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Welcome to CurrencyCast Travel Edition. I'm Marc Padrosa, I’m the Global Industry Leader for the Travel industry at Kantox. And today I'm pleased to be joined by two leaders of the industry. We have Mario Gavira from Kiwi.com, the Vice President of Growth. And then we have Mauricio Prieto, who is the founder of eDreams and founder of the Travel Tech Essentiallist newsletter.
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Thank you guys, for being here. Thank you. Thank you. And could you guys, for the ones that maybe they don't know you, explain a little bit where you're coming from, what is your background? And we kind of start like here. I start from, come from the travel industry. I've been starting, really working there from day one when we were still printing tickets physically and sending them to the customers.
00;01;05;24 - 00;01;30;03
So it's been a long way. But I basically moved to the digital world in 2001. I went to London, started the, was part of the founding team of Apollo, which was one of the big first OTAs in Europe. We were basically in the dot com boom, the first wave. So we had a lot of funding and we started to build this pretty strong brand in Europe.
00;01;30;03 - 00;01;58;21
I mean, northern Europe, north Western Europe, most of the UK and Germany. And after a few years time, then we basically merged with eDreams and GO Voyages, and that became the group Odigeo, where I had the pleasure to work with Mauricio for several years. I was mainly focused in the French market, then moved to metasearch business, and then I decided to change it back in 2018 I think.
00;01;58;21 - 00;02;28;08
And now I have been in Kiwi.com for two and a half years as, you mentioned, VP of growth. So mainly focused on traffic acquisition retention and customer retention, and also some cross-functional projects around conversion optimization and monetisation of our customers. And I do not come from the travel, you know, originally from the travel sector.
00;02;28;10 - 00;03;00;08
I come from, I’m originally from Mexico and went to business school in California. And I was working product development for Schwab, for Charles Schwab, which was like one of the like the first online brokerage company. It was a traditional broker and then it changed its entire business model to online brokerage. So I started working there in 95, from 95 to 99 right exactly
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it was very fortunate timing. Because right when they were starting to change their entire model totally to an online brokerage model. And so I was working in product development for four years. So I had experience in that area. I got together with Javier Perez-Tenessa, who I had known, we were friends from Mexico. And at that point, he told me I think about starting something with travel, in the travel sector.
00;03;34;01 - 00;04;05;27
And at that time there were a couple of companies in the States that seemed to have some initial traction, as with an OTA model. So we decided to start an OTA in Europe. The original model was very different from what it ended up being. Because we started with tour operator packages and with a sort of a, we call them dream guides,
00;04;05;27 - 00;04;42;17
it was like a social media of experts. And then we changed things around and then we decided to be experts in flights. And we started in 2000, we came to Barcelona in 99 and we launched eDreams Spain, Italy, UK and France in 2000. And then we kind of closed off a couple of markets and consolidated in Spain and Italy.
00;04;42;20 - 00;05;31;15
And then we, by the time I left eDreams in 2014/2015, we were in eDreams Odigeo was in 40 something, 48 countries. And I met Mario back in 2011, right? Yes. And the second leveraged buyout in eDreams, it was a company called Permira. And the idea was to do kind of a consolidation play in Europe. And that's when eDreams, Opodo, GO Voyages merge and created eDreams Odigeo.
00;05;31;17 - 00;06;03;23
So that was kind of a mass market, high volume, thinking big. And then I went to completely thinking as small as possible, as niche. Niche and very kind of what I'm doing at the Travel Tech Essentiallist. Is this kind of vague thinking, as a one-person company trying to build that right. Because I’m launching different platforms, first of all, understanding different needs and I’m launching platforms to hopefully be able to scale.
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But again, in a very different approach than eDreams. So that's what I'm doing. In different capacities, but always in the travel ecosystem, online travel ecosystem. Okay. And are you also now investing as an angel? Because I know you mentioned Javier, and he's on the four founders. If I’m not mistaken,
00;06;28;06 - 00;06;57;13
he’s part of the 4Founders team, I'm not sure if you are also there investing. I don't, I'm currently not investing, but one of the platforms that I have actually is a platform that connects startups that are looking for, that are fundraising and investors that are either specialized in the travel market or VCs that like the travel sector.
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They don't invest exclusively in the travel sector but they invest and some of their portfolio companies are in Travel. So that's one of the platforms that I help through Travel Tech Essentiallist. Perfect, thank you guys! Then I wanted to ask you first about the current environment in the industry. Because, at least what I see from the conversations that I have with CFOs, CEOs and many people in the industry, is that there is quite a lot of optimism. I would say, conservative optimism, if I can call it like this. Because bookings are booming, prices of the flights are high and everyone is booking, hotels also they are all full.
00;07;45;24 - 00;08;04;02
I don't know, I would like to see, maybe Mario we start with you. How do you see it in terms of what is the situation now at Kiwi? Do you see this increase in bookings also in your platform in your day-to-day? Yeah, I mean, obviously last year was the year of the revenge things, revenge travel, right.
00;08;04;02 - 00;08;30;23
Where we had massive growth then, which was triggered basically by the catch-up demand that all the pent-up demand, as they called it. This year, we were surprised to see that the year started really very, very strong. We also had triple-digit growth really compared to 2019, which was obviously quite surprising for us. Now, part of it is also due to the fact that we have been growing quite significantly, in terms of marketing and so on.
00;08;30;23 - 00;08;57;26
So it was driven obviously also by some of our own capabilities, but also because the demand was there. The growth has been slowing down, at least from what we see, and this is purely driven by I mean specifically on flights over the last four weeks. That doesn't mean that we are now not growing, but it's not anymore high double-digit numbers, but rather low double-digit number.
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So it's still good compared to 2019, and obviously compared to 2022. But there is a slowdown. And our main hypothesis here is that obviously, the booking values have massively gone up. The airlines have been obviously maximizing their yields because they're still at reduced capacity and they know they can sell more expensive. There is especially reasonable on the long haul sales.
00;09;25;13 - 00;09;49;00
So the long haul right now for summer it's nearly impossible to actually do any type of sales activity because the planes are full. On the short haul, medium haul side, specially intra Europe with all of the capacity of the local carriers, there is still availability. So what we see is the airplanes. I mean the airlines, the big ones, these are around 80-85% load factor.
00;09;49;00 - 00;10;22;19
So they still have these last 15%, but they are holding up, so they are keeping the prices up. Because they expect that there will be the last-minute work that will allow them to sell expensively. But it might also go wrong and they might need to go for some last-minute offers to fill the planes. And then again talking mostly of Ryanair, Vueling, Wizzair, the big low-cost carriers in Europe, so there we today still see growth we do expect that to keep the growth for the summer season.
00;10;22;26 - 00;10;53;12
And then the big question Marc is obviously what would happen afterwards. If it's sustainable or not. Exactly. We don't know, and nobody has a crystal ball. We obviously know that with inflation, the macroeconomic headwinds, with the fact that the people might have kept this spending for the last summer trip. But then how much would be left in terms of purchase power for further travel in the post summer season?
00;10;53;16 - 00;11;39;18
That is something we don't know. And we are obviously having different scenarios where we kind of project rather conservative up to slightly negative possible outcomes, depending on how this works. So basically, we will see after the summer, that's our current status. Mauricio if you want on your side. I think Mario, he is in Kiwi, it is a very successful and high-growth company, I think that there is a handful of companies that are growing well.
00;11;39;18 - 00;12;30;17
I mean if we think about the early start-ups. In the startup environment, there is a blocked path. There's the level of funding that has happened this year is at record low. Especially also in later stages, no? Yeah but because there's a trickle-down effect between, actually the early-stage startups are doing better than late-stage. Because it trickles down from the publicly traded companies that the multiples have been cut significantly, and that has an impact on the,
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the late-stage startups. And the early-stage startups, the fact that they're starting now also gives them an advantage. In terms of focus, in terms of approach to the equation between growth and profitability. There are some startups, that those startups that raised in 2020 and 2021, they are a lot of times growing to the valuation that they raised. And at which point you need to start having down rounds,
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and that's very painful for everybody involved. Companies that before were favouring growth over profitability, now they're doing the opposite. They're trying to have profitable models and the growth capacity is impacted. Just on that front, even in Kiwi we obviously have these type of discussions, too.
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Because we have been a profitable company but sometimes you can obviously invest more in growth, diluting your bottom line. And even now with our investors, who are also from Sillicon Valley, GA, General Atlantic is one of the big investors. And these guys are coming up with very clear guidance on their expertise, also from what they see in their portfolio of companies. And making us focus on the rule of 40 to say it, which is a combination of top and bottom-line growth.
00;14;03;21 - 00;14;31;02
So it's not only about the top line, we also now are obviously making, let's say, adjusting some of our marketing strategies to make sure that we also grow the bottom line. That's clearly something that everybody's seen. And probably that guidance, that clear guidance is as clear as the guidance a year or two years ago, that was completely the opposite. Is like grow, grow, grow.
00;14;31;06 - 00;15;01;04
And now it's somewhat reversed, but it’s always clear. I think it's healthy, you cannot grow at all costs. And also maybe now we have been very strict on the profitability. But in the end, we need to look at the bottom line. Otherwise, we were seeing valuations that now when you look at them, now it’s very easy to have an opinion on that.
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But you would see 100x, even 200x turnover, which was quite crazy. And I think this, well in this case it was COVID, that this makes people feel more near to the reality of the business. In the end, we are here to make money, we are here to make the business grow, but not at all costs.
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So it's complex. And if you have to give me some names of players, companies that you think they have benefited out of the situation that we have suffered. Because one of the names that comes to my mind is Airbnb, for example. I think Airbnb, now you let me know, but I think
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they have won quite a lot of market share in that sense. For what, I have been following, of course, your newsletter, I have seen some numbers. But in your opinion, do you think that there are some players that now are in a better position due to what we have been suffering this year? The two players that come to mind, because also maybe they've been very good at getting the word out of what they have done and how much their business has changed, one is Airbnb, and also Airbnb is a relatively newer player.
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But their focus, I mean apparently Airbnb was close to being dead. They were in the emergency room, and then they got a round of funding six months before their IPO, and at that moment nobody was talking about IPO. What Airbnb says is that they went from seeing themselves as a travel company to seeing a huge opportunity to be a work company and a living company. And you don't know how much PR and spin there is to that.
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But if you start looking at the average days, you start looking at how people are engaging with Airbnb, it seems like people are indeed staying longer periods of time. People are staying also closer to home in different cases, I mean they're using Airbnb differently. And what is also notable is the way we define work, at least in the now hybrid work and remote work. In some way,
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Airbnb has a product that fits relatively well. So Airbnb is one of them and another one is Hopper. So Hopper seems also to be a company that has done really well just incorporating, I was going to say fintech products, but it's just incorporating products that address human basic needs. We call them fintech because we have to categorize them.
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But it's like reducing the friction with the way people behave and the way people think. So by reducing that friction and by reducing how nervous people are when making a big purchase, they have come up with interesting products. I was reading the other day that more than 50% of the revenue now come from their splouse?.
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From this product being sold to other travel players. So those two companies come to mind. Now that you mentioned Hopper, I was about to mention it too. Because they are now, is what you said more of a fintech player than a travel player, and the line is very thin between fintech and travel.
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What we see is not just Hopper, now maybe we can talk about Kiwi also. For example, I know Booking.com, they also hired like 300 or 400 people just to build a fintech unit. We have some clients in the B2B space that they are also building their fintech units. In the end, this is a very, very competitive environment,
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very competitive industry, is really difficult to differentiate yourself. But if you put the client at the centre, really the client at the centre, okay. Not just marketing it, but putting it and building products that can remove the friction and the problems that they may have. At some point, this will lead to more sales and more growth. And from my point of view, this “fintechisation” of travel, it will be a must at some point. If you don't put your payments strategy, your fintech strategy, meaning we see it in Kantox on the hedging part. We help them hedge the currency risk and making the most out of currencies by
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sporting arbitrage opportunities on the contracting side, helping them sell more. If you don't take into account all these concepts in your day-to-day, you are going to be the last in the line at some point. And this is something that is moving very, very quickly. And I think now there is this moment of FOMO in the industry, that we need to do something about fintech.
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We need to be a fintech or at least embed fintech into the business. I don't know Mario if you have any initiative in, I guess so, in Kiwi.com that you can share about fintech or payments. I will first be playing the devil's advocate. Okay. Overall I would argue that Hopper has a great narrative and there's no doubt that they have basically managed to monopolize the headlines in the whole industry for the last 2-3 years.
00;21;27;17 - 00;22;12;07
They probably have grown massively top line. But it's still out what is their profitability, coming back to the bottom line. And I have not yet seen any number of Hopper around what is actually the results down in the P&L. So that, I would say, is the one question Marc that I have around Hopper. Now then on fintech in general obviously there are many parts right. And there's the pure payment optimisation part and adding new payment methods which is a huge obviously opportunity. Now that also they are more and more new types of native payments that are popping up all over the
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world. I mean, take an example like Brazil, where Pix is now the in-app payment method that is by far the most widespread payment method across the entire country. And Colombia has another type of local payment method, in Europe there is open banking. So for sure, we have a huge number of new types of payment methods where we as an OTA to make the shopping experience as frictionless as possible.
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We are adding them to allow basically customers to pay with whatever method they want to pay. And then there is this more type of what they call fintech features like we sometimes are mix of guarantees, insurances, instalment payments in there. And there, to be honest, I mean, that's where Hopper has doubled down.
00;23;09;20 - 00;23;30;06
And we, in Kiwi, are also investing into some of these features. We have already rolled out what we call our fare lock, which is pretty much the same thing that Hopper does for fees. You keep your airline ticket at this given price for a number of days, and then basically you can redeem it or not.
00;23;30;08 - 00;23;57;17
There is something which has a certain traction, but I wouldn't say that it's a game changer to be very honest. But then again, we have to test and iterate on the features. So, I think that this typically instalment also is something that we know there is a certain audience for that. A certain customer segment that is very interested in that. It's nothing new on Earth,
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it has been there for many years, in different shapes and forms. But it's true that there is a need to enrich with these features the travel shopping experience. And then there's a third layout in fintech, which is the actual financial institutions. Which can be banks, credit card companies and so on, who realize that, especially in the last years, travel has been such a massive spending pocket for them. And that obviously they will generate money
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whenever there is a transaction, they are doubling down in travel. So this is an opposite stream, that the big banks like Capital One with Hopper, like Booking.com who did a partnership with Barclays a few weeks ago, and some other even acquisitions from big financial institutions, I think JP Morgan also announced something recently. There seems to be also an appetite from the financial institutions to get into more basically a foothold into travel because they realize that that's where the money is.
00;25;03;24 - 00;25;26;29
And they obviously follow their money and therefore they want to own all these customers. So a lot of moving pieces, very interesting. Some of it is more, I would say, PR and as Mauricio said. So, sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is actually positive impacting our bottom line.
00;25;26;29 - 00;25;47;13
But we are obviously exploring them and testing all of the features which we think can drive value for the customer. And you know, sometimes a narrative is important too. Because when you're selling a product, you need to know how to sell it. And if you're selling “oh, and then add this insurance product”, I don't know.
00;25;47;14 - 00;26;30;18
You know, a lot people sell insurance in a very gentle, mechanical way. If you're changing the narrative to positioning insurance in a much more, you know, trying to give you peace of mind. And selling it in a way that is a lot more human and less mechanical transactional. Maybe you're selling a very similar product, but you might be more successful in selling it. Because you're able to sell a dream or sell a concept or sell something that speaks to your cognitive way of thinking, right?
00;26;30;21 - 00;26;54;04
So I think that's also something that Airbnb has done well. Airbnb, the whole narrative behind Airbnb and the way that they have built a brand, a really strong brand. At least all the stories seem to point out that Airbnb, they also invest in performance, but it seems like their brand is very strong.
00;26;54;04 - 00;27;13;01
They created a whole category. So it's kind of unfair to talk about Airbnb as an example to follow because very few brands create categories. So that's kind of a bad example. But you need to sustain it in time, in the end. We have a lot of companies that they have been the creators of the categories.
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But in the end, they are getting disrupted at some point. What I think they are doing really well is they are constantly innovating. I see the CEO, Brian Chesky, every X month asking to Twitter, that maybe this is all sort of part of the narrative and part of the marketing, but he's they're asking the people, what should we improve in Airbnb?
00;27;33;10 - 00;27;56;20
He does have the, it might be narrative, but he has the ear on the ground. Just like most, most get it clearly. The previous Twitter CEO never tweeted, it's difficult to be a CEO if you're not using your product, if you're not listening to your customers.
00;27;56;22 - 00;28;18;29
So I think that having that something that Chesky at least seems to. He has a very good sense of what the market is saying and he engages and it might be narrative. But I think that if he's pointing that way, the rest of Airbnb are also following suit. If the founder and CEO is doing this,
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everybody else also listens to the market. Is part of the company culture, in the end is putting the client really at the centre, not just in a marketing way with also in the day-to-day. Buy now pay later is a concept that we have seen especially two years, one year ago, a few years ago in all the companies that I was going to, this was like the main topic.
00;28;44;03 - 00;29;15;09
And honestly, in line with what you just said Mario, I think this is what I see that is more narrative than real tangible concept, at least from what I see. I don't know anyone that is using buy now pay later approach in the travel industry, you know what this is. I didn’t tell you in France, there's a local challenger to Amazon, which is called Cdiscount, and is a big retailer,
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of anything. And they have a massive, I mena the flight product of Cdiscount is partly powered by an OTA that I worked with. And over 50% of what they sell in terms of flights and packages is buy now pay later. They have built their whole marketing and their whole narrative and value proposition around that.
00;29;45;24 - 00;30;23;28
And obviously, it's targeting a very specific segment of the French customers. But it works, it does work and it is a presence. Now, other than that, I can tell you that I don't know anybody else, but we haven't tested it yet in Kiwi and we've got to be testing it. So we definitely want to test it. Because, we do feel that especially for tickets with higher price value, which can be a lot more types now where the prices are going up like crazy, there might be an appetite. What we won't do is do it ourselves.
00;30;23;28 - 00;30;48;25
We will use an expert who basically provides us with especially that let’s say managing risk because that's obviously where it gets dangerous potentially. And we don't feel that that's part of our core expertise. And therefore there are enough expert players out there who know how to do this. And we've got to really see if there's any traction.
00;30;48;27 - 00;31;22;05
Okay. Well, the more successful buy now pay later is a credit card right? In the sense, exactly. That's why I think there's nothing new into that. These like we have been doing it but now that the word buy now pay later it seems that the word, that the concept, it seems that well everyone should have. In the end I agree with Mario that if I were the owner of a company like this, I would give the option to my client. This for sure,
00;31;22;05 - 00;31;53;10
this is not going to decrease bookings. He's giving the option, and then for these segment of population that maybe they are going to use it, of course, go for it. Then we see cases like buy now pay later companies per se like Klarna, for example. You know them really well, that they have seen the valuation going from I think it was like something out of 50 or 60 million to 80% less or 70% less.
00;31;53;11 - 00;32;19;13
I don't know now where they are, but I agree with you that giving the option to the client is something that is, of course, what is not going to happen is going to harm the business. That's for sure. Okay, I need to ask the question. AI, what do you think about it? Do you think that it has really tangible outcomes?
00;32;19;16 - 00;33;01;14
Do you see some companies that they are using already AI? Maybe companies that are built just to give AI feasibility to other travel companies. How do you see the concept of AI in the travel industry? So first of all, AI is a lot of things. And if we speak about machine learning, for instance, at Kiwi we have been using machine learning for over five years now. And a lot of our capabilities around what we call the virtual interlining of combining different flight segments into new itineraries even, and optimizing the content that we send to our metasearch partners.
00;33;01;14 - 00;33;26;10
All of this stuff, is already heavily basically driven by algorithms. You are the hackers of the industry. We do feel that we are disrupting the airline industry, yes! We are proud of that. Now, if you speak about generative AI, there, obviously, this is opening some new opportunities, new windows. We in Kiwi,
00;33;26;17 - 00;33;57;06
we are exploring it very proactively in many different domains. And to give you a few examples, let’s say what we would call our FAQs, it was a chatbot that was allowing customers to ask questions. This is now purely fully driven by AI right. It was fairly easy and quick to implement. We’re using AI, generative AI, for a lot of our internal workflows. Stuff like creating copy ads,
00;33;57;06 - 00;34;34;16
even in SEM we have done experiments. Because obviously a company like Kiwi who is running millions of copy ads in search worldwide in over 40 languages. Sometimes the workload to do these ads correctly is quite cumbersome. And sometimes you will have the local insights. And by running experiments where we compare the ads that we were having created by ourselves and the ones that are generated by AI, we see in many cases the AI do a much better job.
00;34;34;16 - 00;35;02;17
We have a better click through rate, conversion. So that's a clear domain. We have stuff obviously on the coding side, they call the engineers, they have their copilot now in Github starting to use it more and more to automate part of the coding. And obviously on the also on the display, everything that is creative and around banners, in remarketing, in Facebook, TikTok and so on.
00;35;02;17 - 00;35;25;21
We are starting to test different iterations by using AI. So all of this stuff is more around workflow optimisation and savings, and scaling faster. Now, the other big question on AI, that's the one we don't know at least. But we obviously following very closely and we are encouraged to see what happens is: will it fundamentally change the user behavior?
00;35;25;21 - 00;35;52;20
This is, will customers who today run search by basically for flight typing in origin-destination dates and then looking at their results page, will they change their behaviour and become more conversational, let's say, dynamic? Where you ask a bot and he answers you and these kinds of conversational platforms would pop up in many different touchpoints, right? You would have,
00;35;52;20 - 00;36;18;25
we are starting to see them in search, obviously Bing and also now Google gradually. But you are also going to see them in all of the basically the office stack of Microsoft. So you will have the capabilities to have a chat with a bot while you're writing your Word document or your Excel sheet, right? And then you potentially can ask him: Hey, by the way, give me the cheapest flight to London for next week.
00;36;18;27 - 00;36;39;28
All of this stuff, we don't know what will happen. And this is something where it can be a major disruption. It can mean that now where we are investing massively in search engine marketing, we might need to reshuffle it. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it would be the search engines who would own the chatbots, the key chatbots and therefore we've got to be able to keep using them.
00;36;40;00 - 00;37;09;23
A lot of question marks. We don't have the answers, but what we are trying to do is basically testing or putting a little bit of a seed in all of these different plants to see what will basically fly. And again, we are obviously working closely with Microsoft on a Bing chatbot and we are discussing with Google with bot, and some of the new type of search engine AI driven results they’ve seen.
00;37;09;25 - 00;37;34;18
So we are trying to explore all of these different levels and at least what we feel in Kiwi is that thanks to our technical capabilities, since most of the stuff that is under the hood for these chatbots will be API driven. And we have a very strong API tech stack, we can be actually the frontrunners. Whatever happens, whatever is a touch point in whatever chatbot environment it happens,
00;37;34;20 - 00;37;51;16
we will try to be the first ones who get to integrate it and see how it works. Which is a little bit the similar thing we did back a few years ago with Google Flights. When Google Flights started, they were only airline.coms and we were the first ones, we pioneered giving them the content and that gave us financial
00;37;51;16 - 00;38;14;04
power over some of our competitors. For me, that's the big question. It’s a really good point, where am I going to go to book the flight in three years? Am I going to ChatGPT and asking, what you said, to find the cheapest flight to London? And that’s why companies like you, and Expedia they were also one of the first ones creating this plug-in inside the platform.
00;38;14;06 - 00;38;43;20
So at least you should be there and then we'll see where am I booking the flight. But of course, you should be one of the contenders there in order to get this booking. And I think one thing is that generative AI is ruthless. It's ruthless in the sense that it doesn't care about what relationship, what commercial relationship you have. It doesn't care what human human relationship we have.
00;38;43;20 - 00;39;15;27
And then, okay, I'm going to work with that partner because that's no. Here is going to be I want this flight and maybe the best virtual interliner will be whatever. I don't know what the name will be, ChatGPT Flights or whatever it is. But in that scenario, what will matter a lot is having unique inventory. Because if somebody else's,
00;39;16;00 - 00;39;50;09
I mean, we as consumers might not really care where who's selling it, where is inventory coming from. Somebody else, an agent, the robot, is putting together the flight, according to what we asked. And they're putting together ruthlessly from different providers in a way that is optimal for what I asked. And in that sense, if you don't have either, I think that direct providers, that's a loss for them.
00;39;50;16 - 00;40;16;19
I think because the flight will be flown by United but that can change things around. That has a lot of implications in terms of brand building, in terms of how important is it to build the brand. We were talking about the importance of brand building,
00;40;16;19 - 00;40;42;27
well, it's difficult. But it's as Mario said, it's difficult to know now. I mean now direct applications are online that you can put in place today is, you know, customer service, on coding, the engineering team, the marketing team. And I think that it is making professionals a lot more efficient and better professionals.
00;40;43;00 - 00;41;07;14
It is augmenting the human productivity. Then on trying to guess, you know, the business applications and where is going, is like guessing what the clear applications of the iPhone was when it started. We were all talking oh well, it's like reading the newspaper, because that's what we did with the computers, or is like buying an Expedia flight.
00;41;07;16 - 00;41;36;05
But we would have never thought that there was going to be a you know, you could ask a private car to pick you up here in 5 minutes. That sort of, it's very difficult for us, for any of us to imagine what can come. But I think it is moving extremely fast, just like everybody has been talking about AI and machine learning for a long time.
00;41;36;08 - 00;42;21;29
Now things are moving faster and there's a real application. Well there's very strong consumer applications that people can use for their advantages as students, as teachers, as entrepreneurs, as freelancers, as whatever they want. But I do think that it will be at least interesting to see the impact it will have on loyalty, on brand loyalty. And it is also interesting to see how, another thing that people talk about a lot, is how the younger generations like to gravitate around brands that have some sense of community.
00;42;21;29 - 00;43;00;18
So there's investment in community. Very few brands I think have really that sense of community where it's the fans of the brand building the community itself, instead of the company doing it on a fake marketing-oriented focus. But you know if you're able to build communities around brands, that could be a way to bypass that commoditisation of travel that could happen with future iterations of AI.
00;43;00;20 - 00;43;27;01
Well, guys, I think this has been a really interesting and insightful conversation. So thank you very much, Mario. Thank you very much Mauricio, for coming today. And you can come whenever you can. Thank you very much. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
