Welcome to the AI Travel Brief

You know that feeling when someone's talking about how their company's operations were completely transformed by AI? They're throwing around terms — MCP, RAG, GitHub repos, context windows, tokens — and if that's happening at a travel conference, everyone in the room is nodding in approval. And then you open LinkedIn. It's everywhere. Posts about agentic this and copilot that. Comment AI, and I'll send you the ultimate guide to vibe coding your own revenue management system in under thirty minutes with Claude Code. You comment, reluctantly. You get a link to a ChatGPT-generated Notion page, and you say to yourself, "Okay, I'll get to it when I have time."

But if you work in hospitality, you rarely have time, and you feel it — that creeping sense that everyone else is getting ahead of you. So what about your business? Is ChatGPT sending bookings to you, or to your competitor, or to an OTA? You keep hearing about AI tools that promise to handle guest support, but you remember how frustrated you were the last time you spoke to a customer service bot, and you ask yourself, "Do I want the same experience for my customers?" You see an article about AI replacing jobs, and you're wondering — am I safe? Should my company replace humans with Claude Code, or maybe with Claude Cowork? What's the difference again?

Here's the thing. The honest answer to a lot of questions surrounding AI is that nobody actually knows. At least not yet. But everyone is acting like they do, and that contributes to the feeling underneath all of this — the feeling that we can't keep up, therefore we are missing out.

Now, I want to push back on that feeling, because here's the truth: it's not the job of a travel professional to follow every AI announcement, model release, new tool, or partnership. That's a full-time job. At my company, we support the infrastructure that enables AI to operate in the vacation rental space. It's literally my job to be on top of AI developments, but sometimes even I can't keep up with everything going on out there. Your job is to run your business, to take care of your customers, to manage your team, to survive — and hopefully thrive — in the biggest technological revolution since the internet.

I believe the travel industry needs something to cut through the noise. To separate the real opportunities from the AI-generated marketing copy. An honest and simple take on what's going on, from the lens of a fellow travel professional. This is where the AI Travel Brief comes in.

My name is Boris Pavlov. I've spent the last decade in travel — first as an operator running thousands of vacation rentals, and now as the CEO of Onseason. I'm not a journalist, I'm not an analyst, I'm not a consultant. I started doing short AI briefs for my team a few months ago, and they thought I should just share those with a wider audience. There you go.

AI is changing how travel is discovered, sold, and operated faster than most of the industry realizes. The people who understand these shifts earliest will have an advantage and won't feel like they're missing out. That's the whole point of this show.

The first few episodes will be a catch-up series — a foundation, sort of a baseline. Then we move to news-driven episodes, ten to fifteen minutes each. I'll be filming most episodes in this studio, but the whole idea behind the AI Travel Brief is to be timely. Sometimes news will come when I'm traveling, so some episodes will be filmed in a hotel room, at airports, conference halls, and — quite possibly — from the beach. The setting is going to change, but the format won't.

Now, I know what most of you are probably thinking. The world needs another podcast just as much as it needs another AI trip-planning startup. Probably true. But still, I have to say how the AI Travel Brief is different. So let's use ChatGPT's favorite framework for explaining things. Here is what the AI Travel Brief is not.

It's not a traditional podcast. It's a news briefing — concise, to the point, the kind of show you can finish on your way to work, over a cup of coffee, or during a short workout. It's not impartial. I won't hold back my opinion, just as I hope you won't hesitate to share your views with me. It's not a hype channel. I'm optimistic about AI in travel, but optimism isn't cheerleading. When something is overhyped, I'll say so. It's not a vendor showcase. There will be no sponsors. My team and I curate the content, and we're more than happy to receive your press releases and product demos — but ultimately, we decide what goes on the show and what doesn't.

And one more thing. I said it's not a traditional podcast, so I'm not doing long-form guest interviews — but hallway conversations at conferences, those will probably make it in. Could that change? Never say never. But if it does, it will be because there's a guest whose voice genuinely adds to the analysis, not because I needed to fill a calendar slot. Speaking of calendar — episodes will come out when there's actually something worth covering.

So that was episode zero of The AI Travel Brief. The AI news shaping travel, explained. Operator-focused, ad-free, brief, edited, opinionated, honest about what AI can do in the travel space. Next, we kick off the foundation series — five episodes on the state of AI across various travel verticals. Subscribe wherever you found this: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn. That's the AI Travel Brief for today. Thank you for listening or watching. Cheers.