wonder if this is not just the positive spin that AI leaders need, working on a product whose impact is so substantial and could either be the best or worst thing for human society.

What is truly shocking is Demis’s absolute conviction that AGI will be with us within 3-5 years. For me, AGI is a massive accelerator of the AI revolution that already amazes me every day.

If you’re not embracing AI in your business, you’re standing still in a rapidly evolving world, and we all know that standing still is a recipe for disaster.

I have been in the holiday business for 37 years, and I have never seen peak-season flight prices trashed in the way they have been this year to popular beach destinations like Majorca.

As usual, Ryanair leads the way with a £19 fare from Manchester to Majorca, but one glance at the Skyscanner screenshot below shows that return flights for under £100 can be secured for most supposed peak dates in August.

This highlights the genuine weakness of the low-cost yield systems that “price low” early and subsequently raise prices in response to demand. There must be demand!!

The UK’s warm early summer weather has fostered a “let’s wait and see” consumer attitude, as many holidaymakers are content to stay in the UK if the weather is pleasant enough for the children to play in the garden and for the BBQ to be fired up.

I have always believed that foreign beach holiday markets compete far more with “Staycations” than with expensive UK breaks. With the advent of the internet, on-demand TV, social media, and gaming, the urgent need for parents to take the family on holiday to alleviate school holiday boredom has diminished, allowing for late decisions to be made.

We must therefore consider whether we have reached a capacity tipping point, as low-cost carriers are compelled to reduce capacity to improve yields as their relentless UK expansion approaches its limits.

This is a relatively trivial rebalancing for Ryanair and Easyjet, who will shift capacity to other source markets. Still, it may highlight a weakness in Jet2’s exclusive supply to the UK travel sector.

As mentioned in previous blogs, Easyjet Holidays is the perfect “Opaque” dumping ground for heavily discounted excess seats, so watch out for some amazing orange deals. However, it’s companies like On the Beach and Love Holidays that are leading the way with £402 for 7-night self-catering holidays based on their new favourite ultra-low-cost carrier, Ryanair.

Love Holidays is a private company still seeking an IPO to enhance their share liquidity and access cash for expansion; therefore, it is difficult to determine how much the owners value the new deal with Ryanair and the access to low-cost seats it provides them.

However, given that On the Beach’s share price has doubled since last August to a closing price of 207p yesterday, it’s clear the financial markets have finally got the message. OTB operates as an “asset-light” travel business that feeds off the misery of  low-cost carriers, providing the optimal position when capacity exceeds demand.

The key profit driver for OTAs is not the selling price of their holidays, but the conversion of leads into bookings they achieve from their advertising sources. Low prices significantly boost conversion rates and, therefore, profitability, so watch out for some excellent results from Love and OTB this year.

However, it is the reaction of Majorca’s leading hotel chains to this new “Glut” of excess seats that I find most interesting.

After many years of needing to operate at nearly 100% capacity to turn a profit, the sector has learnt that it is a better strategy to maintain high prices, which enable it to generate a profit at 80% capacity. This allows them to relax and simply fill the extra rooms if airlines significantly discount their prices, creating an influx of late demand.

Therefore, while it’s easy to find ultra-cheap flights to Majorca and other Mediterranean destinations, holiday prices are not falling because it’s difficult to locate any inexpensive accommodation. So, although UK holidaymakers are benefiting from lower holiday costs, it’s not quite the “Golden Age of discounted holidays” just yet.

However, I know a few hoteliers well, so it’s time for me to stop writing and book another holiday!

As readers of this blog will know, I have a deep fascination with both disruption and AI, particularly regarding how they will impact our daily lives.

The power of AI to access the knowledge of the internet has already been made available to customers through ChatGPT and other “Large Language Models (LLMs),” and its use is now integral to every student’s life, increasingly becoming mainstream in business.

Nevertheless, it is the way we access and utilise this knowledge that will bring about the most significant paradigm shift in our daily lives, with hands-free voice likely to dominate.

A good comparator is how we used the internet when it first arrived. Do you remember those “noisy” modems to which we connected our bulky computers to access the web? Now, 70% of what you use is facilitated by your mobile phone. The phrase “Mobile first” is no longer a business’s term, as it has become an absolute default mode.

Interestingly, Open AI openly states that today’s “Hardware” does not support their vision of how customers should access AI and has made the sector’s first significant move by purchasing a start-up called “io” for $6.4 billion, even though it was only founded in 2024 by Jony Ive. Yes, I did say “Billions”!!!

Jony Ive is the legendary designer behind iconic products such as the Apple iPhone and iPod, collaborating with several former senior Apple engineers and designers, including Scott Cannon, Tang Tan, and Evans Hankey.

The primary motivation for this acquisition was to gain access to io’s elite development team, many of whom were instrumental in creating the original iPhone and other groundbreaking Apple devices. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, and Jony Ive had already collaborated for two years prior to the deal, sharing an ambition to create a “new family of AI-powered devices” that could redefine how people interact with computers and artificial intelligence.

OpenAI is refusing to even hint at what new piece of equipment they have in mind, considering the significant impact that the launch of China’s “Deep Seek” and their copycat LLM technology had on OpenAI’s share price. They will be copied, but just as Apple gained an early advantage and established a first-mover edge, it has managed to maintain that to this day.

I have long predicted that within two years, we will all have “Digital Twins” that know all our buying habits and research all our purchases by liaising not with humans but with businesses’ AI sales agents, to present us with a shortlist of choices to buy. Until today, I had merely assumed that this data would be kept securely by our phones, which would remain our primary tools.

However, I then unpacked my new Ray-Ban Meta Sunglasses today! Just WOW.

Much like the launch of the first Apple phone, looking stylish is essential when using new technology. This is why Meta’s collaboration with the iconic Ray-Ban sunglasses is significant, even though it would have been far more practical to produce reading glasses that would allow me to read the instruction manual when setting them up!

I had never previously considered how glasses naturally position speakers close to your ears, allowing Ray-Bans to eliminate the need for wearing headphones to listen to music or take phone calls. The sound quality is incredible, and unless you’re in a library, nobody around you is likely to hear the track you’re listening to, let alone your incoming conversation. Similarly, they are equipped with microphones positioned just above your mouth, which provide excellent voice capture.

However, listening to music and handling calls is hardly a new phenomenon. The key new applications are:

Photo and video AI analysis.

With one click of a button, I can start recording video or photographing my surroundings, with Meta’s AI analysing the output to describe what I am looking at.

Potential applications.

· Shopping. I can now walk around shops, look at an item and buy it online at a cheaper price to be delivered via Amazon Prime to my home, to avoid carrying it around.

· Look at Tell. The glasses are already AI-enabled and can analyse anything you’re observing, providing verbal feedback. For example, I asked them to summarise what I’m writing in this blog, and they instantly told me I was writing about the features of the new Meta glasses and that I like them. Just think about how powerful this is in the real world, for instance, reading a menu and telling me the best-reviewed items that match my typical tastes.

· Facial recognition. Our police and border forces will soon be equipped with these tools, as Harvard students seeking to identify girls’ details while walking around campus have demonstrated this is possible.

· Meeting Recording. We are already used to AI bots joining all our video calls and transcribing them to save time and increase accuracy. Our glasses will enable us to bring this technology into the real world.

Language Translation.

Turn on the translate function, and the glasses suddenly turn into the “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” fictional “Babel Fish”. They pick up what is being said to you in Spanish (only three languages currently) and translate it with a 0.5-second delay into English, directly into your ears. Now, admittedly, it would be helpful if, like Google Translate on your phone, they could translate your response back, but understanding your surroundings is probably 80% of the job when navigating cities or travelling in general.

Potential applications

· Travel. These glasses make travelling the world infinitely easier.

· Business. How many times in meetings have you thought, I wish I knew what this lot were saying to each other!

Other similar products are set to launch in the next few months, and if the manufacturers manage to keep them looking cool, you can expect the next wave of smart glasses to take off truly. However, they will still require linking to our phones to keep the heavyweight computing away from our faces.

Glasses may not be the next big wearable tech, as Open AI invest billions into the next big thing, but assuming the trend of Star Trek tools coming to life, you would not bet against them.

I must admit that, mentally, I had written TUI off as a spent force in the UK. It had not expanded its ATOL bonding beyond 5.9 million passengers in the last four years. It had been overtaken by Jet2 Holidays at 7 million passengers, while being chased by the rapidly expanding Love and EasyJet Holidays.

However, listening to Tui’s newly appointed CMO, Bart Quinton Smith, the first speaker from Tui at the ITT conference in 10 years, reminded me of the mega brand they maintain and the expansion opportunities that Tui “Smile” offers.

As most readers will know, the dominant UK Thomson brand was phased out in 2017 and replaced by the group-wide TUI Smile branding. Although this transition was executed smoothly, it ironically left many customers under the impression that Tui had previously been Thomas Cook, following the latter’s collapse and subsequent disappearance in September 2019, just before the travel industry’s shutdown due to COVID-19 in March 2020.

The collapse of Thomas Cook left Tui as the only remaining vertically integrated tour operator, well-positioned to acquire its market share. However, when COVID arrived, the larger you were, the harder you were hit.

Thomson and then Tui succeeded where Thomas Cook failed by creating “Exclusive Product,” where they either owned the best-located beach hotels or had them tied up on long-term guarantees. This was combined with their own airline seats to provide a high-quality and controllable tour operation, featuring popular products such as Sensatori, Tui Blue, and the third-party-owned Rui brand.

However, this heavily leveraged position became a noose around their necks during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a staggering £5.6 billion loss for the business between 2020 and 2022. Without intervention from the German government, which extended a loan of £4.6 billion to the company, it would have collapsed during the pandemic. Although it ultimately survived, it left the business burdened with a mountain of debt and greatly restricted access to cash.

This meant that Tui could no longer guarantee much of its third-party stock, thereby granting access to the rapidly expanding travel sector based on low-cost airlines. This situation undermined its “product shield” and exposed it to the impact of operating “commodity products” that others also sold, albeit at a lower cost base.

The net impact was that Tui picked up virtually none of the Thomas Cook market share, which was quickly gobbled up by Jet2 Holidays and Love Holidays, both of whom have added 3.5 million passengers post-COVID.

Thus, I had a somewhat dismissive attitude towards the second-largest UK tour operator. However, I must admit that I was mistaken to discount them, as they are now making some intriguing moves.

Tui continues to reap the rewards of its early purchase of the Dreamliner fleet, which allows it to dominate the long-haul beach market, where it faces no competition from low-cost airline rivals. This, combined with the profitable hotel and cruise divisions that its competitors lack, is the primary driver behind their strong rebound to a £2.12 billion EBITDA in 2024. However, the net profit of only £505 million highlights how much mounting interest on their debt still holds them back.

More interestingly, Tui has signed a strategic deal with Ryanair to significantly expand its regional access to its remaining exclusive hotel stock and increase its sales of city breaks. If Love Holidays can add 1 million passengers to its ATOL this year after gaining permission-based access, with no API fees to Ryanair, why shouldn’t a major brand like Tui do the same?

Some commentators, of course, will focus on the negatives of Ryanair’s attitude towards customer service, which is diametrically opposed to TUI’s and could potentially damage the brand. Indeed, there is a risk, but I know it is one that TUI will monitor closely through its customer service scores and will incorporate provisions into its pricing. This will enable them, as ATOL holders, to replace Ryanair’s draconian amendment fees and cancellation policies with more acceptable alternatives that better suit their customer base.

The relationship is in its early stages, but a strategic alliance with the mega-leisure brand TUI offers significant benefits for Ryanair. As previously discussed, Ryanair’s brand heritage suggests it’s unlikely customers would trust them with their holidays; however, these same customers clearly accept them as a convenient bus service when packaged within a Tui holiday. Let’s be honest, there is little true brand differentiation provided by the Tui airline short-haul fleet, as seat pitches align with low-cost carriers, and their on-time performance, if anything, lags that of Ryanair.

Consequently, Tui UK, with its extensive retail shop network and online presence as a package holiday brand, offers a completely new and complementary distribution channel for Rynair flights that could enhance its initial load factors and overall profits. Equally important, Tui Group provides this opportunity to Ryanair not only in the UK but also in the crucial German market, where Ryanair, with 20 million passengers, ranks a distant third behind flag carrier Lufthansa’s 71.4 million outbound passengers. Remember, third is not a position Ryanair enjoys!

It also makes perfect sense for Tui to switch its long-haul customers to short-haul beach or city breaks between their long-haul excursions. I’m also sure that their events and attractions arm, Tui Musement, is rubbing its hands together at the prospect of creating a rich events and excursions-based city break holiday within a greatly expanded city break offering from their sister tour operator.

More products under the same branding are always a winner, as long as they do not dilute Tui’s quality positioning. However, Tui is adept at maintaining quality and customer satisfaction, so I don’t foresee this as a concern.

So, with a receding debt mountain and some interesting strategic moves, the leisure giant that is Tui in the UK may finally be awaking, and it was great to be reminded by the eloquent Bart about their brand’s opportunities.

Until Tui reduces its substantial debt, it will remain a relatively unappealing option for potential suitors. However, one could easily envision a future bidding war among profitable and well-financed low-cost carriers lured by their pan-European distribution.

Maybe one to watch, guys!

In my last AI Steve Speaks blog, I shared predictions from leading AI experts that unemployment would increase to 20% due to the rollout of new AI Technology and that 50% of entry-level white-collar worker roles would disappear.

Unsurprisingly, when these predictions were brought to the attention of two young graduates looking to enter the UK Travel sector, whilst they were on stage discussing their prospects at last week’s ITT conference in Sardinia.

Both emphasised that although they understood the importance of AI tools and had been actively taught how to use them in their Leisure and Tourism courses, they wished to enter the industry to utilise their interpersonal skills and the human touch.

I quickly dispelled these concerns by pointing out that the inevitable result of workers using AI tools would be efficiency gains, leading to a shortened 4-day working week, with most humans having both increased wealth and leisure time to enjoy holidays.

Rather than posing a threat to the travel industry, the AI revolution is likely to offer it its biggest ever boom, as more people can explore the world without language barriers.

My own Neural Voice AI business supports conversations in 25 different languages with AI characters that have the knowledge of the internet at their fingertips, making planning journeys, selecting restaurants, booking taxis, as well as travelling between hotels and local attractions, child’s play.

The new Meta Ray-Bans I have just ordered are equipped with listening devices that will instantly translate foreign languages and display the English translation on the inside of my glasses. Extending this to allow for the immediate translation of my spoken English into any other language is only months away, so the language barriers that once restricted our travels are rapidly diminishing.

There will, therefore, be an ever-increasing number of flights and trips booked if we could discover ways to counter the polluting impact of air travel, either through new SAFE fuels or, in my opinion, the more likely route of carbon extraction and offsetting through other actions in our lives. You may complain about the move to electric cars, but this reduces your personal emissions by 29%. If you also install solar panels and improve insulation in your home, the resulting overall reduction will more than outweigh your increased travel emissions.

Contrary to some commentators, I really don’t see the need for restricting air travel if we can achieve net zero by focusing on transitioning to clean nuclear-powered electricity and replacing carbon-burning sources with electric power. It is unlikely that flying will ever be an emissions-free activity because the cost of biofuels and the scale of production required do not seem economically viable to me. However, as long as we balance flying with other emissions reductions, I don’t see the issue here.

I believe that most wars would be avoided if the world understood each other’s cultures and customs better, and travel is a key driver of this. Sorry, but having visited the USA, Russia and China, I know their people are human beings like us, and it’s often only power-hungry leaders that drive conflict. Just remember, as evidenced by the collapse of communist Russia, people can overthrow repressive rulers at any time, and even the worst of Trump’s excesses will soon fade in memory once the US population see the consequences of his isolationist policies.

However, travel will not be spared from AI’s massive impact.

Customers buying holiday packages online will swiftly cut down the 303 minutes that Google estimates they currently spend on researching holidays. In the next three years, we will all possess digital twins securely stored on our phones that recognise our buying habits and preferences. Do you genuinely believe our AI twins will opt to purchase from humans? They will merely reach out to the AI agents of travel companies to receive 3-4 recommendations for their owners, along with customer reviews, videos, and photographs, to inform their final choices.

Nonetheless, just as high street shops have survived and home workers have thrived despite the rise of the internet, AI tools will be utilised by human agents to arrange more intricate or costly holidays, where customers prefer to depend on the expertise of a trusted human travel agent to employ these tools on their behalf.

Never forget that travel represents the most significant purchase a customer makes annually, centred not on a physical product but rather on a promise of delivery. This implicitly necessitates trust, and it is human interaction that builds this trust. Therefore, while you may use AI to book flights and accommodation for quick beach getaways, you are unlikely to place your trust in AI for the increasingly complex and long-distance travel arrangements to foreign lands that will rapidly become accessible in a world without language barriers.

The main impact of AI tools in travel will not be to replace humans as such, but to make the top-selling agents with the best empathy and sales skills considerably more efficient. As Simon Powel, owner of Systems X, demonstrated at the ITT conference, all calls will be automatically transcribed, summarised, and utilised as booking drivers through AI integrations. If AI co-pilots can reduce administrative tasks, agents will have more time for their essential human interactions with customers. However, by implication, this will mean fewer agents, as the most successful will handle many more clients concurrently.

AI tools like Neural Rivers, “AI Reps in Your Pocket”, will also enable agents’ branding to accompany customers on holiday, providing AI voice interaction that allows customers to utilise the internet’s knowledge to choose between restaurants and bars based on their convenience and reviews. Each conversation is instantly captured, summarised, and used to drive WhatsApp itineraries and booking links.

More importantly, that information is also fed back into the agent’s CRM, providing them with a much deeper understanding of their customers’ preferences, which facilitates a continuously evolving level of personal service and interaction.

AI tools also ensure you’ll never miss a call again or be unavailable to clarify arrangements, even if customers are heading to the airport at 3 am for an early morning low-cost departure. Your AI Copilot will handle every mundane call immediately and triage all others for your attention.

The quote of the ITT conference was that “If you’re not moving forward with AI, you’re moving backwards against your competition and may soon be out of a job”.

Explore some of the products developed by Neural Voice as simple MVPs to appreciate the art of the possible and commence your journey.

https://www.neural-voice.ai/travel-demos