Leveling Up - Tech and Product for the Next 20 - at The #Phocuswright Conference 2025
Summary
This Phocuswright 2025 Bridge Series panel, moderated by Pete Comeau and Siew Hoon Yeoh, brings together Bryan Batista (CEO, Skyscanner), Mariano Dima (Chairman, Civitatis), and Paul Jacobs (GM & SVP North America & APAC, KAYAK) to examine how product, technology, and culture are reshaping the travel industry over the next two decades.
The session opens by challenging the idea that AI will kill metasearch. Batista pushes back directly on Omry Shraier's earlier conference claim that OTAs could become their own search engines, arguing that search is hard, that Skyscanner has 20 years of experience and 160 million monthly travelers, and that AI actually enables 'metasearch on steroids.' Jacobs echoes this, welcoming competition as ultimately good for the industry while noting Kayak's business remains strong.
The panel turns to tours and activities, where Dima argues the category is at a similar inflection point to vacation rentals 10 years ago. He highlights that 70% of the experiences market is still booked offline, signaling enormous room for digital growth. Key growth regions identified are Latin America (driven by transatlantic flight growth) and Asia-Pacific. He stresses the core pain point in the sector is curation and quality of supply — ensuring that when travelers book an experience, the product description, inclusions, and logistics are crystal clear, contrasting Civitatis' curated 80-option model for Rome against competitors listing thousands.
On AI and personalization, Batista argues the travel industry has 'done a terrible job with personalization today' and sees AI as finally enabling meaningful personalization and memory — moving beyond lowest price to deliver the most relevant answer, whether that means fastest journey, most reliable provider, or most flexible booking. He also advocates for metasearch expanding into packages, rail, and attractions using AI tools. Jacobs frames AI as doing 'the opposite job of metasearch' — curation to narrow decisions — but argues customers ultimately still want price comparison and a trusted brand at the moment of booking.
The panel addresses social commerce and discovery, with Dima noting Civitatis has built strong correlation between micro-influencer partnerships (2,000–3,000 followers) and revenue. Batista describes Skyscanner's bespoke social strategy, citing a cricket sponsorship in India as a high-impact example of market-specific marketing.
Kayak's expansion into business travel via a partnership with Block Sky is discussed by Jacobs as the 'most rational' move the company has made, applying 20 years of consumer-grade technology to corporate travelers who, as he quips, 'already used Kayak anyway.' This also generates cross-referencing data on how the same person behaves differently as a business versus leisure traveler.
On the AI-and-jobs question, Batista reports engineers at Skyscanner are seeing 20%+ productivity gains from AI tools, enabling faster and better product delivery with the same headcount, but stresses the need for new skills: critical thinking, creativity, and better judgment. Dima closes on the responsibility of the experiences sector to sustain SMB supply partners — citing Moroccan operators who grew from one to seven vans after working with Civitatis — and urging that the financial gains of AI efficiency flow back to local communities.
Key Takeaways
- •AI enables metasearch to do more, not less — Skyscanner frames it as 'metasearch on steroids,' enabling better personalization, expanded categories (rail, packages, attractions), and richer comparison funnels.
- •70% of the tours and activities market is still booked offline, making it one of the largest untapped digital opportunities in travel right now.
- •The core unsolved problem in experiences is curation quality — travelers are overwhelmed by thousands of poorly described options; companies that invest in clean, accurate product data have a structural advantage.
- •Growth in experiences will come more from Latin America and Asia-Pacific than from Europe and the US in the near term, driven by expanding flight connectivity.
- •Micro-influencer partnerships (2,000–3,000 followers) are generating measurable revenue correlation for Civitatis — more effective and scalable than chasing celebrity influencers.
- •Skyscanner engineers are reporting 20%+ productivity gains from AI tools, enabling faster product delivery without expanding headcount — but this requires upskilling in critical thinking and judgment, not just technical skills.
- •Kayak's move into business travel is framed as applying 20 years of battle-tested consumer search tech to corporate users who were already using Kayak informally — a natural adjacency, not a strategic stretch.
- •Brand trust is a durable moat: even as AI reshapes the discovery journey, consumers still want to complete high-value bookings with brands they recognize and trust.
- •The same traveler behaves very differently as a business versus leisure traveler — cross-referencing these personas creates valuable personalization signals for both segments.
- •Experiences companies bear a social responsibility to develop and sustain SMB supply partners on the ground, not just aggregate large commercial attractions — this is both an ethical obligation and a product differentiator.
Transcript
So, welcome to the bridge series, leveling up tech and product for the next 20. So, this is always a highlight for Suhoon and I because we get to kind of weave together some of the themes from from the last couple of days and layer it with product, technology, and culture and also cross markets and industry categories. So, we're we're going to keep it fastpaced. We're going to try to have a lot of fun. >> So, let's do it. So before we dive in, I want to recognize my bridge series partner from th...
